How Wayward Are You?

I know many of us have heard someone say, “If I knew you were coming, I would have cleaned my house”! No you would not have cleaned your house. The way your house looks when someone unexpected arrives is the way it looks all the time. This is how it’s going to be with many of us when Jesus returns~ unprepared!

Be prepared – all dressed and ready – for your Lord’s return from the wedding feast. Then you will be ready to open the door and let him in the moment he arrives and knocks. There will be great joy for those who are ready and waiting for his return. He himself will seat them and put on a waiter’s uniform and serve them as they sit and eat! He may come at nine o’clock at night – or even at midnight. But whenever he comes there will be joy for his servants who are ready! Everyone would be ready for him if they knew the exact hour of his return – just as they would be ready for a thief if they knew when he was coming. So be ready all the time. For I, the Messiah, will come when least expected.” Luke 12:35-40 TLB

We are not taking this seriously! Jesus is coming, and the signs are everywhere, yet we ignore them and allow injustice to take place. If many of you haven’t notice, we have eliminated prayer from the schools, took down the Ten Commandments out of the schools, eliminated God from our government and then wonder why schools are being shot up, same sex marriages are taking place, and our homes are severely dysfunctional! Wealth does not mean you are favored by God, nor does it mean you have power over another person to do to them as you will. Wealth and power does not please God, but righteous living and love for others does! IF GOD IS NOT THE HEAD OF ANYTHING, IT WILL NOT ENDURE!

Listen to Me, you “fat cows” of Bashan living in Samaria – you women who encourage your husbands to rob the poor and crush the needy – you who never have enough to drink! The Lord God has sworn by his holiness that the time will come when he will put hooks in your noses and lead you away like the cattle you are; they will drag the last of you away with fishhooks! You will be hauled from your beautiful homes and tossed out through the nearest breach in the wall. The Lord has said it.

Go ahead and sacrifice to idols at Bethel and Gilgal. Keep disobeying – your sins are mounting up. Sacrifice each morning and bring your tithes twice a week! Go through all your proper forms and give extra offerings. How you pride yourselves and crow about it everywhere!

“I sent the hunger,” says the Lord, “but it did no good; you still would not return to me. I ruined your crops by holding back the rain three months before the harvest. I sent rain on one city, but not another. While rain fell on one field, another was dry and withered. People from two or three cities would make their weary journey for a drink of water to a city that had rain, but there wasn’t ever enough. Yet you wouldn’t return to me”, says the Lord.

“I sent blight and mildew on your farms and your vineyards; the locust ate your figs and olive trees. And still you wouldn’t return to me,” says the Lord. “I sent you plagues like those of Egypt long ago. I killed your lads in war and drove away your horses. The stench of death was terrible to smell. And yet you refused to come. I destroyed some of your cities, as I did Sodom and Gomorrah; those left are like half-burned firebrands snatched away from fire. And still you won’t return to me,” says the Lord.

“Therefore I will bring upon you all these further evils I have spoken of. Prepare to meet your God in judgment, Israel. For you are dealing with the one who formed the mountains and made the winds, and knows every thought; he turns the morning to darkness and crushes down the mountains underneath his feet: Jehovah the Lord, the God of Hosts, is his name.”  Amos 4 TLB