Category: Devotion of the Day

LIVING BUT DEAD

I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.
Revelation 3:1

The prodigal was dead but came alive (Lk. 15:24). So it is with all who believe (Rom. 6:13). The Sardis church was alive but dead. It had a name to live, but Jesus had another name for it. The name we have for ourselves is not always what our Lord calls us. You say you have eternal life. Does God say so? Not every one who calls Him Lord, Lord, is known of Him. Some Christians seem active enough, but it is not the vitality of the spirit, it is only the vivacity of religious flesh. And how many busy churches are called live churches, while the Lord looks on and says, “Thou art dead.” Does Jesus say that yours is a live church? How does it look to Him? Mere activity does not deceive Him.

“She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” She may be animated and really get around, but God says “dead.” And a lot of go-getter Christians and churches draw no better word from Him who looks on the heart.

Are you one who was once dead and now lives, or do you seem to live but are dead?

CALL TO AMERICA

Hear the word of the Lord.
Isaiah 1:10

We need to recover Isaiah’s thundering call from the mothballs where we have relegated it. The first chapter could be proclaimed, with a few names changed, to America and be strictly up to date. Surely our people “doth not consider.”

Surely the moral putrefaction Isaiah portrayed (vs.5, 6) smells just as bad in our land. And God hates our Sunday-morning religion without reality as much as He despised the sham formalities of Judah (vs. 11:15). Religion is popular nowadays, but we will not put away evil and learn to do well (vs. 16, 17). We want a religion that involves no break with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Still, God invites us to reason with Him (v. 18). We reason within ourselves and among ourselves, but we do not want to accept God’s reasoning. We want to be saved on our terms, not His.

When America is willing to turn from sin to God and accept His provision, willing and obedient, we shall eat the good of the land. If not, we shall be devoured with the sword, for “the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”