Peaceful or Violent?

“From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” Matthew 11:12 (NIV)

“We must all wage an intense, lifelong battle against the constant downward pull. If we relax, the bugs and weeds of negativity will move into the garden and take away everything of value.

“Humility is a virtue; timidity is a disease.

‘If you spend five minutes complaining, you have just wasted five minutes. If you continue complaining, it won’t be long before they haul you out to a financial desert and there let you choke on the dust of your own regret.

“You cannot take the mild approach to the weeds in your mental garden. You have got to hate weeds enough to kill them. Weeds are not something you handle; weeds are something you devastate.” — Quotes by Jim Rohn

We have to be serious about living right, being holy in this world because there is plenty of opportunity to wimp out and give in the attitudes of this age. The kingdom of God is not an earthly kingdom, a place for a literal king on a throne. It is according to Jesus “within us” (Luke 17:21). We have to fight daily for that kingdom. We must hate sin and those things that come to take the kingdom of God from us. No, hatred is not too strong a word when it comes to sin. Satan wants us to be reticent, complacent, and indifferent about sin. I am not talking about being a “hell, fire, and damnation” preacher. I am talking about each of us and our individual, personal lives. Personally seeing the weeds that find their way into the garden of our life trying to choke out the fruit of the Spirit, and ripping them out by the roots, or they will keep coming back.

It is not unlike Christ to get angry at sin. Remember the temple story where He drove the money changers away and turned over there tables? “When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength. Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, ‘Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a shopping mall!’" John 2:13-16 (MSG)

So when we pray to be like Jesus there is an element of holy anger, holy hatred toward sin that will drive us to forcefully contend for the kingdom of God in our lives and in the world around us.

There are all kinds of sprays and treatments to deal with weeds, but even if you kill them they still need to be pulled up and thrown away because dead or alive they are unsightly in your yard or the garden.

We spend too much of our time being angry at ourselves, blaming ourselves for failure in our lives. We do make choices. We do have to take responsibility for our actions and decisions. But the better way to do that is to deal with the sin, the weeds themselves rather than just beating up on the garden.

Remember, the kingdom of God, the good life, the blessed life does not come easily, does not just fall into our laps by chance. It comes by choice and forceful action. Deal with those weeds. Develop a holy hatred for them then devastate them, destroy them and save the kingdom.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, forgive me for letting weeds grow in my garden, for being complacent about sin in my life and about the kingdom of God. Today I choose to rise up with holy hatred to destroy those weeds, those attitudes that have stunted the growth of spiritual fruit in my life. I commit to fight for the kingdom of God in me. AMEN.

Blessings!
Pastor Roger