Love and Israel

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Mat. 6:24-34). I fully believe that these simplistic but powerful words of Jesus are about to become more significant and needful to be heeded, than in any other time in the lives of all who are alive today. As we see things moving into the home stretch of the end of this age, we are going to see and unfortunately experience greater upheaval and commotion of many kinds, like no other time in history (Mat. 24:5-24). It appears that we are on the brink of economic collapse in this country, probably in a matter of days, and those who name the name of Christ are going to have to be anchored in the above words of Jesus in order to abide this time with peace. Myself, like anyone else, would like to see things continue as they have, but I can't talk myself into believing that when the wall is so full of handwriting that one can't even see the wall anymore. The bottom line is that money is not our source of provision, and it never has been. That takes us to the opening statement of Jesus in the text quoted above. If we're trusting in money at all, we're either going to get ourselves purified from that condition, or we are going to fall. It's that simple. As Jesus said plainly, we "cannot serve God AND mammon [money]."

While it's true that we have to eat, and we have to be clothed, and hopefully housed; we must condition ourselves to look to and trust fully in God for these things. If we do not, we are going to be running into some really serious problems really soon. We are either going to do what it takes to condition ourselves to pure faith, or we will incur the words of Jesus who warned us: "Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken" (Lk. 21:26). What it takes to make the grade is not calculus or physics, it's just simple math. We purify our hearts in prayer daily by the power of the holy Ghost, and we set our hearts to love everybody by means of the same holy Ghost (I Jn. 3:3; Rom. 5:5). Also by these same means we walk in the grace that God has bestowed upon us, as the apostle Paul admonished us to do: "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Tit. 2:11,12). I'm also aware that we need money, but I realize that God is the source of that for us as well. What will happen with the monetary system in this country when the economy goes down, I'm not certain. I can't spend my time and my mind trying to figure that out and research the possibilities. Reason being that I need to spend myself finding out what God is doing, and what he is requiring of me, so that I might somehow obtain mercy to be able to abide the things that are coming; and hopefully be able to help others to do the same. That goes to what Jesus said about "seeking first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, [so that] all these things [food and raiment] shall be added unto [us]." So if we make God our priority and focus, and take care of the other stuff as well as we can, he has promised to take care of all our needs. That's what I'm banking on [no pun intended], and I'll have to live or die with that promise. In reality nothing has ever changed. Man's problems are the same, and the faith that is of God is still the same for those who believe. The only change that is coming is that we are about to see both sides of that equation magnified like no other time in history. The only other note I want to make here is that I am not saying that the end of the age is coming in the next few years. There are many things to be fulfilled, and it will be more than a few years before the end comes, and the second coming of the Lord. But everyone on earth is going to be conditioning themselves in one direction or the other in the next several years, and everyone will end up reaping exactly what they have sown. Amen.