How Is Your Form?
2 Timothy 3:1 But realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come.2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these.
Who is influencing you in your Christian Walk? Do they seem to be good people? What is the message of their life? On fire for God? Whatever influence any human has on your life needs to be evaluated with the above scripture as a warning to follow only the word of God. The Word from Paul to Timothy is a current, viable warning for each of us. We see lovers of self by how many pictures we take of ourselves and then flaunt them to everyone we can. The desire to have the most stuff is an overwhelming problem in our Christian society today. Worship of certain "lifestyles" of wealth and "cool" people is at an all-time high and it is not getting any better. I was amazed to see how many women bought into an author's way of thinking and then the author admitted to many egregious lifestyle stands that were immoral and those followers didn't know what to do. They just had to be the ones to find the latest greatest women's author first, so they could be in the lead when trying to find someone to follow and mimic. Why not study the Word for yourself and bypass the worldly filter of a "cool" mom who seems to have it all together, even though their teaching is weak and lifeless and spreads more and more compromise in the ladies who follow them? Men are even worse off. So many men won't even try to lead their home with spiritual direction and when they do their wives shut it down and take back the control they had to take to get any direction for their family. We have slipped so far. That word slipped used to be called backsliding and in my book, it still is called backsliding.
Paul's list of specific things that will take place is just that specific. Just think about what is mentioned there. (lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,). Just throw a dart in there anywhere and you will hit one of those in the modern-day church and it is getting worse. It is all I can do to convince some people that we are in evil times and they just say "Well, there are still good people." Good is on a sliding curve and the curve is at an all-time low level, so there may be some, but not very many. When the rich young ruler came to Jesus He called Him "good teacher" and Jesus said, "Only God is good." Jesus always told it like it was, and is, and it shall be.
We can just stick our heads in the sand and try to hope everything is going great, but that doesn't add up to anything getting changed. Paul also said in the above scripture that some of these so-called believers will have a form of Godliness, but they have denied its power. We are all about denying God's power and the reason is we haven't experienced His power in our lives. Power point #1 Jesus saved your soul from hell. Power point #2 Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit to live our lives abundantly, and so on. In reality, we have to shut off the Holy Spirit coming into power in our lives and there is a lot of that going on right now, and the modern church is weakened and also lifeless because of it. We need to let go and let God!! We are in the Laodicean church age and we need a life-changing, spirit-led, born-again believer revival to take place NOW.
Where are you when it comes to our present-day form as believers? I hope God stirs your heart and you step up and make a decision to be a world-changer and share the gospel as never before. That type of form is long overdue by modern-day Christians and God is giving us the message of hope in a very fresh way today. Share it and let that be seen as your form of Godliness.
The Pilgrimage Continues
David Warren