In the Slough of Despond

My previous post reminded me of an article I posted a while back on my first blog, ETVFC.blogspot.com.  I ended up creating this new blog as for some reason every article I wrote posted as one gigantic run-on paragraph.  And the spell checker wouldn't work.  Readers must have assumed my blog was written by a spiritual seven year old. (Not sure if I am ahead being a semi-spiritual 37 year old.  And I was really humbled as one of our high school homeschoolers at our church published her first book already! God really can use any of us and it is more availability than ability.  I am the writer at my church! I have over 100 posts written! I have been published! I have 4 blogs! I have 10 book ideas in my head! Yet here is a girl who just published her first book!  Availability is the greatest ability.)

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How shall you escape from the wrath to come?

 If you have ever read Pilgrim's Progress, it reads, " Christian because of the burden on his back, began to sink into the mire." Hence he was in the Slough of Despond for a time.

I admit I am in the slough of Lake Laodicean. It is a lukewarm lake, a very rich lake.  It has high salt content, which causes people to easily lose their vision in no time.  The sands are very appealing, but often trap those that swim there and suck them down forever in it's grip. It is a very worldly and seductive lake, a lake that seems to welcome everyone but frees no one from it's clutches.  It is very strange too, it seems all drains today flow into it's currents.

 I was swimming against the current in the deep Camp Meeting Creek but after a week I was so tired that I just thought I would float a bit.  Next thing I knew I was back in that dreaded Lake.  Later, I was fasting and witnessing boldly out in the pond of purity, but I got afraid and took my eyes off the horizon and slowly floated back in. 

At one time, I was walking on the path of Holiness and started wandering off a bit and the thorns around the outskirts full of the affairs of this life and the cares and riches started to choke me and as I pulled desperately to get out I fell in again. 

How shall we escape?  Is there a way out?  Sometimes I feel there is but it seems like only an illusion.  It seems if we are content to be ostriches and be blind to the lack of true repentance around, we are good.  If we just stop fighting the current and stop making a big deal of Lake Laodicea, we can enjoy the waters with all the others all aboard the FellowShip.

 Lukewarm is very comfortable and the salt keeps you afloat with no or little effort.  Lot pitched his boat toward that lake and found it well watered there. I don't know honestly the answer today. I think the church today likes to live in Lake Laodicea, but they know it as De Nile.  Denying there is a problem.

 We get decisions so things must be good.

 Kingdom bound gets decisions in a pot-polluted stadium with pumped up heavy metal playing.  Decisions don't mean anything.  I decided after a great sales pitch to let my wife buy a $2,000 Rainbow vacuum.  I still would return it today if I could.  That is not the same as a conversion.

 In the great awakening people were awakened to their sin! To their rebellion against God! Who really is being awakened today?  We get flash in the pan professors....back then they had saved from the fire possessors. 

Yet the church wants to swim and not be pointed out there is something wrong.  (Whitney) Houston, there is a problem! I NEVER KNEW YOU!  Yet her Baptist church raved about how talented she was.  Our circles are just as clueless it seems. We have professors who don't witness, love pro sports, don't hate sin, yet they are "saved." 

We must wake up!  You can't say you love God yet not hate sin and hate evil. Yet church today says you are too radical.  They label you a nut.  Critical.  A divider.  Hey, if everyone unites around the Bible and conforms to the book there will be true unity. 

We mistake today pacifism and cowardliness for unity.  We expect real Christians to be warm and fuzzy and not make waves because everyone is trying to sleep on their pleasure rafts in Lake Laodicea.

 Judgment must begin at the house of God. Faithful are the wounds of a friend.  Until the church today wants to wake up and examine ourselves and get out of the slough ourselves we have no ability to rescue the perishing.

Nor do we have any business to.