If we want to understand our present and our future, we need to go back. We need to symbolically get into our DeLorean, fire up our flux-capacitor and travel back to Paul’s day. We need to dive into his second letter to Timothy to understand.
“Difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people!” [2 Timothy 3:1-5]
That description of our “last days” could have been taken directly from our own headlines. When the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples at that first Pentecost, it was the “beginning of the last days.” Now nearly 2000 years later, we are seeing the “last of the last days,” those perilously difficult times that Paul foretold would happen.
We are seeing these “last of the last days” in our churches also. Paul was quite clear that in these “last days” people will have a form of godliness but deny the power of God. The people in our streets are not claiming any form of godliness, they are shaking their fists at God. It is the people in our churches that claim godliness yet deny God’s power.
For too long we have tried to make our God Almighty comfortable and safe. He is neither. He is dangerous. He is Creator and Redeemer of this world, and as such, He has the only authority to determine its course. When we align ourselves through the cross with His will, we must surrender to His Ways. That is the dangerous part because His will and ours often conflict. When we come face-to-face with our LORD and Savior in all His Holiness, we know one of us needs to change, and I guarantee it will not be Him.
I cling to my dangerous God. I strive to give it all to Him. I want more than a form of godliness without power, I want true godliness with all power no matter the cost.
