Is it any great wonder that we serve a God that all are bound to serve anyway, all will bow the knee to Him, all will do as He commands. A ruthless despot is how many in the world will see Christ, when He rules on this planet in totality, many will not be pleased, but how less now than then.
It is difficult to serve a Master who is invisible to our eyes, it is in a sense one of the reasons of the parable of the man who started a vineyard, left, and gave the care of that business into the hands of others. (Matt. 21:33-45) We serve, at least in our physical sense, an invisible and unseen God, we base our reaction and actions towards Him more on our feelings and perceptions than on His Word and commandments, and what we call blessings and chastisements, the world calls circumstances and coincidences. The law of averages, luck, chance, they are called by any number of names, a few Christians there are though that can discern the voice of the Lord from the intuitions of their mind.
The perception of a thing is what matters, nearly every lie can be made to be seen as the truth, emotions can quite easily rule in the life of a follower of Christ, and they forget the visible proof of the Savior, their works. By your works you will be known, not by your good intentions, by the deeds that you do, and only by those done in the name and for the glory of God. Here is what is prevalent today though, the idea that if we feel saved, we are, if things are going well for us, then we are pleasing in the eyes of God. That doesn’t seem to work very well though, does it, each and every time life is flowing smoothly, we tend to move away from the Lord, when distress and troubles appear, we run towards Him, such is the nature of man. When we believe ourselves to be doing His work, when we remain on the path of obedience and proper servitude, we draw close to Him, when we fall into a pattern of sin, we do just the opposite, we run and hide.
He whom we are all bond to serve is to be served at all times, no matter the circumstances, no matter the possible consequences, no matter whether He is visible or invisible to us, the choice has been made for all of creation, it will serve the Most High God whether it wants to or not.
We put far too much emphasis on this short little temporal life, treating it as if it will last forever while fearing the inevitability of an ever-approaching death. Fear is the greatest leverage upon man, the knowledge that he is finite, the possibility that there is One who is infinite, these are the balancing points we use upon ourselves, and so the so-called faith of many is based upon the possibility that they may offend this infinite One, it is not based on love for Him who loved us first. (1 John 4:19) The knowledge that we do not know our end past this life, the possibility that there may actually be a God, these are the tipping points, these are the morality laws of man’s most basic precepts.
This knowledge, this eternity that has been set in the heart of every human being, (Eccl. 3:11) is the reason there are so many different gods, so many religious organizations, so many dead churches pretending to serve in love when in fact it is in the fear of possible retributions and punishments for their actions that they serve. Love has very little to do with the reason that many people serve whatever god they have imagined, fear is what keeps them in servitude, not love, the possibility that Almighty God might punish them if they even have a wrong thought is the prevalent ideology even in many churches that claim to be evangelical today. They have been taught that the control over, the mastery of themselves, is the path to Christ, not submission to His Word and will, not by being available at all times, but by being productive members of society, not by trusting and obeying, but by sacrifices, and those in the most menial way possible. Even great men of God who many have admired in the Christian community have of late been heard to say, “Just bring them to church, we’ll take it from there.”
The responsibility to serve is best seen when the fear of punishment is inevitable, until then, men will serve who they want, when they want, it is how it has always been, peace and security have always brought apathy and callousness to the heart of man towards the Almighty. Fear will either draw us closer to Him or pull us away, if it comes upon us from an outside source, we rarely see it as an expression of His love towards us, if it is internal, we flee from Him, for we are ashamed and fearful that punishment will come instead of forgiveness. And so we toe the line, we try to do good, we try to be better people, to get along with everyone, to not offend in any way at any time, never rebuke, never reprove. We want to be the friend of the world of the lost, we want to become acquainted with them before we seek to speak to them about the love that awaits them, and we fear to tell them of the punishment that awaits all who will not. It is a cycle of insanity, it is a most excellent and ingenious trap laid by our adversary, and it has led to the great falling away. (2 Thess. 2:3)
