Thought of the Day !!

I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close. You have little strength, yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me.
Revelation 3:8 (NLT)

John is relaying Jesus' message to the church in Philadelphia here. These words of encouragement for people back then can be words of advice for us today. First of all John writes that they had little strength. This equates to being weak, but Jesus sees this as a strength. For when we are strong on our own, we can fall into the temptation of leaning on ourselves as opposed to leaning on Jesus. In reality we are all weak when it comes to sin, temptation and salvation. The sooner we learn to find our strength in the Lord, the better.

Secondly, we see that they obeyed Jesus' word. They didn't have the Bible but did have the Apostles' teachings. We do have the Word of God today, known as the Holy Bible. If we're going to obey this Word of God, then we must first know it. That means we should consume ourselves with it daily.

And lastly, the people of the church in Philadelphia did not deny Jesus. They remained faithful due to their obedience to Christ and the strength that they found in Him. They had many more persecutions than we do today. They had as much temptation as we do today, though maybe just fewer avenues such as media, television and Internet for the temptation to come their way. But through all the persecution and temptations they did not deny Jesus.

It's embarrassing to think about how little persecution we have today in America, yet how we deny Jesus so often. As Christians we may never deny him like Peter did and say that we don't know Him. But how often do we deny Jesus by our harsh words, our unChristian actions, or our lifestyle choices? Philip Yancey wrote, and DC Talk later made the introduction to one of their songs with these words. "What an unbelieving world finds unbelievable is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and deny him with their lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world finds so unbelievable."

In the love of Christ,
greg