“But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.” [Jude 20-21 NIV]
If there is anything that has been emphasised to me of late as I read through parts of the Old Testament, as well as the New, it is that God hates hypocrisy. We either love Him or we don’t, we follow Him or we follow someone or something else. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t say one thing and do another. He is holy and worth far more than a fickle lip-service.
As it says earlier in this book, “ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality” [vs 4], have infiltrated the church. I find it disappointing that people exist within the church who disregard the high standards of the Word as old-fashioned and out of date. Creative accounting in your business is NOT OK. A little white lie here and there is NOT OK. We are called to a nobler purpose, a way of life that stands out from the crowd — one that says NO! to the general trend of selfish behaviour in our society.
No one ever said it was an easy path. I will be the first to admit I’m not perfect and sometimes I just want to react or behave in a way that is not seemly — and sometimes I do. But, one of the things about the grace of God, is that He “is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” [vs 24] Let us persevere in doing right in all we possibly can, showing the world who God is, being honest representatives of Him in our neighbourhood.
Romancing The Rock 