WATCH OUT

 

WATCH OUT

II John 8-9 Watch out, so that you do not lose the prize for which we have been working so hard. Be diligent so that you will receive your full reward. For if you wander beyond the teaching of Christ, you will not have fellowship with God. But if you continue in the teachings of Christ, you will have fellowship with both the Father and the Son. NLT

It is so easy to slack off in our Christian walk. It is so easy to get into a coasting mode. We are not prone to work very hard at keeping our walk with the Lord fresh and sharp. We get so caught up in other things and take the Lord for granted.

The rewards of heaven are beyond our imaging. The Lord is preparing great things for us to enjoy. The stuff He uses is the fruit of our lives on earth. The more faithful and diligent we are in our walk with Him, the greater our reward will be. It is possible to make it to heaven and lose out on what might be our greater rewards. We don't know what all the Lord wants to do for us, but we hinder Him from what He can and wants to do by the way we live. Heaven's rewards are the natural fruit of a life lived rightly in Christ on earth.

We must be very careful how we treat Christ and His teachings. We easily can read into the Scriptures what we want them to say. There is great danger in trying to make the Lord say what He has not said. God said what He means already and we do not have the right or authority to go beyond what He has said. We must strive to understand what God has spoken and apply it to life. Do not let the words of man deceive you. Jesus has spoken clearly about eternal life and how it plays out in life. Listen to Him. He alone is the way to God. His life alone is our standard for living and loving. We cannot add to or take away from anything He has said.

If we continue to live the life Jesus has shown us and taught us, we will have fellowship with both the Father and the Son. If we don't, we won't. It's as simple as that. It is good soul food for us to consistently read and meditate on the Gospels where we have recorded the life of Christ. It is not the only soul food we need, but nothing else makes sense without it.