God. . .Our only Hope and our Greatest Threat.

I was moved by a sermon I heard recently in which the preacher described the conversations with some of his church membership after he delivered what was apparently a strong message of a call to notice and bring out the sin in our lives, and then to repent. As his church members were leaving the church, they were saying to the pastor, "great job, you had a lot of courage to preach that message." The pastor replied to his members, "I am actually a coward. It would take great courage not to preach the whole message of the Bible."

What he was saying is that those of us who claim Christ as Lord and hold true to His Word have a responsibility to that Word that should stir a certain amount of awe within us. We as obedient Christians do not live fearlessly. We dare not flaunt from one theme of the Bible to another, depending on our particular mood for the day and decide for ourselves to which parts we will remain obedient and which parts we will politely ignore. Even in the midst of a special call to service or ministry, surely we dare not take the risk of serving with a partially obedient heart. It is in that arena of behavior that we can view our only hope as our greatest threat.