WHEN HELL GETS THE GLORY

“Looking saved,” without being healed gives hell the glory.  Dancing in church without scoring in life might impress the church people but it gives hell the glory. Promoting faith that cares more about how high we jump as opposed to how healthy we are or how we walk when we come down, gives hell the glory. Anything that causes our faith to not represent our Truth, hell gets the glory.
 
Pastor Pete Scazzero once said, “A true surrender of our will to God’s will is a learned and struggled-for obedience.” We don’t glorify God by glorying in pretentiousness, pretending as if saved means solved or acting like salvation means we fell from heaven – we all came up from hell, and we’re all fighting or struggling to go higher in faith every day (Philippians 2:12).
 
I have never met a perfect Christian and I’m not looking for one. What we should see are Christians humbly working, and growing through adversity, tests, and trials that produce greatness. Christ died for our imperfection, not to confirm we don’t need God (Romans 4:25).  If we don’t have anything else in common, we have this: We will all always need God.
 
Denial and pretentiousness give hell the glory, denies our story, and prevents us from being transparent with each other. Iron sharpens iron when it’s transparent, not when it’s wearing a mask – A testimony cannot have blood in it if we were not cut for it (Revelation 12:11).
 
Christ said to the Apostle Peter, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32).  Peter’s sifting positioned him to help his brothers, not his belief alone (James 2:19). Just like Peter, belief does not grow us, what we grow through grows us.
 
We cannot strengthen each other if we’re not strong enough to admit that our strength comes from being sifted, not from being perfect. We cannot disciple people if we’re too busy trying to be too holy to be any earthly good (Romans 7:23-25). 
 
An authentic relationship with God is between the natural and the Supernatural, the weak and the Strong, the Holy, and the unclean.  We should be reminded of our condition whenever we are in the presence of God unless we’re deceived by our own ego – “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
 
Our greatest challenge is not being saved, it’s embracing the meaning and the purpose of worship.  Catch this: 1 John 1:8 said, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”  John 4:24 says, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”  If we didn’t know, now we know: If we claim to be without sin we cannot worship God in spirit and in truth – because the truth is not in us.
 
Nobody comes right out and says they’re perfect in God’s sight but it’s in our lack of humility, compassion, and judgment of others. It’s in our inability or refusal to sit with those who Christ called us to.  It’s in our denial and lack of sympathy for human conditions that cause us and others to struggle,  that cause us to need God (Galatians 6:1).
 
Nothing is more powerful than our ability to fellowship with one another (Matthew 18:20), but we cannot fellowship or help each other, in or out of the church, if we cannot be real with each other. Are you comfortable letting God use your truth, your healing, and the compassion that comes from your forgiveness to lift others up? Our greatest sacrifice, highest honor is to be used by God to help others.
 
As Christians, we are safe places for people to grow, for people to be sifted and for cutting to take place that produces the blood of our testimony.  When we love God, we are acknowledging that we’re all in it together, God is the potter and we’re the clay, we need the blood of each other’s testimony to survive, we are no better than and, our story gives God the glory. God is lifted up when we show up perfectly imperfect.
 
Share and be blessed.
 

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