WHO ARE YOU PARTNERED WITH'?

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to faithhopegodlove@aol.com In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God. Deuteronomy 18:9-13

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Think about your weekly routine. You wake up, get ready and on most days go to work or school or a combination of both. In between, you may be in transit between those places, driving a car or motorcycle, or taking some form of public transportation (bus, subway, plane, etc). You don’t work all the time so you have leisure time and can do any of a myriad of things (i.e. go to the movies, go shopping at the mall, go dancing in the evenings, etc). On Saturday or Sunday (or maybe even other days of the week), you attend church and participate in worship or bible study. I’ll stop here because this paragraph could be the largest in modern literature if I tried to capture everything that someone might do in a week. The point I want to make is that the Lord takes you a lot of places in a week’s time and in going to those places, you experience a lot of people…and not all of them hold Christian values like you do (or hopefully you do).

This concerns the Lord who knows that there is always a danger of us being effected by those who carry different values than those of His Son, Jesus. For if you aren’t walking with Jesus, you aren’t truly living life…you aren’t walking the right way…and you aren’t doing anything in truth. For to do those things and do them fully, we need to immerse ourselves in…we need to follow always…the One and ONLY One who is THE Way and THE Truth and THE Life…JESUS CHRIST (John 14:6).

Did I mention that God is concerned with who we partner with? Don’t just take my word for it because I won’t say anything that I can’t support with the scriptures. Look at today’s passage as God says through Moses:

“When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God.”

There was no doubt. Israel was not to partner with the nations in Canaan. Why? Because they would be influenced by them…they would end up imitating their detestable ways like sacrificing their children to the gods, practicing sorcery or witchcraft or divination or acting as an interpreter of omens, a medium or spiritist. In other words, living for anything else in life except for God and His will for their lives. The people of Canaan lived for the world and thus adopted inappropriate spiritual lifestyles. Friends, the same thing can happen to us if we’re not careful. Maybe you can relate. I know I can.

When I joined the Navy in 1983, I had been a regular and faithful church attendee. I was a member of my hometown Presbyterian church where I knew everyone and was in a nice spiritual comfort zone. Most of all, I was grounded in and partnered with Jesus, well on my way to becoming the kind of man He wanted me to be. But then I left home.

In the next year and a half, I would go from San Diego, California, to Great Lakes, Illinois, to Augusta, Georgia, and finally to my first duty station, Stockton, California. During that journey, my life and lifestyle changed drastically. I was no longer a small town boy from Western Pennsylvania but a United States Sailor. There was an associated identity shift because I was now partnered with the Navy and a whole different set of social norms and values…some good, some not so good. And through all of this, I had lost the one norm and value I needed the most…my spiritual life in Christ Jesus.

I lost it because I chose to partner more with the people I was serving with more than the One I was supposed to serve. I was serving country and then God when it should have been the other way around. I started to adopt a new language…one that was laced with detestable words which included taking the very Lord’s name I used to follow so faithfully in vain. My words reflected my heart…a heart that was now void of the Holy Spirit…and my actions followed. I was the ruler of my own domain. I saw any success as a result of my own hard work…as something I had earned on my own. The way I treated others changed too. I was angrier and testier than before. Christ’s love which used to drive me was now a distant afterthought. When I was confronted with rage, I responded in kind. There was no partnership with the Prince of Peace and so peace was not an option. Everything was a competition and I was fighting a losing battle. You always will when you try to one-up another in sinfulness.

The worst thing that happened as a result of my choice to change my partner in life was that I lost the first partner He provided for me. You see, as I partnered with everything and everybody that would pull me away from Jesus. I stopped being the spiritual leader in my family and my marriage died on the vine. I was responsible for pulling our family branch from the Living Vine of Jesus…and as the scriptures assert…cut off from Him we could be nothing and that’s exactly what happened. My worldly partnership didn’t have a happy ending…instead, I was left in the wake of loss and despair and darkness. This is what happens when you decide to leave the light…this is exactly what God didn’t want Israel to do…why He expected them to be blameless before Him.

Why am I bearing my very soul before you? Because I want to try and help you avoid the mistake I made in the past. If you are partnering with all the wrong people and things in this world, stop now. Make Jesus your only partner…saturate yourself with Him…make Him your way and your truth and your life. He should be your one and only treasure…so that He might be the only thing that lives and abides in your heart (Matthew 6:21).

If you do this, everything you do will be an outflowing from Him. You will treat others as He did. You will teach others as he did. You will live like He did. And most importantly, you will love like He did. If I am the person Christ is using to speak to you to today, then please listen to Him. If He speaks to you through another person and gives you this message, please listen to Him. For you see, I have one final testimony in this message. Jesus spoke to me through a woman name Grace who I have now spent over 16 years with. I listened, I changed my partnership back to Jesus, and He took me back in with love just as He does any prodigal that returns (Luke 15:11-32). Jesus then took control of my heart and my life…I was lost but Jesus found me and I’m never going to leave Him again.

Sometimes we don’t know what we truly have until we lose it. Thanks be to God that I rediscovered His Son. What about you? Are you partnered with Him? Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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