Tag Archive | faith

The Seven Churches In Revelation (Part 2)

Oct22

By Eric Sponheim

SMYRNA

Rev 2: 8-11

“And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write:  The first and last, who was dead and has come to life, says this:  I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.  Do not fear what you are about to suffer.  Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days.  Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.  He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.”

The church in Smyrna had to deal with hardship and struggle every day.  They were despised and looked down upon.  If you valued your life on this earth, becoming a Christian in Smyrna would not be the way to go.  It was very difficult to be a Christian and live there.

Jesus acknowledges their suffering, but instead of telling them their breakthrough is coming, He tells them there is more suffering on the way.  Basically, He tells them that you have been suffering for me, and it will continue; in fact, it is going to get worse.

Who wants to hear this?  We often start to whine and complain when we have hardships.  We are always looking for our breakthrough, wondering when this life will get easier.  When we go through the hard times we have a choice; either draw close to God or turn away from Him.

What do we fear about going through testing and tribulation?  Is it fear of death or a fear of losing our possessions?  Is it the fear of not having any friends and being made fun of?  Is it the fear of losing your home and having no place to live, or maybe no food to eat?  Or is it the fear of having to put up with inconveniences and not being able to have the comfortable life one is used to?  Is it a fear of being tortured and being in pain?  Is it a fear of not having a retirement account and having to work in your later years?  Is it a fear of your family abandoning you? 

What happens if the trials never stop, like in Smyrna? 

The reality is that any of these things could happen.  We need to consider the costs and decide if the potential costs of following Jesus are worth it.  No one can make that choice for you, you must make that decision yourself. 

We also need to count the cost of allowing fear to dictate our decisions. When we allow fear to run our life, we are not honoring God.  When we change our mind out of fear, it does not honor Him.  When we allow fear to influence our decisions, we are not trusting God.  When we allow anything other than faith in God to influence our decisions, it does not honor Him.

One of the problems is that we tend to have a temporary perspective.  It’s all about this life.  We have trouble comprehending the reality of eternity.  We do not understand, and value, the rewards that come as a result of overcoming the trials that we have to endure.

We need to overcome fear associated with the testing and tribulation because of our faith.  Do not give up and give in at the end.  We need to decide what is more important to us, this temporary life, or eternity.  In John 12:25, Jesus says “He who loves this life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life.”  If we claim to be His, we need to be willing to endure inconvenience, challenge, trial, hardship, torture, and death for the sake of our eternal relationship with God.

Nutshell: We need to overcome fear associated with the testing and tribulation because of our faith.  Do not give up and give in at the end.

The Seven Churches in Revelation

Oct20

By Eric Sponheim

Note from Sharon: My husband, Eric, studied and wrote this paper while taking a theology class. I wanted to share this with you, because I believe there is a lot of good information that as Christians, we should pay attention to. I will be posting about each church every few days until we go through all seven churches. Thank you.

INTRODUCTION

Chapters two and three in Revelation consist of the letters written to the seven churches.  While each letter addresses the condition of a specific geographical church, the warnings, encouragement, and promise given is for all of the body of Christ; as each letter states that anyone who has an “ear to hear” should “listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”  We are encouraged to listen to what is being said to ALL the churches, not just one; and not just the ones that sound good to us. 

At the end of each letter a promise is also given to those who overcome.  Each promise was different, but in each case the promise would only be given to those who overcame.  In these seven letters there are seven promises given to the church, but that also means there are seven things that we, the church, need to overcome.

What does it mean to overcome?  The Greek word (νικάω) used in all seven letters means to conquer.  It also means to triumph, subdue, overpower, or prevail.  No matter which word one chooses to use, it denotes a victory over something; but not without effort.  To overcome requires us to struggle with, to wrestle against, to fight against something.  Overcome is an action verb, it does not happen when one sits by idly, hoping it will happen; you have to put in the effort. 

To overcome something, we must first be in a battle, a challenge; or there will be nothing to overcome.  To repeat, overcoming is not passive, it is active.  We cannot overcome something by doing nothing, we have to be engaged in the struggle.   

A word of caution, we need to remember to seek the Lord as to how we should overcome each situation that arises.  There will be times that we need to stand, and wait, and let God fight for us.

EPHESUS

Rev 2:1-7

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this:  I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false, and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary.  But this I have against you, that you have left your first love.  Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place – unless you repent.  Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.  To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.

The Ephesians were still doing good works, and they weren’t buying into the slick talking, self-promoting, want to be leaders who came along.  They were also willing to put up with the persecution that came with being a Christian.  However, their relationship with God was fading.  They were doing all the good deeds, but it had become “because that’s what we do.”  They were, in many ways, just going through the motions.  Their “faith” had started to shift to a faith in “right” thinking and doing the “right” things. 

Their relationship with God had grown stale, they had kind of “figured God out”.  They “understood” what He expected from them, so there really wasn’t a need to spend as much time with God.     

It doesn’t matter how well we start, if we don’t finish well it will not have mattered.  It doesn’t matter how good our relationship with God once was, what matters is where our relationship is now; and where will it be in the future.

Often when we begin our relationship with God we are full of zeal.  There is a fire in us.  We can’t get enough of His Word.  We want to learn all we can.  Often, though, over time, that zeal begins to fade.  The cares and distractions of life begin to take priority.  Our relationship with God begins to take a back seat to everyday life.

Other times, our zeal can slowly turn to legalism, or religious ritual.  We begin to think that we “know God” and we have Him figured out, we have come to understand the truth.  The focus of our zeal can become distorted.  Our zeal shifts to the truths about God, the “dos” and “don’ts” from our understanding of the Bible.  We can become more concerned with protecting our version of the truth, than knowing the author of the truth.  Our love for the truth, should never overtake for love for the one who created the Truth. 

We need to overcome a complacent love that has become too familiar and is taken for granted.  We need to make the effort to have a strong relationship with God.  The Christian life is not about “figuring God out,” and understanding “the rules”.  It is about developing a relationship with God; this takes time spent together.  In this life we will never arrive at fully knowing God, so there is no stopping point where we can say we have arrived at fully knowing God.  Just like in a marriage, there will always be more to learn about our spouse.  As we spend time with them we begun to understand what they like and don’t like, what things their heart is drawn to.  Without spending time with our spouse, we will not know what they are thinking, what is in their heart; what are their concerns of the day.  Without spending time with God, we will not be able to hear Him; our heart will not be in tune with His heart

Nutshell for the church of Ephesus:  We need to overcome a complacent love that has become too familiar and is taken for granted.  We need to make the effort to have a strong relationship with God.

The Rat Race

Oct16

According to my 2006 Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, “rat race” is defined as “strenuous, tiresome, and competitive activity or rush”. Well, now, does that sound like Black Friday shopping or what? I chuckle as I write that, but it’s true. Recently I found myself going through a rat race, though I had no idea I even entered this race. How is that possible? It all started in the middle of August this year when my book, Love Waits: Book One was republished. I started to promote it on social media and follow people in hopes of “getting the word out” about the book – perhaps someone would buy it, right? Since I self-published through Covenant Books, I didn’t have a marketing team assigned to promote the book, I also didn’t have ad campaigns – just me and social media. I had taken about 3+ years off of social media until 2024 – so basically, I had zero social media presence as well. In hindsight, I see now that I could have/should have been promoting the book from the moment I signed the contract – that idea just never even occurred to me, to be honest. Since it has been 10 years since I first published Love Waits, it was basically like starting all over again at ground zero with a brand-new book.

If you read my blog, Let Your Light Shine, then you know that the first time I was published, I did every single thing that the publishing company told me to do to become a “successful author”. Needless to say, no, I don’t believe that I was a successful author – at least not by the standards that most people would consider “success”. (i.e. books on bestselling lists, awards, thousands of 5-star reviews, and let’s not forget the handsome royalty checks, right?)

When I started promoting my book in August, at first things were good and I was getting a lot of traction with it, especially on Instagram. However, then things started to slow down and I couldn’t figure out why; I wasn’t doing anything differently, so what happened? Before I knew it, I was big time overthinking this “book promotion situation”, which led to stress and an old familiar, yet uncomfortable feeling inside of me that I hadn’t experienced in over 8 years. I paused everything and went to God in prayer. In Scripture, God is known in many different ways, such as gardener (Genesis 2:8), healer (Exodus 15:26), judge, lawgiver, king (all at Isaiah 33:22) – so, why not as marketing manager? Do I have a Scripture reference for that? No. Do I need one? No, at least I don’t think so. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, I think if He wants to, He can promote anything or anyone as He sees fit. So, I gave it all over to God and started posting as He directed.

By the world’s standards, I wasn’t succeeding, because I didn’t post enough posts, or the posts weren’t reaching enough people, or some other nonsense that was not part of the equation with God. Once I started to follow what I believe was God’s leading for posting on social media, I just felt His peace. Later though, when I let the “worries of the world” (Mark 4:18-19) distract me, God had to remind me that He wasn’t asking for me to meet a quota for likes, shares, or comments with every post. God reminded me that He didn’t ask me to sell “X” number of books – I didn’t have a quota to fill there either. He reminded me that I am called to be obedient to Him. I post what I feel He is directing me to post and I even try to write what I feel He is directing me to write (just like now and in my books). Obedience to the Heavenly Father, that IS success! I didn’t need to add to it, nor was I supposed to cherry pick and do only what I wanted to do, what I felt comfortable with doing, or what was easy or convenient to do. I was just called to do His will and I want to answer that call every, single time.

As I have been writing this blog, it occurred to me that I was fixated on the wrong race. The rat race is the wrong race, the race that God has set before me, that is the race I should be focused on. Today I leave you with Galatians 5:16-17, which says, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.” (Bold print and italics are mine for emphasis.)

Early Years

Sep15



As I’ve stated before, I was raised in the church. What does
that mean? For me, it meant that I attended Sunday school and the church
service every Sunday morning. It meant that we said prayer together as a family
before eating supper. It meant that my mom went to a women’s Bible study, my
dad went to a men’s Bible study, and when I got older, I started attending
youth group once a week. There were times that my parents would do daily
devotionals, but this was not a constant in our lives. In these few sentences,
I have basically summed up what I mean by being “raised in the church”. Now I
will go a step further, which some may not want to hear or to acknowledge.
Being a female and being raised in the church meant that I learned early on
that there were certain expectations put upon me, as well as certain
limitations put upon me because I was a female.


I was raised in a very traditional Methodist church. All of
the church leaders were men – or at least all of the ones that I recall as
church leaders. (Women usually taught the children, but not always.) Women were
expected to take care of the children, they were expected to do the cleaning, to
be presentable (preferably in a dress if it was Sunday), to remain quiet,
mild-mannered at all times – essentially, I had to “know my place” as a female.
A lot of what I learned was really “head knowledge”, not actually having a
relationship with Jesus. I didn’t really “look” at myself as a child of God’s,
because that is not how it was presented to me. It was mostly about my gender
and the expectations that “the church” had on me, which thereby meant God had
those same expectations of me as well.

I saw a lot of hypocrisy in the church at a young age. I
didn’t understand a lot of it, and as a child, it came across as, “Do as I say,
not as I do”. When I started to attend youth group, that’s when my eyes were
opened even more. One evening at youth group, I had gone into the women’s
bathroom and while I was in there, some of the other girls came in and were having
a conversation. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For a moment, it seemed
like I was in the girl’s bathroom at the public school I attended! They were swearing,
talking about having sex, getting drunk. I was absolutely shocked! I guess I
was very naïve to think that if you were at church then that meant that you
were saved and you didn’t do those type of things or talked the way they were
talking. I went to a youth group leader and explained to her what just happened,
expressing my concern about what was being talked about. She reprimanded me for
judging them! I was quite confused by her reaction. I had no bad intentions on
my part to get any of them in trouble, I thought they needed prayer and help –
guidance. Another time at youth group, one of the leaders gave us an assignment
for the following week. He said if your house was on fire and you could only grab
one thing from your house before evacuating, what would it be and to bring it
to youth group next week. When the following week happened, we all sat in
chairs in a circle. One by one our leader asked each one of us to show what we
would grab and explain why we would grab that item over anything else. I don’t
recall much of what the other teens had brought, I do remember one brought a tv
remote, saying that he would grab the tv if there was a fire, but for this
assignment, he just brought the tv remote. When it was my turn to speak, I
showed my Bible and said that I would grab it because it has helped me through
a lot of rough times in my life. I was sincere in what I said, I was not trying
to “show anyone up” or have the “right answer”, yet I was met with snickering,
eye rolling, whispers from people that weren’t really that quiet (of course, I
don’t think that they were meant to be quiet). The leader “praised” me – ish,
which didn’t help the situation at all. I meant exactly what I had said about
the Bible, I knew that all of the other things could get replaced if there was
a fire. Of course, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I could get a new
Bible if that one was destroyed. I was sad that I was the only one who brought
a Bible, but I never looked at myself as better than, I pretty much always
looked at myself as less than.


Another time, I was struggling with the question, “Was God
real or not?” One day I went to the reverend’s office to ask him. I figured he
would have the right answer, right? I sat down in a chair in front of his desk,
he was standing between me and his desk. I asked him, “How do I know that God
is real?” He leaned back on his desk, so that he was partially sitting on the
edge, he reached over on his desk and grabbed his Bible with one hand. With his
other hand, he pointed at the Bible and tapped the cover of it and said, “Because
of this…because of this, we know He’s real.” I waited after he said this,
waiting for more, waiting for some sort of epiphany, I don’t know, I was
waiting for just more of an answer to my question, but there wasn’t any more.
He had a smile on his face and that was it – conversation over. I didn’t have
any more questions and he certainly wasn’t going to elaborate on the question
that weighed so heavy in my spirit, so I thanked him (because that was the
polite thing to do) and got up and left his office. My question continued to
linger within me and when I would say my nightly prayers, they would go
something like this, “God, I’m sorry but right now I can’t pray to you, because
I don’t know if you’re real or not. If you are, then I’ll be back praying more
often. Amen”. I’d like to say that after praying that prayer once that the
light bulb went off for me, but nope. Many nights later of saying this prayer,
I realized that if God wasn’t real, then why did I keep feeling this need, this
longing inside of me to keep praying to Him? It was at this revelation that I
came to the conclusion that God is definitely real and I’ve never questioned
that again. Perhaps that isn’t very theological, but I was about 12 years old
at the time and that satisfied my question, much more than the reverends Bible
tapping statement did.


Being in the environment of the church weighed on me a lot. At
about 14 years old I left the Methodist church. Unfortunately, I slowly left
God too. I didn’t stop believing in Him, but I was most definitely not serving Him.
At 21 years of age, I started getting back into religion. I word it that way,
because “religion” was all I knew – “relationship” with the one true God, that
was not something I learned about yet. From age 21-36 I was in religion, out in
the world, then back in religion – I was a hot mess spiritually, or at least I
felt that way. Then one day in the autumn of 2008, I said a prayer to God that
I would later realize was a prayer of submission onto Him. I had been doing the
“religious roller coaster” and was going nowhere fast. I had been reminded of my
early years with God before I got turned off by people in the church. I felt
like God brought to mind all the times I spent with Him reading the Bible,
reminding me of every Christmas as a child I would take a moment and go into my
bedroom, sit on my bed, and sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. (A memory that
still brings tears to my eyes.) In that autumn of ’08, I opened my mouth and
just started telling God that I wanted to have what I had with Him back then. I
wanted Him to be real to me like He was back then. I didn’t realize it at the
time but I turned to the Heavenly Father, with childlike faith, and I have
never been the same! However, that is not to imply that I am still the same
right now as I was in ’08, no, I keep learning and growing. I feel like I am
not the same person I was just a few weeks ago, and it’s not me, seriously! It
is God, it is Him in me, it is the love of Jesus Christ, it is the workings of the
Holy Spirit in me that keeps molding and shaping me into the new creation. (2
Corinthians 5:17)

This is just a part of my story, but it’s a very important
part. None of what I’m writing is to bash a religious denomination or any one
person or group of people. I honestly don’t even recall the names of most of
the church leaders who were “over me” during my young years in the church. This
is just my story about what happened in my life and how it has impacted me. While
my testimony of growing up in the church doesn’t include much of what some
people have gone through as is evidenced by many “church leaders” moral
failures over many decades, I do want to try to encourage anyone who can relate
to my story or who can relate to others story’s that have been circulating
lately on the internet and in the news, your story isn’t over.
Whatever you have been through, it is just a part of your story, but it’s not
the whole story. Don’t let moral failures of any church leader or leaders speak
louder to you than the words of the Great Shepherd who willingly laid down His
life for you. Yes, for you.


Psalms 139:13-14 “For You formed my inward parts; you wove
me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and
wonderfully made…” (NASB)


Galatians 5:1 “It was for freedom that Christ set us free:
therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.”
(NASB)


John 8:36 “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free
indeed.” (NASB)