Tag Archive | Teaching

The Seven Churches In Revelation (Part 7)

Nov11

By Eric Sponheim

LAODICEA
Rev 3:14-22
“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:  The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this:  I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth, Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.  Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.  Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.  He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Laodicea, the church that was comfortably numb.  They were blessed materially, their needs were taken care of, and more.  They had everything they wanted, life was good.  They had no need to cry out to God and depend on Him, their physical needs were taken care of.  But spiritually they were empty and full of themselves.  They were distracted by all the good things of this life that they had; maintaining the good life, the comfortable life, was more important than a relationship with God.  Oh, they acknowledged God, and called Jesus their Savior, but they didn’t get beyond that.  They were blessed in this life, and going to heaven when they die, what more did they need?  You see, they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, grasp the understanding of Jesus as Lord. 
“Surrender” was a word this church didn’t understand.  The possibility that God may be asking them to give up their comfort was something to be scoffed at.  God wouldn’t expect them to give up what they had.  Besides isn’t the Christian life about living a moral life and being a good witness (example) to your neighbors?  How can one be a good witness to those around you if your life isn’t going well?
The thought of living a life surrendered to Christ was a nice concept, if it meant you didn’t lie, steal, cheat, or kill someone.  But if a life surrendered to Christ meant you may have to give up some, or all, of the comforts of life, and/or actually depend on God to provide what you needed; well that was crazy talk.  Any good responsible Christian takes care of themselves and doesn’t need anyone to help them. 
The church was useless to God because they were unwilling to surrender their lives to God.  They all wanted to go to heaven; but surrendering to Jesus as Lord was a bit of a stretch.  Their prayers were one of “bless me Lord.”  There was no, “Lord what would you have me to do?”  They were unwilling to let God work in their lives for His purposes.  Their view was that God was there for their purposes; not realizing they were created for God’s purposes. 
The blessings of God can be a blessing, or a curse.  It all depends on how we choose to use them.  When we are materially blessed, it makes many aspects of our lives easier.  If we choose to use the blessings for God’s purposes, holding on to them loosely, they are a blessing.  However, if we choose to starting focusing on ourselves, using the blessing only for our pleasure and comfort, then they can become a curse.  It becomes a curse because the material blessings get in our way of our relationship with God.  Things become more important than our relationship with God.  When we have a “good life” we begin to depend on God less and less, often without realizing it; we don’t need Him like we used to.    
When we are blessed, it’s easy to think that we have arrived; we have God’s stamp of approval on our lives.  If nothing else, it is another step in growing in our relationship with God.  It is like a test; will we use the blessings to glorify God?  Or will we use the blessings for ourselves, and do our best to hold on tightly to them?  Just because you have been blessed materially does not mean God has decided that you have “arrived.”
How easy it is to get comfortable in life when things are going well, when we have everything we need and even some of our wants.  When life gets comfortable we have a tendency to want to keep that comfort.  We don’t like things interfering with our comfort.  We can even start to ignore God, if He starts to potentially upset our comfort.  We get so comfortable with our comforts that the thought of having to give any of them up just isn’t appealing; our comforts have become the god we choose to serve.  We can still go to church, read our Bible, pray, tithe, help others, and many other “Christian” things; but we can still be unsurrendered to God because we are doing it on our terms.  We’ll continue to “serve and love” God, but don’t expect us to make sacrifices or give up the security that our comforts give us.     
We need to overcome the pride of thinking we can do it our way.  Just because you have been blessed by God, does not mean you are walking in obedience to God.  We need to be able to set aside our goals and agendas, in favor of God’s plans.  We need to be able to let go of our desire to be comfortable, and instead desire that His purposes be accomplished in our lives, whatever they may be.  We need to be able to see things from an eternal kingdom perspective, instead of this temporary earthly one.

From Sharon – this blog concludes the 7 part series that my husband Eric wrote. Every time I read these, I just feel conviction – but in a good way, a humbling way. Eric will be the first to admit that writing is not his thing, but I believe that God really worked through him with this series. I hope you enjoyed them! If any of you want to reach out to him, you can find him on Facebook, just search Eric Sponheim. Thank you! 😊

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.)