priorities

You Love the World

November 6, 2023 by Tim Sherfy

Over the past year, I’ve probably referenced (1 John 2:15) more than any other verse. I keep coming back to it because its message is so clear and sobering: “Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.” Do you love the world? If so, then you don’t love God. It’s a harsh statement, but impossible to avoid.

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There isn’t any wiggle room in the verse to accommodate how much we love the world, so we can’t rationalize and say we love God more than the things of this world. God has never been one to accept partial love. We cannot serve two masters; we will love the one and hate the other (Matthew 6:24).

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Bad Advice

October 12, 2023 by Tim Sherfy

There is a lot of bad advice out there. Some of the worst advice we can ever give to someone is to say, “Follow your heart.” This advice is rampant in self-help circles and the culture at large. To someone waffling between options or contemplating a career change, it sounds like wise counsel. But as is often the case, the wisdom of man is foolishness (1 Corinthians 3:18-20). Jesus never told people to follow their hearts. He told them to follow Him (John 8:12; John 12:26).

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When you follow your heart, you will be listening to your carnal desires. God’s Word says the heart is more deceitful than anything else and incurable (Jeremiah 17:9). When we follow our heart, we are deceiving ourselves. We are playing ourselves for the fool. Only by following Jesus will we ever find the peace, rest, and fulfillment that our hearts desire.

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God’s Word, Not Our Feelings

October 9, 2023 by Tim Sherfy

There is much emphasis on feelings today, both in the Church and in the culture at large. If you watch religious programming, you won’t have to wait long until you hear a preacher talking about the feelings that will come over you when the Holy Spirit takes hold. Instead of emphasizing what the Bible teaches, these men and women promote experiencing the power of God’s Spirit through the manifestation of laughter, falling down, convulsing, or babbling unintelligible nonsense.

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Within the culture, the prevailing attitude is people can and should do whatever makes them feel good. All of this is in direct conflict with the truth of scripture. As Christians, we must always defer to God’s Word, not our feelings.

The Reason We Sin

October 2, 2023 by Tim Sherfy

The reason we sin is that we reject the commitment we once made to Christ. When we live our lives as if we are the center of the universe, we forget our lives are not our own. God has purchased us for an astronomical price and we are now the sole property of Jesus. The Bible declares we are slaves to Christ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Ephesians 6:6; Galatians 1:10; 1 Peter 2:16).

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Because of the modern connotation of the word “slave”, we immediately bristle at the thought of being anyone’s slave. But don’t let modern culture and human injustice allow you to deny the holy and inspired Word of God. We are slaves of Christ, bought at the price of Him dying in our place. It is a debt we can never repay.

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Indulging in Entertainment

September 21, 2023 by Tim Sherfy

In the last post, “The Relevance of the Church”, we discussed how entertainment has crept into our churches and dramatically changed what a service looks like. While most churches start with the goal of submitting to the Lordship of Christ and being a living demonstration of His life, over time, it is common for churches to become the sum of the people attending. They begin to reflect the whims and preferences of those who come through the doors rather than maintaining a rigorous adherence to Biblical teaching and structure.

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This means if we want to have more Christ-like churches, each of us must become more Christ-like in our lives. Don’t wish your church was better. Focus on becoming more Christ-like yourself. Our churches are obsessed with entertaining the masses because of our penchant for indulging in entertainment in our personal lives. If enough of us would take the call of Christ seriously by consuming our thoughts with Him instead of earthly pleasures and desires, our churches would once again be the light and refuge that our world needs.