Many people want the safety and perks of becoming a Christian. Perhaps they want a family or club they can call their own, or perhaps they feel a sense of safety being in a group that speaks about blessings and protection.
Many of these people do not want God, they only want His stuff. We know this because when a born-again believer attempts to bring them back to thinking about Christ, worshiping Him, and obeying His principles they become hostile as though the one who loves the Lord has done something wrong.
As we move further into the apostate age we will see this mentality of "them versus us" in reference to the "radical born-agains" and the "pretenders" growing and solidified.
The pretenders don't want to grow in holiness and sadly they don't want anyone else to grow beyond them. It is an affront to the pretender that anyone else would be spiritually superior to them. Pride and self-protection is at the root of the rudeness and resistance to spiritual and emotional maturity.
Matthew 15:7-9 "…7 You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied correctly about you: 8‘ These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. 9 They worship Me in vain; they teach as doctrine the precepts of men.’ "
Ephesians 4:11-16
"And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ."
James 1:22-25
"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing."
Let us be seeking the word, hearers of the word and "DOERS" that we might please Christ and not ourselves or other men.
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