October 23 – Revelation 2:12-17
Dear Lord God, we come before You in worship and praise, for You are the orchestrator of Your creation. Be with us as we spend time with You, and guide us to what You want to show us.
Truth and love. We are commanded throughout the Bible to defend the truth and to love even the unlovely. Most of us lean toward one or the other. It’s hard to balance. In our family, Ray was more the disciplinarian and leaned toward Getting It Right. I tended to not want conflict with an errant daughter and leaned more toward quick forgiveness without sufficient consequences. I’d let things slide so there “wouldn’t be trouble.” Both of us needed balance, and we decided that was why God put us together. I could temper his sense of justice with my passion for mercy, and he could help me guard against being “too nice” to the point where I was allowing wrong behavior to flourish.
How about you? Do you have a leaning toward one or the other? In our reading about the Church in Pergamum today, we see that although that church was not denying Christ even though they lived in a place where Jesus declared Satan had his throne, they were compromising truth where they shouldn’t. They were becoming weaker in areas of doctrine that were not optional. They were sinning in the way they were treating idols and in the way they allowed sexual sin to flourish without consequences. We cannot compromise basic truths like this.
I love that He reassures them; however, He has special gifts for those who truly follow Him without compromise. Can you imagine eating actual manna?? How fun! And how sweet that He will notice them with a new name understood only by Himself – He who knows every heart and designed every human being!
My verse: Revelation 2:12, “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Pergamum. This is the message from the one with the sharp two-edged sword:”
My response: Lord, You are good and merciful and tender and gracious. Yet help me not to forget that You also are wielding a sharp, two-edged sword. You expect me to obey You and follow You wholeheartedly. Help me to keep the tension between respect and awe for You and happy nestling into You as my Abba. You are SO big. You are all I need.
What’s next?
As the Spirit leads, share what He has laid on your heart in the comment section below. Then join us again tomorrow for the next commentary.
