Revelation: Church of Sardis, Choose Life | May 27, 2023

When my husband was in high school, he took a mission trip to Haiti. He remembers someone asking a local pastor why, did they suppose, America wasn’t influenced by Voodoo like Haitians were. “That’s easy,” the man said. “The Enemy uses materialism in America to distract them.” Satan uses whatever the culture has to distract us, lull us to sleep, and make us useless in God’s kingdom. Like a boat that isn’t anchored, we will drift away from the truth if we allow culture to creep into our lives.

Revelation 3:3-6 ESV

³ Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. ⁴ Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. ⁵ The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. ⁶ He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

Hooray for the few who are persevering in obedience, remaining faithful, holding to the truth, and choosing life! May we also be the ones who conquer culture by choosing life.

Deuteronomy 30:14-21 ESV

The Choice of Life and Death

But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

Reflect:  Ask the Lord to bring someone to mind who needs your encouragement to persevere and choose life. Pray for them today.