With all of the “reality” shows that are out there, it’s no wonder we think they truly display reality. Yet when reality is presented in its raw truth form why are we are offended?

Proverbs 15:31 says “He who listens to a life giving rebuke will be at home among the wise”.

2 Corinthians 7:10 says “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, BUT worldly sorrow brings death”.

In this era of “love”and what some call reality we must be careful to define what godly love and REAL reality REALLY is.

Godly love will have an immediate hatred for sin. Sounds harsh but IS reality. If it is a love that leads to repentance one must recognize that love is not an emotion of tolerance. It is a constant awareness of who our God truly is and what He has already declared as being righteous. His law clearly states what is right in HIS eyes. This leaves us outside the realm of acceptance by God and yet some of us walk “with the lord” for many years before we realize we are walking along side man’s idea of Christianity instead of walking WITH the Lord of lords and King of kings.

I believe our message has to be pure and REAL!

In our weekly studies we have been investigating how to witness to people to lead them to salvation. This has been interesting to say the least. We have learned much about different personalities and about each other. The subject has been to challenge people where they are without offending them for where they’ve been. Yet we have also found that unless we are offended, we may not ever realize that we are in the wrong. The offense mustn’t come from our flesh, but from the Holy Spirit Himself.

Is it love to say “I don’t want to offend you so I will just say that God loves you” and then walk away, leaving someone on the same road as when you arrived?

If you knew the road they were on led to a cliff that it would be impossible for them to see until they began the long descent to their death, would you pass them going the opposite way while saying “God loves you”?

We have discussed the different approaches to people who are in different times in their life and how we must be sensitive to their current positions in order to know which method of communication to use.

We have looked at Paul as an example: Although many say Paul has a “more consistent” and maybe even “milder” personality and deliverance than some of the other disciples, it seems Paul was simply more aware of his audience.

When he speaks in Romans 2 he starts this way “You, therefore, have NO EXCUSE”……his approach here is not very empowering or encouraging. Why does he start this way? What is the “Therefore” there for? Well we see in the end of the previous chapter that he was already on the subject of “God’s Wrath Against Mankind”. He finishes the previous chapter by saying “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them“.

We tend to believe that love is to approve and tolerate where one is, regardless of where it will lead them. Paul cares about the direction of people and so he delivers an encouraging message to those who are heading down the right road, while warning those who are headed toward the cliff. This is love.

He goes on to mention that God’s judgment is based on truth and that truth remains for those who are judging as well. None of us will escape God’s judgment.

We must first realize that we are on the road that leads us to “the cliff” before we can be thankful to the one who has saved us.

Romans 2:4-5 “Or do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance”? “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when His judgment will be revealed”. Further in verses 11& 12 “For God does not show favoritism. 12 “All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law”.

Charles Spurgeon said this about repentance:

“If thou hast one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it thee, for human nature’s thorns never produced a single fig. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. True repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our transgressions only, in the light of his love.

True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin, if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but experimentally-as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed is afraid of the thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it-shun it in everything-not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers as well as great snakes. True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word; we shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcoming, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers, that this day God would hold us up that we may not sin against him.

Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day. This dropping well is not intermittent. Every other sorrow yields to time, but this dear sorrow grows with our growth, and it is so sweet a bitter, that we thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it until we enter our eternal rest”.