Entertained or Changed

To Be, or Not to Exist - Entertained or Changed?
by py thomas
© August 27, 2013

A friend of mine who is a young mother of two grade school boys posted her concern on Facebook about Miley Cyrus  and her recent Music Video Award performance.  They were grieved because she was a former Disney child star.  Imagine that, Ms. Cyrus  a former child star from the Disney Corportaion changing in such an adverse way.

Really?  Since when did Disney become the author and finisher of our faith?  Since when did the Disney Corporation set the standards for godly living?  Quite the contraire, they like so many others, including parents have contributed to setting the standards for ungodliness. 

The body of Yeshua like the world wants to be entertained and not changed.  Many of the sons and daughters of the covenant know more about the latest movies, television shows, fashions, celebrity gossip, money, and sporting events than they do about their own salvation, consecration, regeneration and sanctification.  The only characteristics of YHWH they want to focus on is that He is love, He blesses, but do not want to hear that He also is the righteous judge, and will be the God of wrath on the sons and daughters of disobedience.

If you ask the average Saint about sin, they will pick and choose what is sin, and even rationalize why they do certain sins.  They love to say, “God knows my heart.”  And that’s true, He does.  He said that our hearts our desperately wicked.  Thus, our need for salvation.  When asked about righteous and godly living, many are quick to say, “it doesn’t take all of that…Jesus did it all…”  and on and on it goes.

How many of the Saints truly avail themselves on a daily basis to study YHWH’s word and earnestly seek HIM to search them out and be examined in all areas of their lives that have not been brought under the subjection of His authority?

Well when we are more interested in being entertained versus changed by the Word of YHWH, we have what we deserve…Miley Cyrus, the pornography industry, the vile rock and rap music, a corrupt legal system and corrupt elected officials, drugs, drunkenness, parents who say they love their children but refuse to correct and discipline them in accordance to YHWH’s word, husband and wives who do not submit to the LORD, let alone each other;  the countless murder of innocent lives (born and unborn); and the refusal to call sin “sin,” but instead slap a label on it and call it a disease and mental illness (and in many cases its demonic possession).

Well we should not be surprised, as this world is under the sway of the Adversary Satan and unless one decides to break free from the bondage of sin we have through Yeshua the Messiah, we have what we now have.  The Apostle Paul under the influence of the Holy Spirit said it best in his letter to Timothy:

Moreover, understand this: in the acharit-hayamim [perilous times] will come trying times. ² People will be self-loving, money-loving, proud, arrogant, insulting, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, uncontrolled, brutal, hateful of good, ⁴ traitorous, headstrong, swollen with conceit, loving pleasure rather than God, ⁵ as they retain the outer form of religion but deny its power.

Stay away from these people! ⁶ For some of them worm their way into homes and get control of weak-willed women who are heaped with sins and swayed by various impulses, ⁷ who are always learning but never able to come to full knowledge of the truth. ⁸ In the same way as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moshe [Moses], so also these people oppose the truth. They are people with corrupted minds, whose trust cannot pass the test. ⁹ However, they won’t get very far; because everyone will see how stupid they are, just as happened with those two.

¹⁰ But you, you have closely followed my teaching, conduct, purpose in life, trust, steadfastness, love and perseverance — ¹¹ as well as the persecutions and sufferings that came my way in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. ¹² And indeed, all who want to live a godly life united with the Messiah Yeshua will be persecuted, ¹³ while evil people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived themselves.

¹⁴ But you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, recalling the people from whom you learned it; ¹⁵ and recalling too how from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which can give you the wisdom that leads to deliverance through trusting in Yeshua the Messiah. ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is valuable for teaching the truth, convicting of sin, correcting faults and training in right living; ¹⁷ thus anyone who belongs to God may be fully equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3)

While we have opted to be under the delusion of being entertained instead of changed by the renewing of our minds by YHWH’s Word through the influence of the Holy Spirit, we will face His judgment:

⁸ Now go, write it before them on a tablet,
And note it on a scroll,
That it may be for time to come,
Forever and ever:
⁹ That this is a rebellious people,
Lying children,
Children who will not hear the law of the Lord;
¹⁰ Who say to the seers, “Do not see,”
And to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us right things;
Speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.
¹¹ Get out of the way,
Turn aside from the path,
Cause the Holy One of Israel
To cease from before us.”

¹² Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel:

“Because you despise this word,
And trust in oppression and perversity,
And rely on them,
¹³ Therefore this iniquity shall be to you
Like a breach ready to fall,
A bulge in a high wall,
Whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant.
¹⁴ And He shall break it like the breaking of the potter’s vessel,
Which is broken in pieces;
He shall not spare.
So there shall not be found among its fragments
A shard to take fire from the hearth,
Or to take water from the cistern.” (Isaiah 30:1-14)

But because YHWH is merciful, long-suffering and patient with us, while we have breath in our bodies, we have a chance to turn from our wicked ways.  Lord YHWH, help us all, including me.

I pray that those who have an ear to hear and eyes to see, answer YHWH’s call to repentance; and truly return to Him – acknowledging Him in ALL of our ways.

In Yeshua’s Mighty, Awesome & Strong Name,
His maidservant, py thomas