April 13 What Do you Need

April 13

What Do You Need?

Re 3:17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased

with goods, and have need of nothing….

Suspicious of the envelope you had just retrieved from your mailbox, you opened it, already guessing what you would find. Yes, it was a wedding invitation and you suddenly realized you now had a problem. What could you buy them as a wedding gift.

     Buying wedding gifts used to be easy. Newlyweds needed everything; coffee pots, lamps, sheets, toasters, wall clocks, pillow cases, alarm clocks, frying pans, etc etc. The list was long and the only difficulty in selecting a gift was deciding what to give them from  the many items they needed.

     But then came the modern practice of living together for some lengthy time before couples got married. That meant they had already bought everything they needed for their home. Now when you open the wedding invitation you really have a problem. They no longer needed anything. Now what will you buy for a wedding present?  The answer is usually money, and with both of them working they probably don’t need money except to pay for the huge reception that is common now days. It is really hard to buy something for someone who has everything.
       There are seven churches listed in the first 3 chapters of Revelation. Many scholars think they represent the churches down through the ages and can match each church with some time period and in chronological order. For example the church at Smyrna suffered persecution and martyrdom. Some scholars match that up with the 2 or 3 centuries of persecution under the Roman government. They match the last of the seven churches, Laodicea, with modern times. Most of us know that is the “lukewarm” church, but it is also the rich church that did not need anything.
       Today’s devotional is not about being lukewarm, or even about churches today. I want us to consider if we, as individual Christians, are in any way like the church at Laodicea.
      The Bible tells us that church was rich. The whole town was rich. How rich? Well after an earthquake in the first century nearly destroyed the whole town, the people just opened up their wallets and rebuilt the place without asking the Roman government for any aid. You need a hefty bank account to do that. They were really rich!
     The church in Laodicea was the same way. If they needed something they bought it. Finances were not an issue in that church. I doubt they ever had a prayer meeting asking for the Lord to send in money to pay the heating bill, or their lamp oil supplier, or the scribe who wrote letters for them.  Nope, didn’t need to ask God for anything. They were rich. They were so rich they didn’t need anything.

     The bustling wool trade provided both lots of money and  the finest clothing. Professors from the huge medical center provided the best health care for their time. Probably the church had Doctors, teachers, wool merchants, bankers and other business men that had contacts and resources for just about anything they ever wanted. No need to ask God for anything.

     But they were still a busy church, and fit right into the local community. They probably had church dinners, and the boy scouts might have met in the basement.

     They were not a cold church, and they were not one of those hyper enthusiastic hell, fire and brimstone churches either. The middle of the road was their comfort zone. They were neither “frigid” nor “boiling hot” (the Greek meanings for hot and cold)

     I was once in a church during a heated red team vrs blue team division of the members. A man who tried to maintain good relations with both sides told us “ I am just trying to straddle the fence on this issue”. I told him that would work except the fence was all barbed wire. The result was neither side trusted or accepted the guy. He was trying to be lukewarm in hopes of pleasing both sides. Didn’t work.

     Now I am not going to accuse anyone of us of being lukewarm. The devotional question for us today is what do we need spiritually. Anything? Probably not. We are born again, know Christ as our personal savior, read our Bibles and pray. We attend church more or less regularly. We love people in our church family and get along well with them. We enjoy fellowship on a regular basis with other believers. We don’t dance or drink or chew, and never go with girls that do. So what else is there. No, I don’t think we need anything.

     Unfortunately that was one of the symptoms of a sick church. They had need of nothing. Only their kind of sickness didn’t make them throw up, it made Christ spew them out of His mouth.
     Oh dear, if we have the same symptoms do we have the same ailment?  That is a hard thing to admit. But in our modern age of credit cards and government support most of us have figured out a way to survive economically.
     And spiritually we are not bankrupt either. We do not reject religion in our lives and are definitely not “frigid” spiritually. So that leaves two choices. “boiling hot”* or Lukewarm. 
      If you have no spiritual needs and do not need God’s help for anything, you are probably like the Laodicean church, lukewarm.
     Now the boiling hot Christian is not the one leaping over pews and swinging from the chandelier, or the one who prays in public like a Pharisee, or is otherwise just plain weird. It is an internal boiling over in our spiritual hearts that recognizes our great needs and thankfulness for what Christ has done for us. .  
     May God richly bless us as we walk with Him today and let Him speak to our hearts about our spiritual needs.

Php 4:19 But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.