“The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”
Most people don’t like the dentist. Take a look from the dentist’s side of things and how they might think about all of the hate. They are only there to help with dental hygiene habits and fix things before they get too bad. With all that, people still don’t like going to the dentist. You go to one dentist and he says, “we need to pull that tooth!” You don’t like that so you go to another dentist hoping to hear another answer that does not involve needles in your mouth. The other dentist says, “Yep, we need to pull that tooth!”
Sadly, most of us view church this way. We don’t hear what we want to so we just ignore it or try to find a church that makes us feel good while never touching the parts of our lives that might hurt. In Isaiah, most of the chapters are titled, “Woe to the city of David” or ” A prophecy against Moab”. You read these chapters and you see the rough side of love. Just like the person switching dentists trying to find one that tells him what he wants instead of what he needs. Ignoring the bullet wound will not make it go away any more than switching churches to find the one church that agrees that your sin is OK with God. This will not make you free.
We even make a regular habit of going to church and singing the songs while our lips honor God but our hearts are actually far from Him. If we are not careful we can “play church” as they say. This looks like following the motions of good church going folks as our outward perception is rubber stamped as “Good Christian People.” The rough side of love means that we pay attention to and do not ignore the things in our lives that need pulling or drilling out.
We need to make sure that on a daily basis our hearts are striving after God. This does not mean that you go to work or school and shout “JESUS SAVES!!” everywhere you go. It looks more like loving on people as Christ would. Spending time reading the Word of God (God’s playbook and instruction manual). Attending a small group, making Godly friends and diching the ungodly ones. Letting the Lord deal with your problem areas instead of ignoring them. As it says in Revelation 3:20, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” He is waiting and knocking, will you answer or just swipe left to ignore the call?
Prayer: Father help us honor you with our mouths and our hearts. Help us to be a person after your heart, Lord. I pledge to strive after you every day by reading my Bible and praying for the wisdom to deal with everything and also how to be an example of a disciple of Christ. In Jesus name, amen.
Let It Go 
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