I Never Knew You!

These are the words that no one desires to hear when the Lord returns; but they will and it will be spoken to many people that are quite active within ministry and the church.

This will be the saddest day for all mankind and I grieve when I read about this in scripture. People are always saying, “well God knows my heart.” This is a direct fulfillment of what scriptures states, “the heart is wicked and deceitful above all things, who can know it?” Well it’s true, God can know it, however, the heart being wicked and deceitful only means that we can deceive ourselves into believing we have some kind of ‘goodness’ that can save us. We don’t. We were born into sin and there is only one that is good, as Christ stated to make His point. “Do not call anyone good for only our Father in heaven is good.

Oh yes, we are good at something that’s true. It is, as I stated, self-deception. We try to climb up on that cross as if we can redeem ourselves with works or our image that we have created. This image is nothing but a false idol that we bow down to and hope that others will as well. Yes, this is why the commandment tells us, “Do not worship false images.” We can create a picture of ourselves in our pride and it is the very thing that keeps us from entering into a true intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. The only one that can save us from our deception and pride. The word of God tells us that, “He became nothing.” That’s right, the king of the universe, stepped into a mortal body to live among us and He did not consider His reputation.

When we come to Christ, we are to have our identity in Christ and we become nothing. He lives through us and touches the world through our hands and feet. Our eyes and mouth. We are the vessels. As pathetic as we are, He loves us in all of our imperfection and He alone brings about the change in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. This cannot happen as long as we are still holding on to any belief that we are doing this or He needs our help. The opposite of the humanist belief must take hold and we crucify our flesh so that He knows we are dead to ourselves. This is why Paul said, “His strength is made perfect, in my weakness. When our pride is wiped out and we are broken. This is when Christ becomes the strongest in our lives. It is the only time that we realize it is not our power. “Not our will, but thine be done.” It’s simply impossible as long as we are sitting on the throne of our will and not submitted to Him.

Now, in the end when He judges mankind it will be just this self-deception that men have chosen, to be cast aside. It is not the Lord’s choosing, but the very men that have been serving in ministry. However, they are not serving God, they only give the appearance of this to the outside world. Here is the pinnacle of the judgement in that day. It says in scripture; (Matthew 7:21-23) “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say(and the word many translates to the majority, or greater part) to me on that day, “Lord did we not prohesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Then I will tell them plainly, Depart from me, I never knew you.” The word knew is defined as “an intimate relationship.

So when the separation takes place we can see that the Lord is not pleased with all of these works, even though the people that claimed this as their right to enter heaven, think that they were serving the kingdom. The key and the operative words are, “I never knew you.”

If you look further, in verse 24, He defines the real meaning of this relationship. You cannot hear the word of God and know the truth and continue to live your life any way you please. There must be an outward change that is visible of your relationship with Christ. And it is not the title or works you perform, but the lifestyle that you live. It must be a reflection of the Lord ruling and reigning on the throne of your heart. If He is ruling, you will have the power to turn away from an unrighteous life and overcome these areas of darkness. You can’t hide behind good works as a smokescreen and believe that the Lord is going to let you slip into the kingdom because you taugh bible study or led ministry. He demands a consecrated life and we are the example of the Word of God being read. Paul tells us, ‘we are epistles being read.” Our life and the fruit of our lives to the world.

If we do not allow this, we are in rebellion and we are the ones spoken of in the last days, “they worship me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

So we can see these portions of scripture are dealing with the ones that claim to know Him. He is not speaking of the unsaved world. It is far worse to claim you know the truth and continue on with your deeds of darkness and use the name of Christ to promote yourself. This is very dangerous since we can see that the lost, don’t walk in hypocrisy. They don’t claim to have a desire to follow Christ and therefore are not preaching a double standard.

I had a friend that came with me to a church years ago. It was a vital church, but things started to be shaken at the top. Church leadership was being called out, by the Lord. A definite shaking was taking place and these people had lives that were unconsecrated and they were doing things that were morally wrong.

My friend laughed when we had a trip together. We were in a European country and walked into a club and she and I saw women on the tables dancing and men drunk as could be. We walked out and she made the statement, “hey it’s just like that church!” I laughed so hard and thought, “you know, she’s right! What separates that church from the world, if the leaders are engaging in acts such as these? She had asked me, “why would these people even want to pretend? If they are going to do this stuff, why no just quit being involved in a church?” Very profound statement from my friend. I was trying to be a witness to her and yet, after she had seen this, she made the valid point, that these people were indeed, worse that she was in their actions, because of their sanctimonious and hypocritical lives.

Of course the Lord wouldn’t allow this to continue and the church fell apart. If the leadership wanted to walk in these ways, the Lord was not going to allow them to lead so many others down this slippery slope. “Judgement begins in the house of God.” And since we are also considered temples, this means us as well.

So here we see the end days approaching and I would encourage everyone, to look at these words with great fear and do a self-examination, just as I did. I speak for myself as well and can say, I had almost fallen away from discouragement, yet refused to be claiming I was an active believer when I was walking in darkness. I just couldn’t drag the Lords name through the mud. To me, get in or get out! This is exactly what the Lord says in Revelation. Remember, I had posted this once before.

Revelation 3:14-16 “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth!” (The word for spit/spew, is vomit) It actually makes the Lord sick to His stomach to see such hypocrisy and remember, He is speaking to the church.

It is coming very soon, so I would say, now is the time to get on your knees and repent. Ask Christ to come and reign in your heart so that you will be one of the over-comers that He praises in the end. These are the ones that He will say to, “Well done my good and faithful servant, enter into your rest!”