A Cry From the Heart for the Western Church

Woe! Woe to what is fallen!

The Church, the Elect of God in the West lie in the dust!

Woe to us who have played the harlot and have known all except our one God and Lover.

We have laid out our bed to be rich, yet are destitute;

We have stripped naked for the spiritist and deceiver;

We entice the daughter of perversion 

And tainted the bride of Christ with the lust of the woman of immorality;

We sell ourselves to lives of pleasure and ease and comfort and acceptance,

All the while being estranged from the Author of pleasure, the Comforter, and our Deliverer from death.

Answer Church, speak ones who call themselves God's children.

Shall not a wife be faithful to her loving and self-sacrificing husband?

Shall not the bride of such a man seek to please and respect him?

Why then do you run from such a husband and chase after men that abuse you?

What will the loving father of such a promiscuious daughter do?

Shall he support her and shield her and bless her as she continues in her lustful and adulterous ways?

No! But He shall let her taste the bitterness of her rebellion, 

Where she shall suffer at the hands of her many lovers.

Then, when she has been exposed and rejected,

He shall come to her and take her home,

Cleansing her filth and treating her wounds

O how they shall sting!

And He will teach her again the life of righteousness.

So you, bride of Christ and daughter of the Heavenly Father, have done,

Chasing after liars and deceivers, forsaking love for lust.

But the hour is not so late,

Nor are you so lost that you cannot avoid this coming horror.

Forsake your wealth,

Abandon your worldly beauty,

Turn from your sinful lovers,

And return to the Father.

Forsake the wisdom of mortal man,

And live off the very written word of the Immortal God.

Remember your first and only love,

The One that died for you,

The One that descended into Hades for a time and returned,

Just that you might be His.

Al-Shadday, God Almighty, Y--H Tsava, the LORD of armies and war,

Great is Your Name and just are Your ways.

We have sinned greatly before You so that we are an abomination in Your sight.

Our wickedness and rebellion rises as a foul stench,

Though we perceive only our good deeds and good intentions.

You are just to afflict us and to prepare discipline for us,

Your rebellious children, deceived into thinking that we are following You.

May You yet have mercy on us, 

Allowing us to see our wretched state;

In Your loving-kindness draw us back into Your presence

That we may not be a reproach among the people

And further disgrace Your Name.

Cleanse us that we may shine like the stars

And bring the adoration of our neighbors to You.

Hear the cry of Your bond-servant, Your slave,

As You heard the cry of the slave of Your servant Abraham, Hagar;

Incline Your ear to this son of Dirt and see us,

For You are Al-Roiy, the God who sees.

"If perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will." 

-2 Timothy 2:25b-26 (New American Standard Bible)

"No other gods before Me." Exodus 20:3

     The first of the ten commandments, also called the Decalogue, introduces the entirety of God's instructions to His unconditionally chosen people. I would venture to say that the command "you shall have no other gods before me" is the key to following the rest of God's instruction, as implied by it being the first commandment. However, rather than focus on the importance and position of this command, I wish to explore the significance of the phrase "before me".
     Frequently this passage is read as "God must be first in your life." The consequent application goes along these lines usually, "if God is not the center of your life and if He is not your top priority, then you need to re-prioritize and make changes in your schedule." This approach reads "before" in the ordinal sense, implying that loving God is a matter of ranking Him over other things and people. If this were the case one would expect to find in the Hebrew text prepositions like תחת (tachat; lit.: in place of) or נגד (neged; lit.: before, against) On the contrary, the word "before" is actually a prepositional phrase of two words in the Hebrew text, which reads, על-פני (al-panaya); this translates literally to a more spacial understanding of "before" as the phrase "in My face/presence"; unfortunately, only two main English translations (the Holman Christian Standard Bible and the Amplified Bible) have striven to reflect this in their wording. Consequent to this understanding of Exodus 20:3, God forbade His people to have any other gods in His presence. The Israelites understood that they were ever in God's presence through their journey from Egypt to Horeb (a.k.a. Sinai); and they would continue to learn that they were always in God's presence through the Tabernacle, journeying in the wilderness, the invasion of Canaan, even to David who wrote about God's omnipresence in the 139th Psalm. Therefore, in summary, Israel was never to have any god other than Adonai.
     In the same way, if not more so, Christians, God's unconditionally chosen people and adopted children, are not to have any god other than the Father. It is not a matter of God needing to be the center of your life, God needs to be your life. Work, study, recreation, money, friends, family, ministry, etc. are not things (gods) to be properly prioritized around God; they ought to merely be means/opportunities to reflect God and honor Him. He needs to be involved in and permeating every little task we perform. Instead of stressing over finances, seek to find the best way to honor God in your financial situation, in what you do and how you act. When worried about relationships that are wearing away, seek the way to reflect God in those relationships. Does Paul not say in Colossians 3:17, "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father"? Always is Adonai to be our God alone, and never should anything distract our hearts from Him.








New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Col 3:17.