Amputation Or Cooperation #17

The same surgeons who perform amputations after a limb is determined to be of no further use (other than bringing death to its owner), are the same skilled physicians, who, at other times, perform acts that bring healing and restoration to their patients. It is always much preferred to save and heal a limb than to amputate it and discard it. There are approximately twenty six prominent places in the Bible where God warns people that they can and will be "cut-off" (amputated) from both their physical and spiritual inheritance should they break their covenant with Him. This warning continued into the New Testament as John the Baptist paved the way for Jesus' public ministry, shouting that the Messiah was coming soon after him, and, among other promises, that the Messiah would burn disobedient men with "fire unquenchable" (see Luke 3:17). Not long afterward, Jesus continued this exact same warning of amputation (that had been first most prominently initiated almost 1600 years earlier, in Exodus 12:15), to all individual persons, declaring: "I am the vine, and you are the branches. The one who remains in Me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are gathered up, thrown into the fire, and burned." (See John 15:5-7.) That same message marches forward well into our own personal presents and futures. Will you choose to be amputated from His grace, or will you choose to be repaired by His grace? This is the question, and the choice is ours. Paul plainly states that the Church is for the repairing of the saints (Ephesians 4:12-14). If one does not regularly attend, one cannot be spiritually repaired. Worse, by rejecting the corporate gathering of the saints, one self-amputates from the Body of Christ. On that final day when Christ "gathers up" and throws "into the fire" those whose proverbial branches were pruned from the Vine, His judgment will simply be a continuance of what amputees first chose of their own volition. He will keep His promises. But mankind will recall that they chose to cut themselves off from Him - to NOT abide in Him - thus, they were unable to be grafted back into Him (the Vine). Having remained separated from His life-giving sap for far too long, they will be discovered long dead, worthy only of the flames. God loves you and wants to repair you. Will you cooperate or self-amputate?