Public Persona Private Personality
2 Timothy 3:1-9 Amplified Bible (AMP)
1BUT UNDERSTAND this, that in the last days will come (set in) perilous times of great stress and trouble [hard to deal with and hard to bear]. 2For people will be lovers of self and [utterly] self-centered, lovers of money and aroused by an inordinate [greedy] desire for wealth, proud and arrogant and contemptuous boasters. They will be abusive (blasphemous, scoffing), disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane. 3[They will be] without natural [human] affection (callous and inhuman), relentless (admitting of no truce or appeasement); [they will be] slanderers (false accusers, troublemakers), intemperate and loose in morals and conduct, uncontrolled and fierce, haters of good. 4[They will be] treacherous [betrayers], rash, [and] inflated with self-conceit. [They will be] lovers of sensual pleasures and vain amusements more than and rather than lovers of God. 5For [although] they hold a form of piety (true religion), they deny and reject and are strangers to the power of it [their conduct belies the genuineness of their profession]. Avoid [all] such people [turn away from them]. 6For among them are those who worm their way into homes and captivate silly and weak-natured and spiritually dwarfed women, loaded down with [the burden of their] sins [and easily] swayed and led away by various evil desires and seductive impulses. 7[These weak women will listen to anybody who will teach them]; they are forever inquiring and getting information, but are never able to arrive at a recognition and knowledge of the Truth. 8Now just as Jannes and Jambres were hostile to and resisted Moses, so these men also are hostile to and oppose the Truth. They have depraved and distorted minds, and are reprobate and counterfeit and to be rejected as far as the faith is concerned. 9But they will not get very far, for their rash folly will become obvious to everybody, as was that of those [magicians mentioned].
The one thing that I love about my Bishop is no matter where you see him, He is the same. I have seen him out doing normal everyday things, I have counseled with him and of course as he ministers on Sunday morning he is the same. It has become a sad fact that more recently we have seen public images within the church and individuals that profess Christianity and God as Lord and Savior, and yet their private personalities have come tumbling out of the closet and have been anything but an example or resemblance of God or Christ. I remember as a child that my grandmother and the missionaries alike in our church were the same no matter where you saw them. They carried themselves with the integrity and posture that gave no room for doubt that they served a God that required them to live holy and be obedient to His Word, and His will. Now it is so difficult to know who we are dealing with, who is in God especially at home behind closed doors or in a work environment where they think no one can see them or with those who are close to them, or in environments that they think will not reveal the truth of who they are. What has happened to us where we have turned away from Godly living to a place where we abide to serve our ego, our pride, our lusts and our need to divide and conquer?
Strangely enough we don’t fear God, and God is no longer the priority that stands out in our lives. We have children that seem fine one minute and have the intent to kill and harm, or seem respectful but are abusing verbal and physically their own parents. We have parents that go to church each Sunday and Wednesday and serve in ministry that are going home and abusing their spouse and cursing out their children and generally just living like hell. We have Ministers of Music that stand up to usher us into a place of worship and the very presence of God and they are engaging in relationships that are an abomination to God, and they are operating instead of under the anointing, under an agenda. We have Pastors that are declaring the gospel and mishandling and misappropriating funds, time, church resources and living lives that are contrary to the Word of God and to God’s call upon their lives. What happened to what you see is what you get? What has happened to who we encounter in people is really who they are? Are we turning into those living a lie, just as many that do not profess Christianity and God as Lords and Savior?
This is a season that God is exposing what is not His will. He is letting the private personality be seen in the public venue. If God was to do this to us, what would people really see of us? Would there be a marked difference between what we betray and what we really are living? Judgment is beginning with God’s church, His house, His bride. We can no longer afford to have a form of Godliness that is seen by the public that is not what we are living in our private existence. God knows us even behind closed doors, and whether we want to believe it or not what we do in the dark, does come into the light, because God will not look upon sin, and He will not allow us to bring confusion and disparagement upon His name and His Kingdom. We cannot continue to live using the name of the Lord when God is not in the midst of our living and the way we are treating people. We cannot serve two masters for one we will love and the other we will despise. Who we are in private and how we are living behind closed doors should be who we are in public, and what our families, close friends, children and co-workers see and experience. Our desire should be, not me but the God within me that should be evident not just to some but to ALL who know me, even those closest to me!
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