The Ballestero Blog

I’m getting ready to go to the airport in a few minutes. I am wearing dress slacks, a sport coat, a dress shirt and a tie. The occasion? I’m going to see my wife in Indianapolis tonight. I ALWAYS dress up when I come home to my wife! Why? I would hope that the fact that I took extra time to dress up, tells her I think she is someone worth dressing up for. I want her to think, to know, and to feel that I consider her the most important person in this world. I will always dress up for her. I try to show her, that I think she’s very special! I might add that my efforts do not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

So what’s my point?

My point is that we are living in a very casual society. My travels have taken me to churches wear adults and young people wear clothes that not even a golf course would permit. Flip flops, tee shirts, curlers in the hair, and clothes that no one bothered to iron or maybe even wash, are seen in too many churches. What’s the deal? Why are Pentecostal churches looking like “Nothing special is going on here.”

There Is A Curse In Being Casual About The Things Of God:

1. CASUAL IN ATTITUDE

UZZAH:

• Touch Ark to steady it and God killed him.  He was too familiar and too comfortable.
• Casual Attitude brings Familiarity

ESAU:

• Heb 12:16 Profane = to treat as commonplace.
• Later he sought for God carefully with tears but never found help.
• Casual brings Unconcern
• Next is Contempt (He traded birthright for something to eat)

• (Heb 12:17 KJV)  For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
• He got careful too late.

ATTITUDE

• Gum chewers – almost never respond, and never receive.
• Demonstrates an attitude of a spectator at an event.
• A watcher.

DRESS

• Carelessness about attire tells God you don’t think coming to His House is important
• Some are very careless about modesty
• Many are careless about adorning themselves with jewelry like Israel did when it backslid.

Wear your best to church

• Dress up for God
• He hates casual!!

God said to Moses, “Take off your shoes,” you are on Holy ground. God wanted Moses to be respectful in His presence.

2. CASUAL IN OBEDIENCE

• Casual in Giving:  Tithe/Offerings
• Sacrifice: God got tired of Israel bring him 2nd rate lambs.  He wanted the best. No Blemish.
• Don’t be Casual in what you give God or Do for God

CAIN:

• Offered what he felt was OK to God.  It was good enough for him; it should be good enough for God.

SAUL:

• Casual in obedience
• Destroyed as he saw fit.  Used his own judgment. Didn’t obey the prophet and let Agag live.

3.  CASUAL IN WORSHIP

• Pharisees – whited sepulchers, worship with lips, but heart is far from me
• Half Hearted worship too common in Pentecost

4.  CASUAL IN FAITHFULNESS

• Why did he have to say, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together if they weren’t casual about their attendance?
• (Heb 10:25 KJV)  Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

5.  CASUAL IN COMMITTMENT

AMAZIAH:

• Did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, yet not with a perfect heart as did his father David

AHAB

• (1 Ki 16:31 KJV)  And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him.

• (1 Ki 16:33 KJV)  And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

• Your Casualness will cause you to provoke God.
• Fools make a mock at sin.
• Are you Casual with God?  You’ll be casual with sin

YOUR CASUAL LIFESTYLE ANGERS GOD

• Churches without conviction  (are they casual?)
• A Casual ministry brought Strange Fire
• Some silly preachers wearing shorts and tank tops in public.
• Even preaching in them.
• God is NOT pleased.

REPENTANCE IS THE KEY

• (2 Cor 7:11 KJV)  For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.

• Yea what carefulness it wrought in you.
• Only Repentance removes the casual attitude