WHAT THAT MEANS FOR US
What that means for the individual believer is that God is working to separate you from, and loosen your grip on the things of this world, and working to draw you into a closer relationship with Him. What it means is that you will be having to confront some significant choices in this coming year that will work to that end. Those choices may be the choice between obedience to Him, without any ability to explain it to someone else, or continuing to participate in a lie that is contrary to Him. These choices will be according to where you are in your faith, growth and maturity in Him.
These choices will relate to every area of our lives, and its purpose is to separate us from the ways of this world and our dependence upon them, and get us anchored on a tried and tested faith in Him. Without these corrections, you will be building your house upon the sand of soulish, intellectual belief that is cleaved more to the interests of the flesh and not the faith of Christ that comes only through trial and the sufferings of obedience.
WHY WE NEED THESE CORRECTIONS
We need these corrections because the love of this world is growing cold. Understand this. God is Love. Therefore, whatsoever is not of God, is NOT love. If the Holy Spirit has not worked the likeness of Christ in you through obedience to His leading, then what you walk in will not be the love of God. It will be your own best attempt and version of it, and it will be something that will fail in the face of the coldness of love that is going on, even now. And THIS is why the love of God is growing cold in this world. If the love that is God is not made manifest in us who believe, how will it be made manifest in those who do not?
Your obedience to God is what increases your faith and trust in Him. That obedience and that faith are the faith of Christ in you, because. Understand this: your own faith fell with Eve as did our ability to obey fell with Adam. In Christ they are restored, but ONLY as you choose to obey God, even in the face of loss, persecution, trouble or suffering and hardship.
The love of God is getting colder in this world, because it is getting colder in His Church, for we no longer believe He calls us to suffering and hardship. This is what He is correcting ~ not to make us suffer, but to work in us that love and devotion that we will willingly suffer for His glory and the furtherance of His kingdom on this earth, as it is written: Thy people will be made willing in the day…” (Ps. 110:3)
THE END OF THE MATTER
You will always choose what it is you really want. But few will make that choice without the outward pressures that force the choice. This is the purpose of God’s corrections. His Church is being brought into the Valley of Decision, where we will be brought to choose who it is that we will serve ~ God, or our own ideas of Him. For many the lines have already been drawn, because you still think it is God whom you serve. This is another reason for God’s corrections, and the evidence of the greatness of His love, that He would do what is necessary to disabuse you of your error and delusion.
SOME ADVICE
If you hope to endure unto the end, read your bible to find out what it actually says, and not to back up what it is you think you believe. Ditch these modern, more ‘culturally relevant’ bibles and return to the bibles that sustained our forefathers through some of the darkest times, the ones that, however archaic the language may be, didn’t pull their punches when it came to telling it like it is.
Obey what you read, for it is to those who have (faith to obey), that more will be given (Mark 4:25). Those who do not obey even the plainly written word of God will lose even that which they think they have. Be more inclined to take the hard and difficult road that potentially involves loss and suffering, at least to the world of the flesh, to take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ and enjoy His comforts and consolations (aka, a closer walk and communion with Him). He took up His cross, knowing it led to a tomb. You must take up yours knowing it will lead to the loss of your life in this world. But know that of a surety, those who follow this road will save their lives unto eternal life, and enjoy a resurrection from the dead BECAUSE of their tried and tested obedience and faith and trust in Him, as well as enjoy the presence of the Lord as He walks with them through it all. Those who chose the easy way will receive their reward through that easy way, such as it is, but at then end, will find only destruction (Matt. 7:13-14).