By: Rev. Gerry Weesner, Maples United Methodist Church<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever sins is guilty of breaking God\u2019s law because sin is a breaking of the law.\u00a0 You know that Christ appeared in order to take away sins and that there is no sin in him.\u00a0 So everyone who lives in union with Christ does not continue to sin; but whoever continues to sin has never seen him or known him.\u00a0 Let no one deceive you, my children; whoever does what is right is righteous just as Christ is righteous.\u00a0 Whoever continues to sin belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the very beginning.\u201d 1 John 3:4-8a (GNB)<\/p>\n
I was once a casual Christian before God called me closer to him and then into his service.\u00a0 I was more in tune with worldly things than spiritual things.\u00a0 Why not? Everyone\u2019s doing it!\u00a0 But to my shock and dismay when I became more of an avid Bible reader and student, I realized that I had been on the broad, wide road to destruction. \u201cGo in through the narrow gate, because the gate to hell is wide and the road that leads to it is easy, and there are many who travel it. But the gate to life is narrow and the way that leads to it is hard, and there are few people who find it.\u201d\u00a0 Matthew 7:13-14 (GNB)<\/p>\n
What is a casual Christian?\u00a0 A casual Christian is someone who claims to be a Christian but who doesn\u2019t make a sincere attempt to live by God\u2019s moral and ethical laws and commandments.\u00a0 Their fruit is of the Devil and not of the Spirit. God requires a decision of us. We are either for him or we are against him.\u00a0 No Sunday Christians, Christmas and Easter Christians, or Christians in name only will be in heaven. God will only accept committed Christians into heaven.\u00a0 \u201cI know what you have; I know that you are neither cold nor hot.\u00a0 How I wish that you were either one or the other!\u00a0 But because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I\u2019m going to spit you of my mouth!\u201d\u00a0 Revelation 3:15-16 (GNB)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Rev. Gerry Weesner, Maples United Methodist Church \u201cWhoever sins is guilty of breaking God\u2019s law because sin is a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5534,8023,8024,603,8025,210,8021,4874,7413,6875,7241,6786,6851,8022],"class_list":["post-18513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-churches","tag-bible","tag-casual-christianity","tag-chirstian","tag-church","tag-devil","tag-god","tag-gods-law","tag-jesus","tag-lord","tag-maples-united-methodist-church","tag-rev-gerry-weesner","tag-scripture","tag-sermon","tag-sin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2YQd9-4OB","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-30 09:35:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westbendnews.net\/autonews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}