How often we read scripture and sit through a sermon, listening, thinking, "So-and-so really needs to hear this!" ... So focused on the wrongs we percieve in our brothers, we keep the words from penetrating Our own hearts, thereby refusing the council of God ...
But how can you ever council and love your brother who is at fault, if you cannot first walk with God and obey Him in these very same things?
I am speaking to myself here, (how terrible I am with this!) But I make my convictions known, hoping that you may also benefit.
... Consider another thing. When you admonish and council. Council and rebuke are good things, done for the right reason! But where is your heart? Are you arguing just to win? To profess a higher doctrine and show off wisdom and discernment? To impress?
... Or to proclaim the word of God with love and compassion, that hearts may be restored to Him?
Examine your heart!
I am also guilty of this.
I can't speak from personal experience on what exactly was the problem with the pharisees. Scripture makes it clear that there were probably a few things. But clear, above all else, was their sin in pride. They felt they upheld their law so well that they held themselves next to anyone else they could.
Pharisees picked up stones against sinners because their hearts were wicked and they were blinded.
Christ protected them from the wolves, then admonished them to go and sin no more.
How often I live out my walk for the external! I challenge the sin that can be seen yet ignore the unseen. I see to it that people will look and SEE the Christian, but how little they know of what goes on in my mind. And this is the very problem, the very essense of a cultural Christianity, where we walk so that our light is in the light but are darkness is in the darkness. Christ is light and there is no darkness in Him, says the apostle John. We cannot say we are without sin, but nor can we claim that the Truth is in us if we continue on in darkness, hatefully and unrepentantly.
Yet scripture promises that one day all things that happen in the dark will come to the light. Do you believe this?
Will we allow the Word of God to penetrate our hearts, or will we continue to focus on the external, the seen, and refuse the light that challenges our own darkness?
But how can you ever council and love your brother who is at fault, if you cannot first walk with God and obey Him in these very same things?
I am speaking to myself here, (how terrible I am with this!) But I make my convictions known, hoping that you may also benefit.
... Consider another thing. When you admonish and council. Council and rebuke are good things, done for the right reason! But where is your heart? Are you arguing just to win? To profess a higher doctrine and show off wisdom and discernment? To impress?
... Or to proclaim the word of God with love and compassion, that hearts may be restored to Him?
Examine your heart!
I am also guilty of this.
I can't speak from personal experience on what exactly was the problem with the pharisees. Scripture makes it clear that there were probably a few things. But clear, above all else, was their sin in pride. They felt they upheld their law so well that they held themselves next to anyone else they could.
Pharisees picked up stones against sinners because their hearts were wicked and they were blinded.
Christ protected them from the wolves, then admonished them to go and sin no more.
How often I live out my walk for the external! I challenge the sin that can be seen yet ignore the unseen. I see to it that people will look and SEE the Christian, but how little they know of what goes on in my mind. And this is the very problem, the very essense of a cultural Christianity, where we walk so that our light is in the light but are darkness is in the darkness. Christ is light and there is no darkness in Him, says the apostle John. We cannot say we are without sin, but nor can we claim that the Truth is in us if we continue on in darkness, hatefully and unrepentantly.
Yet scripture promises that one day all things that happen in the dark will come to the light. Do you believe this?
Will we allow the Word of God to penetrate our hearts, or will we continue to focus on the external, the seen, and refuse the light that challenges our own darkness?
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