Judging (Part 1)

I am a very judgmental person. I see things in black and white. My "gray" has been sorted and I know what goes where. As a result, I tend to judge others who either haven't sorted their "grays" out or who disagree with me. Because of this sin, I have started to read "Who Are You to Judge?" by Dave Swavely. I want to share some of his thoughts with you.

1 Corinthians 4:3-7 - But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.

Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Dave defines the sin of judging as follows: "negatively evaluating someone's conduct or spiritual state on the basis of non-biblical standards or suspected motives...to 'judge' others is to decide that they are doing wrong because they do something the Bible doesn't talk about or because you think you can guess what is in their heart."

Their are two different applications: 1. Do not judge yourself. This is clear in 1 Corinthians 4 at the end of verse 3; "In fact, I do not even judge myself...It is the Lord who judges me." Why? Because we can't even truly know the depths of our hearts. We can sin and not even know that we have. But God does know we have, so He is the perfect Judge.

2. Do not judge others. Our judgments of others and their judgments of us are very small things as the beginning of verse 3 says. The judgments don't matter because we cannot see the heart of a person. Only God's judgment counts as a perfectly accurate judgment of our actions. Why, if we aren't fit to judge ourselves, would we think we are fit to judge others anyway?

Proverbs 18:2,13,17 speak of the judgmental person who believes that he can know his own heart. I would encourage you to look up these verses to try to see if your life is similar to the man in these verses. Are you a judgmental person? Do you jump to conclusions when you see someone's actions and determine what the motives of their heart are for them? Do you assume that you know the reason for the actions made by others and yourself?

These are questions that I have to ask myself first and foremost. I know I am a judgmental person, and I pray that God would help me fight it. I will write more on what we do now, but the first steps to ridding yourself of a judgmental attitude is to acknowledge that you have one and pray to God that He would, first, forgive you, and, second, show you how to change.

Praise the Lord for His patience and grace! Help us, God, to strive for you!

WOMAN, woman, weeman,w

a few weeks ago i saw the cover of Time magazine..."The State of the American Woman" , i passed it off, but it has come back to me through a brother in law and i think its a good time to talk about womanhood, feminism, and most importantly biblical womanhood. now im no bible scholar or theologian, but i do like (well love) the word of God. im definitely not going to tackle this ginormous topic tonight, but i do hope in the coming weeks to shed some light on this subject.

To start off, the article in Time magazine was specifically about how women are more powerful, yet still unhappy. there was some talk about the feminist movement and how quickly it has progressed.

So what does the bible say about feminism? What is biblical womanhood? Why does it matter? What importance do gender roles have if any at all?

These will be coming up in the following weeks, i am hoping to get some dialogue going, so feel free to comment. In the meantime here is a verse to chew on that will hopefully kick off this topic.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Genesis 1:27

Glory of Christ in Words

Just to settle the thoughts of all of our readers, the fanny pack from last week is not from my personal collection. Personally it might have been a little controversial to put anything up with the of the princesses. I probably should have simply picked 1.
The subject at hand however is words and their global purpose for the believer.

What should our words be focussed at? Christ's glory. Its amazing how what is being felt comes from inside and works its way out. When your happy, your words are more cheery. When your mad, anger tends to flow. When your thankful to God you praise Colossians 3:17, Psalm 63:5.
Obviously there are times you will be upset, there just isn't a case that I know of that should keep a follower of Jesus Christ fighting for the right to use vulgar terms as a freedom. “Lighter” cussing may not be offensive to pop culture anymore or even terms in texting that abbreviate the same four letter words. But to the believer we shouldn't be as anxious to try converting these words to everyday speech. Instead we should weigh the cost and make sure that the positive glorify aspects of speech far out weigh the negatives. We should be way more focused about correcting our hearts than if its ok to cuss or not. Once both sides hearts are right then we won't even have to worry about whats worse, not cursing or not feeding the hungry. Hopefully at that point we will have both down a little better.

Glory of Christ through words is fixing your heart and mind on things above and putting behind the old self. This will work itself into speech Colossians 5

Thoughts or comments?

Heaven is Filling with Earth's Broken Lives

Here are some helpful and encouraging thoughts from J.R. Miller on these amazing verses and God's amazing love.


"This man welcomes sinners--and eats with them!" -Luke 15:2


"I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you!" - Matthew 21:31


"Christ is building His kingdom with earth's broken things. Men want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken--in building their kingdoms. But God is the God of the broken, the unsuccessful, of those who have failed.


Heaven is filling with earth's broken lives, and there is no 'bruised reed' which Christ cannot take and restore to glorious blessedness and beauty.


He can take the life crushed by pain or sorrow--and make it into a harp whose music shall be all praise. He can lift earth's saddest failure--up to heaven's glory!"

The Purpose and Centrality of the Local Church Part 5

The centrality of the church can be seen in that the biblical description of discipleship is centered in the church.

This is perhaps the most important function of the church. It is where we see biblical discipleship carried out. There are two things I want to focus on in this post to show the Bible's picture of church-centered discipleship.

1. The preaching of the Word in the church.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Does this mean that all a person needs is his Bible and he is all set in the Christian life? That might be the impression we would get if we didn't continue reading the passage.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word...^AM)"> reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. (2 Timothy 4:1-2)

The Word is not only meant to be meditated on in one's personal life but it is also meant to be preached in the church community. We see this happening in the book of Acts' description of the early church, "And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." (Acts 2:42)

2. The living of the Word in the church.

Local churches are not meant to be clubs for people who really like to talk about Jesus. They are about applying the teaching of Scripture to our lives. This is very well described by the author of Hebrews:

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

This is why Paul describes the local church as a body in 1 Corinthians 12. We work together for a common goal and we each have certain gifts and functions that add to that common mission.

Grace and Peace,
Stephen

The Wonderful Cross

I've been reading through John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and i love it when i get to the part where Christian is relieved of his burden when he is at the cross. It is so easy as Christian's to get bogged down with everyday life and activities, even church activities that we forget the mighty and awesome power of the cross. Im finding in my walk that can't and very much dislike days when i don't think about the cross and meditate on the work of christ at calvary. It truly does "bid me come and die so that I may live". In Christian's case (in the book) he looks at the cross and is eased of this burden that is on his back and shortly after this Christian sings this song:


Thus far did i come loaden with my sin,
Nor could aught ease the grief that i was in,
Till i came hither, What a place is this!
Must here be the beginning of my bliss?
Must here the burden fall from from off my back?
Must here teh strings that bound it to me, crack?
Blessed Cross! Blessed Sepulchre! Blessed rather be
The man that there was put to shame for me.


What beautiful words that have such great truths: Yes we are loaded with sin that cannot be eased or made to go away until we come to the cross and realize that we have a wonderful savior who has died so that we may live. Please let Christians song be encouraging and enriching, not even the words but the truths they speak, to you today. Be Blessed and Be God's

Grace and Peace

What are words?

Part 1 of the series I am attempting to do was Just a little Babel and at the end I posed a question.
I hope at the end of this one we can get some dialogue because I would like the discussion to help shape part 3.

There are many questions that run through my curious mind about different things, but one in-particular thing lately has nagged at me a bit longer than usual. Where do words get their meaning? How does a culture go from have one very vulgar term one day to 20 years later it is a term flippantly used by children. At what point does the Christ follower have to shut down certain speech even though its widely accepted or un accepted?

Recently I listened to a sermon by Matt Chandler (warning if you are from Australia this next story could be considered offensive) where he spoke about his trip to Australia where he was doing some preaching. He was in the middle of talking at a conference and needed to use the word fanny pack to explain a nerdy type of guy. The crowd immediately gasped and he then was faced with trying to figure out what the problem was. In the process though he continued to say the word that was offending the crowd. So at what point does culture define a word, and yet we are to have Colossians 3:8 in mind.

This question came from a few years of hearing the argument “You can say what ever words you want. Words only have the meaning that you give to them”. This mixed with a Derek Webb song titled “what matters more”, where he cusses. Comments were made about the song such as “I thought with all the controversy that he would have said something a lot worse than that” and “he's trying to make a point and needs the shock value. These blended together with the Tower of Babel and James 3:3-12 in my study.

In James 3 we see that the tongue is a desirable thing to tame and control (I'm not there yet and according to James it itsn't looking great for the future either). This means that the words you speak come with meaning. Jesus unpacks this even further. In Mark 15:17-18 Jesus says that the words that come from our mouth are generated by our hearts. So regardless of the actual words you speak it might not be a bad idea to search the source first and hen the dictionary.

So where does the Christian draw the line? Is it with Derek Webb like soft cussing? Or is it ok to use cussing or foul speech if you don't mean it in anger? Is it ok to use it to get attention? Is it ok to use any words to express anger?

I ask these questions with Colossians 3:17 in mind. Not to hold fast to tradition or relevance. But simply to ask why do we hold so tightly to a “freedom” to use “any” words that we desire if the impact could be someone stumbling. I have seen even pastors fight for their right to use light cussing to be relevant rather than to use another term which has the same meaning (which brings up another point for some. Why is it ok to use one word and not another if they mean the same), and not to be bogged down by legalism. But for what cause do we do this.

I have a few rules for discussion: 1. No cursing, if you feel the need to use inappropriate words then hold off on comments or email me. 2. If you don't want to comment on the blog you can facebook me or twitter. 3. look through the lens of Colossians 3:17.

I pray discussion is productive and glorifying to Christ. Part 3 will be the unpacking of this topic and words for the Glory of Christ.