A kick in the face!

This morning I was reading 1 Timothy chapter 5 for my devotions, and I came across a verse that just really got me going. Verses 20 and 21 in chapter 6 say, "Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning. I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favortism." Paul goes on to tell Timothy in verse 24 that "The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them." As I read this, I literally felt myself bloating up with selfrighteousness. I was reminded of how car buffs always describe hot rods as being able to go from 0 to 60 in 1.2 seconds; well I went from a state of supposed humility to a lofty selfrighteousness in no time flat! I began to think of all the people that I knew that were engaging in outright sins, and what this verse was telling me to do about it. In my mind I was running with the idea of bringing out all these sins on Sunday morning, just stoping short of telling the names of those invovled so that they could squirm in their filth. I know it sounds harsh but afterall isn't that what this verse was telling me to do??

After I finished the chapter I also read today's devotion in the book My Utmost For His Highest and in this mindset of judge, jurry, and executioner I read these words; "Be careful that you don't become a hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right with God before you worship Him yourself." The devotional went on to talk about how we are to lift our brothers and sisters up before God in prayer, being awakened to the mind of Christ concerning them. But what does it mean to have the mind of Christ toward those who are in sin? It means that we see them with His eyes, that we reach out to them with His arms, and that we love them with His heart.

It amazes me how much easier it is for us to point out the flaws of those we are looking down on, those who struggle with sins that we don't, or those who have not yet overcome what we have; instead of seeking the mind of God on their behalf. Perhaps before we become so quick to judge our brothers and sisters, before we decide to heap more guilt upon their already sagging shoulders, we should instead strive to lift up their burdens before God and in doing so serve to help lighten their load.

Dog Poop Gospel

It constantly amazes me the ways that God chooses to speak to me. Maybe it's my immature personality or the fact that I have a tendency to be very simple minded but I can't tell you how many times I have been watching Sponge Bob Squarepants and God opens my mind to some deep, or not so deep spiritual truth that is being portrayed right before my eyes. A few weeks ago, Oskar, the dog that we have had for over 6 years became very sick and past away, so now we have Hudson; a 13 week old Snouzer. Hudson is doing pretty well with potty training but sometimes he has accidents and as I sat at the computer doing some work the other day I began to smell one such accident. At first I thought maybe the dog had simply farted because he was setting on my lap at the time and has a tendency to do that when he's comfortable, this habit of his is somewhat annoying. I realized however, as I continued to smell that distinct smell that it's source was probably more than just a simple passing of some puppy gas. When I went to investigate, sure enough I found Hudson's little gift to me on the living room floor. After some time with the carpet cleaner, and some discipline for the dog I went back to work, but for some reason the smell did not go away. I thought maybe he had deposited some more goodies somewhere else in the house, but no matter how hard I looked I could not find anything else that would warrant the smell that was invading my nose. It was past time for me to be up at the church, so I abandoned my search and hopped in the car only to find that the smell was in the car as well! You may have suspected by now, as I did that if the smell had followed me from the house to the car that maybe I should stop looking for it's source in my surroundings and instead turn my eyes on my person. Sure enough, when I did this I found that somehow Hudson had left some of his goodness in a big glob right on my knee, did I mention I was wearing my new jeans? As gross as it may sound, instead of going inside to change my jeans, I just went on up to the church and did my best to wash the mess off. After scrubbing my jeans long enough for the goodness not to be visible any longer, I set to work in my office, however I quickly found out that even though there was no longer a visible mess on my knee, the smell was still very much hanging around.
As I thought about this incident, it became very clear to me how many times this happens to us in a spiritual sense. We realize that something somewhere stinks in our lives and so we do our best to get rid of it. We do good things, we try and be a good person, we recycle and yet no matter how hard we try, something still stinks. This even happens to us as Christians. We know we are forgiven, and we know that Christ is our Savior but at the same time the smell still lingers! Paul talks all through out the book of Colossians to a group of Christians about how they need to stop living the way they did before they came to Christ. As of coarse you know, the only way for me to stop smelling like poop on that fateful day was to get some clean jeans, and spiritually speaking The only way to be truly cleansed is to let go of who we were before, and to dive head first into who God wants us to be. I wonder how God will speak to you today if you are open, it just may be through an unexpected deposit on your new jeans.

The idea behind relevance

As you can probably tell from the title of this blog, the idea of relevance has been on my mind a lot lately, or more importantly are we relevant? Don't get me wrong, we are extremely busy, busy to the point that our days are full to the brim and we continuously wonder why there aren't more hours in the day. What I wonder though is how often are the things we are filling our days with actually relevant to what we are here for?
Each of us, if we claim to be a follower of Christ have been given a commission to go into the world and make disciples. Christ has bestowed on us the responsibility to be ambassadors for him, to basically be Him to a world that is lost and dying. Jesus describes His followers as being salt and light, yet how well are we flavoring the world around us, or shining light in the darkened places? If you look at the cultural trends having to do with our society and the generation at hand, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that we are missing something somewhere, and I can't help but think that it's because Christians have portrayed the message that Christ is no longer relevant. We love to preach loudly to anyone who will listen the evils of abortion and gay marriage, but then we don't love those around us. Maybe our message has become irrelevant because we are yelling too loudly, and loving to sparingly. Now don't get me wrong, sin is still sin and we should stand up for what we believe, however Jesus was relevant to those he spoke to because He offered the down and outs something that no one else would, He loved them.
I wonder if we should stop trying to play the part of the Holy Spirit, stop trying to guilt people into repentance of their sins, and just start loving them because Christ loved them. I think that it's when we strive to do this that we will find our relevance once again, and people will actually begin to see Jesus.