Had a great service Sunday.
Here are some of the highlights
The church should be the most accepting place on the planet, because God accepted us, when we were dirty and disgusting. We should accept the worst of people, no matter if you’ve been in prostitution, drug and alcohol addiction, murder, greed, lust, multiple marriages. God wants to use you no matter what you’ve done.
I want you to judge others as you would have them judge you.
If you knew it was coming back on you, how would you judge the people around you? Because I know when God judges me, I want mercy. I want a judge who says I forgive you, I’ll help you, I wanna love you and care for you, a Judge that’s patient. And praise God we have that, one who never gives up, leads no matter how many times we get it wrong, who died on the cross when we deserved Hell.
And what the passage is saying is when you confront you go with compassion, the compassion that you would want. A compassion that says there’s probably something that caused them to be screwed up there, some things we don’t know. Some issues we haven’t factored in, another side to the story. Some insecurities there, some lack of knowledge, so let’s be patient and kind, not jump to conclusions. And let’s go trying to help, out of compassion, not out of anger or annoyance.
When I see something in you that causes me to wanna form an opinion about you, write you off, talk to others about you, confront you, as soon as I feel that I should immediately think, I wonder what God wants to deal with in my life.
And what this passage is saying is the enemy lies and he puts things in your head and isn’t your memory amazing when it comes to all the reasons someone is wrong, all the things they’ve done, how selfish they are, how sinful, how, you feel in the blank. And His point is because we have an enemy, you need to look at yourself first and make sure your motivation is right. That your desire is for them to love God, nothing else.
And isn’t it true that much of our culture has written the church off as hypocrites? You see, its not that culture doesn’t recognize they have a speck in their eye, it’s that, they have seen an unwillingness on our part to deal with the plank in our own. And we justify our position by saying that God doesn’t approve and you know what you’re right, but because we won’t first look in the mirror, we lose our leverage with the people who need to be addressed.
You see, you know you have issues, insecurities, fears, sins that you struggle with and that sometimes you’re on a path of self destruction. And in fact when you see an issue, the only reason you can recognize it, is because you’ve either had it or you have it now. And so simply coming at me and telling me about the issues you see, when I see issues far worse in you, doesn’t help me. And if anything you make it worse, because its hard to listen to you, because I realize that you lack the same self awareness that you accuse me of. So why should I listen to you, I mean I’m not saying that I don’t have a speck of dust in my eye, but oh my god have you looked in the mirror lately. You see the strange thing about the gospels is that the apostles and Jesus were some of the most confrontational people that ever lived, but they were rarely, if ever accused of being hypocrites, have you noticed that?
You can’t expect someone to listen to you, when you have gapping sin in your life. That’s why some of you kids aren’t listening to you.
And some of you God is calling you to confront and you’re not out of fear. But if someone was about to fall off cliffe, or your child about to run across street would you let them, would you say I’ll pray about it, get advice. Or would you go out there. And yeah it can be uncomfortable but you gotta.
If you keep throwing out bible says don’t, would you just stop for a second. Because perhaps one of those people are coming to you because they have been exactly where you are and they know exactly where you’re headed and they love you too much to leave you alone. And if you continue to throw up the smoke screen don’t judge me, you will never listen and never learn, because you’re hiding behind something that’s not in the scriptures, that’s not a part of Christianity, its just something you’ve learned so you can shield yourself from truth God wants you see. Proverbs 15:32.
