Tag: understanding

A Gospel That Just May Confuse Us

 

My people have been lost sheep.
      Their shepherds have led them astray
      and turned them loose in the mountains.
   They have lost their way
      and can’t remember how to get back to the sheepfold.                                                  

                                                                                      Jer. 50:6

 

Christians who wander away, or led away away, is a frequent issue with the Lord.  It’s hard to watch someone you love go in a way that brings them pain and destruction.  It hurts doubly when they get turned in the wrong direction.  Jeremiah suggests that there is a personal disobedience as well as a pastoral influence from a shepherd.

Influence from confused shepherds runs rampant through the flock of the Church.  Voices speak and men posture themselves to lure the sheep.  Programs are always percolating and brought out at an opportune time to develop and maintain a momentum and to give the sense of direction and purpose.  This sounds confusing but its not.

The prophet sees and perceives.  There is grief and pain in his words.  He witnesses of a coming judgement.  In our time, the necessity of being ‘pastored‘ has been a less of an issue because of the Holy Spirit’s contact with the believer.  We have the Spirit and His presence.  Now we can turn towards a superintending understanding of the functioning of the Holy Spirit.  But the Holy Spirit doesn’t need our pathetic attempts at pointing out our crudeness and foolishness at the situation.

Jesus Christ loves us, and comes at us through the self-generated issues that could move us to a less then a desirable condition.  But our “pastor” is Jesus, He pastors us through our confusion and sin.  His heart is looking to us.  We are to come to Him, not through a man, but through the presence of God, that envelopes us and adjusts our understanding.

We cannot pretend anymore that our issues of redemption and healing can be understood through anyone else but through the direction of our Lord except Jesus. We do not think that our intervention of a pastor, or healer will bring us any closer.  We connect through Jesus.  He has made himself the only connection of God and myself.

We dare not trust ourselves when it comes at us through so much.  He heals and strengthens through His active and present awareness of us.  We must turn from ‘deceptive noise’ and grab ahold of the promises of an authoritative voice. He rules over us with authority, and a loving voice of guidance.  He comes to us in a very real and definite way.  For He is “one on one” to us in a real recognition to us in our personal connection to the Father.

This needs to become our way that we connect.  We rest in His plan.  Nothing else will placate.  Jesus advances Himself to becoming our Lord and Saviour. We turn to Him to save us, and no one else.

A Question About Discernment and Discipline

Question: 

“What if the “desire to excel” isn’t the motivation in allowing sinners into the church? We invite our unsaved friends (worldlings) to church and hope they repent. Sometimes that takes a long time! Is this intervening or being missional? I understand your point that Believers aren’t to live in continual sin but am foggy about what we do with the sin saturated culture around us. Do we draw away or let them draw near?”

My Response:

“Great question/comment.  Jesus made it clear, with the salt & light analogy that we will be distinctive and visible. We need to learn to accentuate and use that distinctiveness, with talent and forethought. All available effort should be used.

The issue of believers in habitual, continual sin should be approached as ‘church discipline’. This falls on people who we call pastors and elders. 1 Cor. 5 gives this oversight a template to follow. It is a sticky thing to judge someone. When we have to, we don’t want to. (Unless the person is a ‘control freak’.)

The issue of sin in the church is interesting. To have water outside a boat is a good thing, but to have water in the boat is decidedly worse. We are to preserve our distinctiveness, without diminishing our witness. It’s like we are a flock of lambs living in a pigpen. By their very nature the are different. One has a sheep nature, the other a pig’s. There will be at times confusion. But the sheep don’t belong.

To sum it up, there is church discipline for believers, that really needs to be in place. But we are missional people. The world is very much like a pigpen. But I say, let them come in and let the Holy Spirit touch them.”

*******

This was a recent post and follow-up comment for “Through the Sheep Dip”, posted on September 28, 2010.  The link is located at:  https://brokenbelievers.com/2010/09/28/through-the-sheep-dip/

Sunday Funnies: It’s a Dog’s Life!

Famous Dog Quotes

  • “Some days you’re the dog; some days you’re the hydrant.” — Unknown
  • “Whoever said you can’t buy happiness forgot about puppies.” — Gene Hill
  • “In dog years, I’m dead.” — Unknown
  • “Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.” — Dave Barry
  • “Outside of a dog, a book is probably man’s best friend; inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx
  • “To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.” — Aldous Huxley
  • “A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.” — Robert Benchley
  • “Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that’s how dogs spend their lives.” — Sue Murphy
  • “I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.” — August Strindberg
  • “No animal should ever jump up on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.” — Fran Lebowitz
  • “I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.” — Rita Rudner
  • “My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That’s almost $7.00 in dog money.” — Joe Weinstein
  • “If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.” — James Thurber
  • “You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.” — Nora Ephron
  • “Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.” — Ann Landers
  • “Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.” — Robert A. Heinlein
  • “In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.” — Dereke Bruce, Taipei, Taiwan
  • “Of all the things I miss from veterinary practice, puppy breath is one of the most fond memories!” — Dr. Tom Cat
  • “There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.” — Ben Williams
  • “When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.” — Edward Abbey
  • “Cat’s motto: No matter what you’ve done wrong, always try to make it look like the dog did it.” — Unknown
  • “Money will buy you a pretty good dog, but it won’t buy the wag of his tail.” — Unknown
  • “No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.” — Christopher Morley
  • “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” — Josh Billings
  • “Man is a dog’s idea of what God should be.” — Holbrook Jackson
  • “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” — Andrew A. Rooney
  • “He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.” — Unknown
  • “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.” — Mark Twain
  • “Things that upset a terrier may pass virtually unnoticed by a Great Dane.” — Smiley Blanton
  • “I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.” — John Steinbeck
  • “Dogs love us,but they are very observant animals. I’m sure they notice that we keep the best food for ourselves.” — Markoff Chaney
  •  “Ever consider what they must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul — chicken, pork,  half a cow. They must think we’re the greatest hunters on earth!” — Anne Tyler

Taken from:  http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2fy14Z/web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/d/r/dryfoo/www/Funny-pages/handy-latin.html

When You Lose [Faith]

…”calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Luke 7:19

 

Here we have John the Baptist locked away in Herod’s prison.  We read of his wavering, but that shouldn’t alarm us.  There has always been difficulties for those who follow without diluting their love for Jesus.  It’s very likely that John had preconceptions about Jesus’ ministry.  But that certainly doesn’t mean he was apostate or backslidden.  He still believed, as he looked out through the bars.

We walk in a greater light and have surer promises that John did.  And in that light we still have our difficult moments.  We can falter and shake and doubt.  And John only had a 100th of understanding that we have.  Often we are amazed by another’s confusion and struggles, it is so clear to us that they are falling short.  It is frustrating.  Moses once went ballistic, beat his rod on a rock and had some choice words.  His anger spilled all over him and made a mess.  We read of his provocation, and miss our own faults, sins and weaknesses. 

We need to understand the depth of our own depravity.  There are those who have proceeded us, who have had their moments of despondency and doubt.  We see them, as it were, from a distance and criticize and challenge what we see.  Noah’s drunkenness and Lot’s vacillation.  The flakiness of Samson, Peter’s denial and Mark’s timidity, and much more.

Today, let us resolve to be gentle with each other. “For we all stumble in many ways”, James 3:2.