music :: worship :: life
God gave us two ears, but only one mouth. Many try to make up for this deficiency by talking out of both sides of it.
Several times I’ve seen a sign in front of a church saying, “I will make you fishers of men. You catch ‘em; I’ll clean ‘em.” A recent song by Chris Rice says, “there’s a world out there that we’ve left behind, full of souls as important as yours and mine.” Are we screening candidates for salvation?
This paraphrase of the gospel illustrates that candidates for salvation don’t need to be good Christians to begin with. What kind of people are we reaching out to in order to promote the message of Christ?
How do you measure the value of an individual’s soul?
Is your soul more important because you are prosperous and blessed with wealth? Or is your soul more important because you are poor and untainted by greed?
Is your soul more important because you are physically attractive and blessed with good looks and charm? Or is your soul more important you are not physically attractive and are uncorrupted by vanity?
Is your soul more important because you’re smarter, or because you’re simpler?
Is your soul more important because you’re life is filled with activity, or because your life is filled with quiet and contemplation?
Is your soul more important because you’re older, or younger?
What are the criteria by which we judge potential candidates for salvation? Are we looking for people who really need God in their lives? Are we looking for people in need of transformation and sanctification? Or are we looking for people who are already living good wholesome lives to begin with? Are we just looking for a few more luke-warm Christians to fill the pews?
To paraphrase another old slogan from the Vietnam era, “Let’s save ‘em all. Let God sort ‘em out.”
Am I prescreening candidates for salvation, or am I willing to let God make the choice?
Doing right is not always easy, but doing right is always right.
—Betty Claiborne, arrested in 1963 for trying to integrate a public pool. Pardoned today by Louisiana governor in celebration of Martin Luther King Day.
There are those who scale the mountain of what-has-been-done-before, and add another stone to the peak. Then there are those who launch themselves from the summit.
Breeding a generation that believes anything worth communicating ought to be able to be said in five words or less. Unfortunately that leaves out almost everything.
Breeding a generation that cannot communicate in complete sentences, and sequential paragraphs.
It comes to this: If you can only communicate in sound-bytes you are no better off than a dog.
Fetch.
Lie down.
Roll over.
Play dead….
I saw a bumper sticker that said “Fish Tremble at the Sound of my Name.”
What if you had a bumper sticker that said, “Satan trembles at the sound of my name”? Would that be awesome if it was true?
But look at your life. How much of a difference are you making with your actions? Are you really interfering with Satan’s plans, or does what you’re doing affect him at all?
[powered by WordPress.]
47 queries. 0.825 seconds
