Archives for October 2013

I’ve been blessed and hon­ored to have women occa­sion­ally come to me for coun­sel about lov­ing their hus­bands and chil­dren. I told my hus­band that some­times I feel like such a hyp­ocrite when answer­ing them because, while I am aware what Scrip­ture teaches about these things, I don’t always live it very well.

He smiles at me. Reas­sures me that the Lord is work­ing in my life, and that nobody has things as per­fectly worked out as they ought. True.

But, when some­one asks me about hon­or­ing her hus­band, and I tell her that God requires that we honor them, even when we disagree…and then five min­utes later I snap at my hus­band or prover­bially roll my eyes…I won­der what on earth am I doing? How can I know what I’m sup­posed to do and totally dis­re­gard it because I thought he was rude. Or I am tired and have no patience. Or I’m afraid of what he is ask­ing me to do.

What’s with that? What place do I have in teach­ing any­one any­thing when my life can be a total mess at times due to my sin?

For I do not under­stand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Romans 7:15

It’s frus­trat­ing.

So, do we stop exhort­ing each other to god­li­ness? As Paul might have said, “May it never be!”

How do we rec­on­cile these two great dif­fer­ences between know­ing what we ought to do and doing the com­plete oppo­site? I guess it comes down to repen­tance and mov­ing for­ward. To not stay­ing there in that place of eye rolling and frus­tra­tion. Maybe tomor­row will reflect a lit­tle more the work of Christ in our lives.

It’s impor­tant that we don’t remain par­a­lyzed by our sin, fear­ful of talk­ing in love with each other because we know we are hyp­o­crit­i­cal.  It’s the godly men and women in our lives who speak truth to us about liv­ing in a sanc­ti­fied way that bring about the change that we can see daily {yearly?}. It’s when we all clam up because we don’t want to have oth­ers point their knobby lit­tle fin­gers at us and accuse us of being pride­ful and judg­men­tal that we start to lose the battle.

Oh, and we really need to stop being pride­ful and judgmental.

Because some­one points us to Scrip­ture in the midst of bad deci­sions and a cling­ing to wrong think­ing doesn’t mean they are judg­ing us in that all too famil­iar, overused way. Our feel­ings might get hurt, sure. But isn’t that pride?

And we need to start being will­ing to have other women dis­ci­ple us in god­li­ness. Titus 2 exhorts the older women to teach the younger women…

 to be sober, to love their hus­bands, to love their chil­dren, To be dis­creet, chaste, keep­ers at home, good, obe­di­ent to their own hus­bands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

One of the things I try to remem­ber when some­one brings a word of crit­i­cism or cor­rec­tion to me, when I’m in the mid­dle of get­ting my hack­les up, is that there actu­ally might be a shred of truth in what they are say­ing.  Even if they aren’t quite spot on, usu­ally I can find some value in their words. As hard as it might be to admit. I have to con­fess that when the deliv­ery is less than gen­tle, I have a really hard time receiv­ing it. At least at first. When I am alone, con­sid­er­ing the words, lick­ing my wounds, I often can ana­lyze things bet­ter and see their point.

And my heart breaks. Doesn’t yours?

My prayer is that godly women will con­tinue to min­is­ter to one another, teach­ing things that are good. I fear that we have become a face­less soci­ety, throw­ing darts in a cryp­tic way on Face­book. Maybe it hap­pens on Twit­ter, too. I don’t know. I’m never really on there. Oth­ers might not know what you mean. But you do. And the intended audi­ence most likely does. But it isn’t done in love, with a heart to restore rela­tion­ships. It’s just too much work to do that. And it’s scary.

So we hide behind our key­boards and throw darts. We might get 100 likes for a “godly” quote we share. But is our moti­va­tion to zing some­one who obvi­ously isn’t liv­ing it?

Or on the flip side, Do we look for zings that just aren’t there? Are we ultra sen­si­tive to what oth­ers say, that even though they didn’t have us in mind at all, we find them guilty of think­ing ill of us? Of judg­ing us, when we were the fur­thest thing from their minds? Just maybe that is con­vic­tion from the Lord zing­ing us, prick­ing our con­science. Maybe. Can we con­sider that per­haps our friend didn’t grow horns and set out to offend us? And maybe con­sider those painful words as hav­ing a shred of truth in our lives also?

In Eccle­si­astes 7:10, we are told

 Do not say, “Why were the for­mer days bet­ter than these?” For you do not inquire wisely con­cern­ing this.

But, boy, some­times I think we had less occa­sion to offend when our many words to each other were lim­ited to real live con­ver­sa­tions. Please don’t let social media have such a place in your life as to destroy the gift of fel­low­ship with one another. It hap­pens all too often, it seems.

And, if you think I’m refer­ring to you: I’m not. I don’t have any­one in par­tic­u­lar in mind as I write this. I’ve not been offended. I am not har­bor­ing anger or frus­tra­tion towards anyone.

As Faith often tells peo­ple: God loves you. Go in peace. {She really does!}

I’ve linked up over at Sim­ply Help­ing Him and Cor­ner­stone Con­fes­sions.