This Weeks IOTW Quote is:

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="139" caption="In Other Words Tuesday"][/caption]

“Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective.”

Rob Bell

 ¹ Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. ² By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, ³ and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.
⁴ You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. ⁵ They are of the world. Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. ⁶ We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:1-6, New King James Version)

I don’t claim to be perfect and if I do, run, but  also say a prayer for me, but run.

From,”The Next Step”, the writer, Tami, shared,

“Plus, using the tag “Christian” causes us to be complacent, giving us a false sense of security, turning off our discerning filter. We think if it’s “Christian,” it’s okay for us to participate in which is not always true.”

As I read that, it was like all the warning bells that I try to pay attention to when I’m out and about the world, or what I read, what I watch, and particularly just in my own activites, all came together into one word: discernment.

Discernment.

I looked up the word via audioenglish.net and although the cold I have, has my ears rather stopped up, what it broke discernment down was easy to read:

DISCERNMENT (noun)
  The noun DISCERNMENT has 5 senses:

1. the cognitive condition of someone who understands
2. delicate discrimination (especially of aesthetic values)
3. perception of that which is obscure
4. the mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations
5. the trait of judging wisely and objectively

The last explantation is pretty interesting,”5. the trait of judging wisely and objectively“. I say this is interesting, because how often, once we live services at church, we carry home what we have listen to attentively at church?

Pretty good?

How about the next day? Monday morning?

Kinda shaky ground. How about Tuesday? Okay, now we are going on to the rest of the week here?

One last question, how about when we get into our cars, or come home? What do we watch, read, say, do?

Okay, take a deep breath, don’t worry, no finger pointing, but truthfully, not to me or anyone else, this is just for yourself, for myself, between ourselves and our Father in Heaven-How many times do we loosely use the word “Christian” like we loosely use our names?

What? You mean we guard our names more than we guard using the word “Christian”?

You wouldn’t want your name associated with a bad reputation do you? Neither do I, but it’s interesting how we are quick to say that we are “Christians” yet if people just look at our lives, are they really going to see the “Christ” in “Christian” or do we expect that they see that just because we have a bumper sticker, maybe wear something around our neck, or hanging from our dashboard.

Yes, going to go there…but didn’t the Pharisees do the same thing only to be told,”   
³⁷ And as He spoke, a certain Pharisee asked Him to dine with him. So He went in and sat down to eat. ³⁸ When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that He had not first washed before dinner.
³⁹ Then the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness. ⁴⁰ Foolish ones! Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? ⁴¹ But rather give alms of such things as you have; then indeed all things are clean to you.
⁴² “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass by justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. ⁴³ Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. ⁴⁴ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like graves which are not seen, and the men who walk over them are not aware of them.”
(Luke 11:37-44, New King James Version)

Ouch. Ouch and throwing in an extra ouch, but one could imagine how the Pharisee must have felt, but imagine what it was like for our Father’s Son to walk into the temple, and hearing “buy this and you will be saved”, “buy buy buy”.

From the article, “Beware the Leaven” the author there shares,

“…..the Pharisees further developed this Biblical practice of exchanging money for sacrifice to include profiteering and thievery. The way they stole from God’s people was by examining the sacrifices the people brought and pronouncing them “defective.”

They then directed the worshipper to buy pre-approved livestock from one of their associate moneychangers at an inflated price. Because the priests had total control, the people had no choice but to obey. The Pharisees were lords over God’s people and were accountable to no one. Everyone else, however, was accountable to them.

In essence, the Pharisee said, “Your worship, even though it is your best, is just not good enough! Our God requires the best. We, the Pharisees, know what He wants and we have provided it here for you. Your sacrifice is not quite up to God’s high standards, but God has given us light on the matter and we have here just the right kind of sacrifices to make sure that God gets what is due Him. Many today do not know how to bring a proper sacrifice to God. However, we do! Learn of us! Praise God that He has provided!”

God addressed this tradition with violence. The Lord Jesus took a whip to the moneychangers, overturned the tables and generally created mayhem in dealing with these thieves. He then did further violence to their tradition by inviting the lame and blind and healing them.

Lame people were, of course, not allowed in the temple. Does the thought of the Evangelical Church down the street being full of people with body piercing and tattoos offend you? It used to offend me, but these are just the sorts that Jesus invited into the temple to heal. There is no better place for sinners than in God’s presence. He will heal them.”

The worse thing that can possible happen is when His Word and just being a Christian is used for self-promotion. I honestly do cringe, when I hear that unless this is done, and yes, that’s great, but this is a better way, that’s not doing our Father’s work, that’s self-promotion.

It’s not about us. It’s never been about us and the truth is that it will never be about us. It’s not about what WE get, or should get or will get. It’s only and will only be about one: our Heavenly Father. No one else.

From Woe to the Pharisees, this lesson is driven hard that even today, in the 21st Century, we aren’t safe from Jesus’s rebuke and as much as we try to convince ourselves we won’t the truth is if we are doing any of the following, it’s not following our Father, but ourselves:

We face Jesus’ sharp rebuke today, too, when we:

• Are more concerned with how we look to other people than how we look to God,
• Fail to show mercy to the poor,
• Fail to tithe,
• Fail to do justice,
• Have hearts motivated by greed, or
• Seek positions where we will be acclaimed.

Unless the heart is truly being motivated by service to Him, why do we call ourselves Christians? Because everyone else does it, so should we?

What about the part of sacrifice, redemption and sin? As much as we try to be feel good, the truth is that when we are sharing His Word, we can’t escape the ultimate fact that we are all sinners who have ALL fallen from grace and no one is not exempt.

Being a follower of Christ isn’t for the weak hearted or those seeking an easy life, for when we pick up our crosses to follow Him, there will come a time He might say, “Nice, now get out of the boat and walk on water”, and what are we going to do then, “Say uhm-no, that’s okay, I’m pretty comfy here”.

He doesn’t serve us. We serve Him and nor do we serve ourselves. It’s about Him.

A few weeks ago, my husband called to share how he was heading home and someone driving way over the speed limit, came riding up behind him, and rather than slow down, impatiently passed him by, waiving concerns for safety for self, for him, or other drivers. He called me to tell me at first he was upset, but then ended up praying for the person who passed him up and who didn’t even wave an apology or anything, but sped up and went even faster.

Why did he decided to end up praying for that person?

They had a bumper sticker from our church on their bumper.

You can bet we’re more careful pulling out of our church parking lot every Sunday in case they decided to do a repeat.

You, me, all of our are P.R. agents not for well, you or me, but for our Heavenly Father and our actions when we think people aren’t looking not only counts far higher but does’t it show a little sense of arrogance to assume that if we believe our Heavenly Father is all-knowing and all-seeing that He doesn’t see what we are doing when we dont’ think anyone is looking, or what we are typing on our phones, on Facebook, Twitter or in our emails.

More than anything, isn’t it showing a little arrogance that HE doesn’t know our hearts better than we know our own hearts so as much as we try to tell ourselves, this is really for and to Him, if it isn’t….think He wouldn’t know it?

Reading Matthew 1:6-18, it’s interesting that Jesus starts off with a warning how important our motives matter by letting us know that we shouldn’t perform “godly acts” for the sake of performance or bringing attention to yourself because you might as well draw a curtain around yourself and pull up a mirror, because it doesn’t bring attention to our Father…it’s bringing attention to ourself.

If you read Matthew 5:16, Jesus says instead that ,”¹⁶ Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Not to the cause you are supporting, or to yourself or to anything else, but who, Our Father in Heaven”.

Remember, we no longer belong to this world or to ourselves-We gave it all up when we choose to follow our Heavenly Father and for good or bad in this world-this world is just temporary and we are really all small ants in a much bigger picture that isn’t about us or will be about us when we go to Heaven. It’s only about and for Him: The Heavenly Father,

I thank You for being the Alpha and the Omega of all things; The Father, The Creator; You are and will always be everything and I am just humble to be Your daughter, Your servant, Your creation. I have NO ONE but You to thank for that.

Lord, keep this worthless servant humble, refine and mold my heart, my life to fit You and Your will and never mine. It’s not about what I want, its about what You want, and pray that You give this fearful servant, strength and courage to always follow You and Your Word and not what I decide, but in Your Will.

In Your Glorious Name, I pray. Amen

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