“Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect
and complete, lacking nothing.” —James 1:4
“Not only must our relationship to God be right, but the
outward expression of that relationship must also be right. Ultimately, God
will allow nothing to escape; every detail of our lives is under His scrutiny.
God will bring us back in countless ways to the same point over and over again.
And He never tires of bringing us back to that one point until we learn the
lesson, because His purpose is to produce the finished product. It may be a
problem arising from our impulsive nature, but again and again, with the most
persistent patience, God has brought us back to that one particular point. Or
the problem may be our idle and wandering thinking, or our independent nature
and self-interest. Through this process, God is trying to impress upon us the
one thing that is not entirely right in our lives. […] Beware of becoming careless over the small
details of life and saying, “Oh, that will have to do for now.” Whatever it may
be, God will point it out with persistence until we become entirely His.”
CHAMBERS
There was a story I heard once about a new pastor who
preached the same sermon for several weeks in a row. When asked by the church leaders why he did
that, he said “I am going to preach that sermon until I see that the church is
doing what I am preaching about.” We
have a propensity to listen attentively to a sermon .. take notes .. and then
immediately forget what we heard. (James 1:23-25) “Anyone who listens to
the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in
a mirror and, after looking at himself,
goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks
intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not
forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they
do.” When you listen to a sermon .. when
you read the Word of God .. when you worship … the Spirit of God will speak to
your heart. We need to stop treating the
pastor’s sermon like a lecture in a classroom.
The sermon is more than words or opinions, or should be, they should be
words prompted by the spirit and grounded in scripture .. life changing .. convicting … Paul said
that when you hear or read the Word of God there are 5 purposes “… useful for (1) teaching, (2)rebuking, (3)correcting
and (4) training in righteousness, (5) so that the servant of God may be
thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
(2 Timothy 3:16-17)
When I was in the Army, I would participate in what we
called “in ranks inspections”. This is
where the soldiers would stand in formation and I would examine each one …
uniform .. haircut .. shave … we had regulations for everything. Sometimes I would ask “Do you know why you
shine your boots?” Most often they would just look at me like “Duh! So I can pass this inspection!” Respectfully
of course. And I would then tell them
.. to protect the leather .. not to make
them shiny. Boots are very important for
a soldier. So my point is this. We can forget why we need to go to
church. It can become, “That’s what we
do on Sunday.” It has much more purpose
than giving us another place to be in our busy schedule. It is critical to our spiritual health and
walk. And when we go, we should not
treat is like the man looking in the mirror. Think about it. ELGIN
Bondye Beni Ou (God Bless You)
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