kalliko 88, you are in my prayers and God will surely help you find and be fulfilled with true love someday soon… keep hanging and waiting on Him for the right time!

dependant, as I said before, I’ll say again: you are much loved in the Lord and I do pray everyday for your work in the villages of West Africa.

Steve, you hit the nail right on the head with “Like Jesus we offend others by handing them the truth about Christ…” Why then have you misunderstood me as someone who is trying to be perfect for Jesus?

Anyone that has ever had a friend tell them the truth rather than lie to them to keep the friendship “friendly”, understands telling someone something negitive in good honest truthful love.

Would it have been better for Jesus to keep the peace by not showing these evil men their sin as well as their errant hearts? Thereby guaranteeing their journey to a lost eternal destiny?

It is the same for us. Like Jesus we offend others by handing them the truth about Christ. Just remember our encounter with Sakoieta and how offended he was at my handing him the Truth. If I didn’t love my fellow man and didn’t care whether they stayed in a lost condition, I could smooth over the truth and make them feel better or in love, tell them their errant ways.

Just my thoughts about Matthew 12:34-35.

Steve

I am not married; neither do I understand what it feels like when someone whom you took the marriage vows with decides to walk out on you because somehow that other half feels that you don’t fit into them. The only knowledge I have is from my past experience in a dating relationship where he walked out on me not because of faith but because of the way I ate my donut :) I couldn’t understand it as you don’t now but I share your moments now and I am praying for you. I hope God honors our prayers.
Mine seems a bit trivial (and I’m not going to claim being right and him wrong here and all the other stuff ladies blame guys for) but I think I feel how you feel: being unable to totally show your true heart and desire to someone you love and believe that will be with you forever and try to understand that if you speak or eat or act in someway its linked to an inner desire to be accepted first as you are and then maybe hope that there will be a form of effect on the other half’s life and vice versa.
I haven’t tried to equate the matter of a donut here with issues of faith but just trying to share in your moments.

Love…

DMG sez:
I’m not so sure about “…he spoke the truth in love…”
“Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things?…“An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign… this wicked generation.” Matt 12:34- 45. Are these words of love?

Ummmm…trick question ;-)

I’d say that unless you are willing to accuse Jesus of sinning, breaking the two ‘greatest’ commandments, he most assuredly (and by definition) was motivated by the Father’s love. See 1 John 4:7 and surrounding verses.

“God is love”…”if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father”…”I and the Father are one”…
(scratching my head at this one, DMG)

If they weren’t ‘words of love’, what would you presume were indeed the motives in the sinless heart of our Lord? Just a wee little hatred for these people?

Curious where you were going with this one…

And it scares me. Yesterday was our fifteenth anniversary. Instead of celebrating I’m watching him pack in preparations for moving out and us separating. And it’s primarily because I believe and he doesn’t. Whenever he used to say something hurtful about my faith, I couldn’t say anything, except maybe to quietly say ‘That’s not what my faith is to me.’ It scares me to see him going out there with no faith. It scares me to see anyone with no faith. Like C.S. Lewis said, there are no such things as mortals. We were all made for eternal life. The difference is some of us will come to eternal joy, and the rest to eternal damnation. And knowing that just leaves me sad and scared.

I wish I was better at making people understand that, and to believe how intensely I feel. But I can’t make them do anything. I can only try to give them a reason to change and pray it works.

They are to a wise man….

There is imminent danger for Christians to blaspheme during the trial of faith or when persecuted for their faith as in “And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities.” (Acts 26:11)

Hence we are told to “Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked. (1Tim 1:19, 20)

And Mart, thanks for another convicting post but I’m not so sure about “…he spoke the truth in love…”
“Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things?…“An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign… this wicked generation.” Matt 12:34- 45. Are these words of love?

Personally, it doesn’t really bother me as a follower of Christ when the unbelieving world blasphemes God in ignorance without knowing Christ. There is still hope and forgiveness for them.

Ex: both Jesus and Stephen prayed to God to forgive those who were killing them because those people did not understand what they were doing.

However, “all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of man it shall be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against (falsely accuses) the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world and neither in the world to come.” Matt 12: 31-32

Therefore, as a follower of Christ I am really careful about presumptuous sins i.e. to sin willfully or consciously, not bother about the consequences and refuse to confess and forsake my sin which is blasphemy (Num 15:30) against the Holy Spirit… which will not be forgiven but will surely lead to death. (1 John 5:16)

OT Ex: “However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die.” 2 Sam 12: 14

NT Ex: Ananias and Sapphira

Dear Lord, please “Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then shall I be blameless, and I shall be innocent and clear of great transgression.” I pray and ask this in Jesus’ name. Ps 19: 13

That is what is so amazing to me. God knew!!!YET. I believe we blaspheme the name of God much more in our treatment of mankind. What we do or say to or about other human beings. God loved humanity so much He gave His only Son for it. He does not need us to condemn but to guide others to Him and His amazing grace. So we blasphemy God when we say words that are not encouraging and used to build up one another speaking the truth in love.