October 01, 2009
Age Appropriate
Our preacher can best be described as an unpaid preaching-elder. Each week his sermons just get better and better. His messages have had a powerful impact on me, but I’m also seeing folks in their 70s and 80s leaving the worship service with a tear in their eye and a priced heart. It’s somewhat startling to see seasoned believers, both in faith and years, being convicted of sin. I know this sounds naïve, but I’ve always thought that our elders have a handle on Scripture and they don’t easily fall into temptation. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the elderly being like the rest of us and needing to daily repent and confess…
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Our deeds, accomplishments, and wisdom are nothing compared to those of the perfect man. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (I John 1:7) In Christ our sins are cleansed from us and we are made righteous, but that is not by our own behavior. It is by His. We all know this, but with the Christian belief there seems to come a need to feel holy, as if we have been made holy in our actions and thoughts. From the many calls in the Word to righteous behavior, we allow ourselves to be emotionally tricked into thinking we can actually be holy in heart and action. But although we can produce many genuinely good works, we remain wonderfully proficient at making gaffes and failing to understand the true heights perfectly righteous behavior towards all details around us would reach.
-----Certainly God could have made perfect righteousness work in our deeds by greatly overwhelming us with the indwelling of His Spirit such that never another distorted thought or misdirected action would occur. But He did not. He gave us a call to godly behavior and only a portion of His Spirit so that our holiness should reside in our faith in His life, and that our genuineness would be evidenced by our effort to ascend the scale of higher behavior more than by the height upon it we have reached.
-----I believe His call for us to not think too highly of ourselves (Rom 12:3) is one of the more important elements of healthy fellowship. For if we recognize that our ascent upon the scale of behavior is a lifetime effort, we would also recognize the unreachable height of the scale, and therefore would more easily recognize our need to be influences in the lives of each other. By this our respect for the greatness of complete righteousness would be maintained, and the mistake of perceiving certain others as iconic leaders would be diminished.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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