These are some of the most convicting words I have read in a long time. Read them and receive them with humility, grace, brokenness, and godly fear. I hope they will mean as much to you as they have with me this Monday morning.
"O Lord, take your plow to my fallow ground; let Your blade dig down to the soil of my soul. For I've become dry and dusty; and Lord there must be richer earth, lying below..."
From the crucible of grace,
Steve
Col. 1:9-14
by Richard Baxter - from "The Reformed Pastor"
"Take heed to yourselves, lest you live in those sins which you preach against in others, and lest you be guilty of that which daily you condemn. Will you make it your work to magnify God, and, when you have done, dishonor him as much as others? Will you proclaim Christ’s governing power, and yet contemn it, and rebel yourselves? Will you preach his laws, and willfully break them? If sin be evil, why do you live in it if it be not, why do you dissuade men from it? If it be dangerous, how dare you venture on it? if it be not, why do you tell men so? If God’s threatenings be true, why do you not fear them? if they be false, why do you needlessly trouble men, with them, and put them into such frights without a cause?
Do you ‘know the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death," and yet will you do them? ‘Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery,’ or be drunk, or covetous, art thou such thyself ‘Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonorest thou God ‘ What! shall the same tongue speak evil that speakest against evil? Shall those lips censure, and slander, and backbite your neighbor, that cry down these and the like things in others?
than to overcome it."
4 comments:
I have found this principle to be true...I have also found that when you are called to preach or teach and you obey...very often you will be personally tested in the very area you have recently preached on or taught in. Be ready...it's coming.
I was asked to teach a 12 week summer sunday school class this past year on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I found myself confronted with a need to exercise and trust the gifts given to me weekly, often times on something from a recent class. It was certainly a great opportunity for growth...and to learn a lot about where my walk personally stood in relation to the unwavering Word of God.
Yes, BE WARY my brothers and sisters...be sure that you are yourself practicing what you preach and that you are resolved to stand when you are tested. Be open to the Potter's hands...and His chastening as necessary. :D
"O brethren! it is easier to chide at sin, than to overcome it." How this statement rings true! I have something I share with those I counsel, "I don’t want to spend our time together commiserating with you on the wretchedness of your sin unless we get to rejoice together at your repentance!" I often have to remind myself that self-pity is poison and no substitute for repentance. How desperately we need the His truth and grace daily.
Y'all
The key scripture for me when I teach is this,
Is. 66: 2
2 All these things my hand has made,
and so all these things came to be,
declares the Lord.
But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.
The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Is 66:2). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
amen!
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