Good Tuesday morning! I'm getting that Outlook thing going again on my PC. You never know when I might need a backup method of sending out e-mail devotionals! :-) A lovely morning has dawned today. The air is cool, the cat is parked on his towel, and I'm up and writing the devotional; praise God!
How often do you find yourself butting heads with someone else? Growing up most teenage boys butt heads with their fathers, and probably a few teenage girls test their mother's will. We go through this while growing up until we come to realize that our father's heads are stronger, bigger, wiser, and they did the same thing with their fathers back in the day and aren't about to be taken by surprise in this. In Christ we often tend to go through the same adolescent phase where we try to butt heads with God. Our Lord sends ministers, counselors, teachers and our brothers and sisters in Christ to disciple and teach us. At first, in the child phase of our Christian life, we listen eagerly, absorb all that we can understand and praise God. As we grow into that teen phase, we pay them back for their service by arguing points of scripture, avoiding constructive criticism, and testing the limits of God's patience. The very things we hope to not repeat from our teen years in this life, we tend to repeat when growing in our Christian lives!
Praise God that this is part of growing closer to Christ. We argue points of scripture as we begin to understand more of God's Word. The key in this is not to become angry and to ponder the other viewpoint. Often I have found that my disagreements are not as far away from what my brother in Christ has said in the first place. At other times the Holy Spirit has led me to see the error in my understanding and the correctness of what a sister in Christ has stated. Sometimes the realization comes the other way, and the brother or sister in Christ will see that I have been given understanding. The main point in this comes from God's Word that commands us to submit one to another. As all of us grow to Christian adulthood, there should be no arguments in the media with our brothers in Christ, no backstabbing our sisters in Christ, and certainly no physical altercations.
If you're out in the church parking lot duking it out with Sallie Mae, both of you are in the wrong, period. You have let the anger go too far and need to seek forgiveness. Besides that, if you're a man, you will want to stop that before Sallie Mae lays you out. You don't want to be both wrong AND embarrassed. :-) Okay, so I'm letting my humor run away there. I have never seen an actual fight in church or Bible study, but we have seen heated arguments in churches, and worse, in the media over church doctrine or God's Word. As is often the case, prayer and listening to God will help us to come closer to each other as we grow closer to Christ.
Love your brothers and sisters in Christ!
Bucky
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