A STRONG STANCE

Jesus was different. 

He let the unacceptable in....always.  And, he rejected the self-righteous...always.

The church has suffered perpetual setback because--in a general sense--we have performed under the reversal of Jesus.  We have catered to the self-righteous and neglected the broken.

I'm not saying always nor never. 

I am saying the church in general is stuck because of this mistaken behavior.

I lived under both umbrellas.  They are not the same. 

We have accepted the wrong umbrella under the assumption we were doing the right thing.  As much as we have heard it said, We go by the Bible, isn't it remarkable we are guilty of functioning under Pharisaical rule?

We go by the Bible is surely to be our clarion call.  But we must ever be self-sensitive to our own missing the mark. 

We shall not live depressed over our lack.  Rather, we shall eagerly hunger and thirst for his righteousness for our own is still despicable to Him and to us.

We shall live upset.  We will not be disturbed because we legalists are rattled (even offended); but rather we will be of great sadness that we have failed to see the rejects as essential and treasured in His sight.

The church is living in still a very exciting time.  A strong stance is increasing as we shed our selfish and whiny silly arguments while we take on the serious mission of reaching everyone we can while we live in this earth-window called life.

We are only given so many days to serve.  May we spend them wisely upset over the things that perturbed our Master as well.

Because Jesus is eternally the nature he is and because the flesh adamantly insists upon being the boss and in control, the things that Jesus faced in his day will be the same believers face in our day.  A strong stance will ever be necessary to move as did Jesus; toward accepting the suspects.