DO I DARE?

This one comment was left on my last blog:

Anonymous said...

Come on, Terry; you can speak plainer than that. Give us an example or two of precisely what you mean. It needs to be said and you're the guy to say it.

Well, that's an interesting comment which I at first thought I would let stand.  The more I think about it...why not?  I feel Anon has specifics in mind and I may disappoint him or her....which is part of my point.

I don't know where Anon wanted me to go, but here's what I was thinking in the process of writing it.  First, one of the main points I wrote is, A glaring mistake is when we draw them according to herd-thought. At that point we seem to shift from faith to politics; you like what I believe and I like what you believe so lets stand together against the other herd-parties.  I believe this to be true. 

I'm not sure Anon or others pick up I mean me in the mix.  I do.  I often post my blogs from my failures so that younger guys/gals might recognize themselves and get mistakes stopped sooner than this 62 year old.  I've always been an eager learner; but admittedly a slow one.

We are in kindergarten.  None of us are as capable of church guardianship as we might have once believed.  But if you want examples, okay.  Try these.

Example #1:  When I began preaching I was a pounder and a shouter.  While I may have sounded courageous (to myself), I was not.  I was pretentious of possessing the courage to speak up when, at that time in my life, I was really tickling the ears of friends (the herd) who believed as I. 

We all find boldness in about six or seven texts.  We know baptism and heaven.  Yet we, too, fail to realize our terrible failure in such important zones as repentance, submission, prayer, Bible reading simply to be fed, endurance, and refraining from being judgmental.

We tend to believe our level is the ideal level of spirituality.  For awhile I even thought mine was somewhat superior.  Really, really wrong.  Mine is just getting started.

Example #2:  We in the Church of Christ are far more guilty of the "tickling ears" passage than the herd would ever guess.  I thought that passage was for the Baptists, the Methodists, and the Christian Church.  But we....we are "tickle-my-ears" obsessed.  We love to hear the old time religion of the Church of Christ preached....even if it didn't exactly come from the Word of God.

We are prone to give up; to quit on people and congregations.  We write others off right and left and move on to the next garden of learners testing the soil to see if we can adapt and accept their fine faith.  While I have had a few rough moments and even years at Memorial, I've never been tempted to move.  Why would I?  I either have the answers or the critics do and I feel secure in waiting on God to show which---if either---is His thought pattern. 

It doesn't discourage me to get the work wrong.  It doesn't discourage me to fail to get my way.  It discourages me most to be caught impatient or defensive.  I've had to grow up and am just now getting started. 

Life in the church isn't easy.  It isn't handy.  Too many have blown the gasket of the body by walking away when He had great plans through intentional pressures of the Spirit. 

Okay...there are couple of examples.  First and second on your list?  Maybe not....but it is what I was thinking when I wrote the earlier blog.

Okay...there are two examples.  Nothing outrageous...but enough to bug some.