Knowing When: 1 Corinthians

Meditate on this often, and God will give you the right heart to know when to say something to others. The following passage is long, but sums it all up well. Take it one section at a time asking the Lord to reveal His message to you through His living Word. This has struck me deep enough that I will be meditating on it for the next few days, and will leave this post up as the most current. you take a few days as well, coming back to read it again and again.

1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16
For those who are perishing the message of the cross is foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is God's power. For it is written:

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and I will set aside the understanding

of the experts.

Where is the philosopher? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn't God made the world's wisdom foolishness? For since, in God's wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of the message preached. 

For Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is God's power and God's wisdom, because God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Brothers, consider your calling: not many are wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many of noble birth. Instead, God has chosen the world's foolish things to shame the wise, and God has chosen the world's weak things to shame the strong. God has chosen the world's insignificant and despised things - the things the world viewed as nothing - so that He might bring to nothing the things that are viewed as something, so that no one can boast in His presence.

But from Him you are in Christ Jesus, who for us became wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, in order that, as it is written: The one who boasts must boast in the Lord.

When I came to you, brothers, announcing the testimony of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, in fear, in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and power, so that your faith might not be based on men's wisdom, but on God's power.

However, among the mature we do speak a wisdom, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. On the contrary, we speak God's hidden wisdom in a mystery which God predestined before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age knew it, for if they had know it, they would have not crucified the Lord of glory.

But as it is written:

What no eye has seen

and no ear has heard,

and what has never come

into a man's heart,

is what God has prepared

for those who love Him.

Now God has revealed them to us by the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the concerns of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him? In the same way, no one knows the concerns of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, in order to know what has been freely given to us by God.

We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.

But the natural man does not welcome what comes from God's Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to know it since it is evaluated spiritually. The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything, yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone. For:

who has known the Lord's mind,

that he may instruct Him?

But we have the mind of Christ.

Knowing When

The one who corrects a mocker will bring dishonor on himself;

the one who rebukes a wicked man will get hurt.

Don’t rebuke a mocker, or he will hate you;

            rebuke a wise man and he will love you.

Instruct a wise man, and he will be wiser still;

            teach a righteous man, and he will learn more.

Proverbs 9:7-9

Something Christians must learn to develop in love, is timing. I’ve found we usually tend to fall into one of two catergories:

 1.) We never say anything because we are afraid of offending someone and/or not being accepted ourselves, or,

2.)  We don’t know when to not say something, sticking our foot in our mouth up to the kneecap.

How do you handle these situations? What other factors might there be? Post some comments/questions, and I’ll add more to this tomorrow.

Take Your Medicine

Have you ever had to take medicine that made you feel worse before it cured you? That's what I am doing. There is a virus that had settled so deep in my system that it will take several months to pull out with a remedy series. What's annoying is that about a week to three weeks after beginning treatment, symptoms will often get worse for several days, but there comes a time in life when it's still worth it.

It's the same with drawing sin out of our lives that has settled so deep within us. We have grown so use to their effects, and have taken root so deep, that we often need to have a remedy series to remove them. For the virus in my body, I am taking a vial every three days which has a stronger and stronger dose of medicine. I have to work up to the maximum dosage. It's the same with sins we are ridding ourself of. We need a strict regiment of prayer, God's Word, and perhaps an accountability partner- someone to remind us to and make sure that we take the next dose.

The beautiful thing about it is God knows when to up our dose. I have found that when working on a particular flaw in my Christian walk, verses in the Bible hit me as they never have before. I may have read a certain verse time and time again, but suddenly one day- WHAM - the Spirit opens my eyes and I am convicted. That is an upped dose. And let me tell you, sometimes it doesn't feel so good.

So then we have a choice:

Do we continue on to be cleansed, or do we allow it to settle back in?

...Rather, train yourselves for godliness, for, the training of the body has a limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance. In fact, we labor and strive for this, because we have put our hope in the living God, who the the Savior of everyone, especially of those who believe. 
1 Timothy 4:7-10

Practice Time

There is a concept we as modern American's don't like to think about: Truly humbling ourselves. In general we  pridefully humble ourselves - Look how humble I am! -  but to truly do it is another thing. We are taught to build our self-esteem and see how preciously unique we are, and while that is true, we lean too heavily upon it.

A random verse in Numbers caught my attention this morning. The Lord is giving a long list of "orders" to the Israelites before they crossed over to the promised land, and there is one we would do well to not forget. "You are to hold a sacred assembly on the tenth day of this seventh month and practice self-denial; you must not do any work." Number 29:7  As much as I'd like it to, "self-denial" does not mean to refrain from chocolate cake or a Big Mac.

The actual phrase for "practice self-denial" in Hebrew is anah et nepes. Another, longer, way to translate this is "Inflict oppression, subdue, humble, deal harshly with your own soul, the essence of your being." (The Complete Word Study Old Testamant) Why would the Lord command this of the people? Because we need to remember at times that we are not all we think we are. We need to remember Whose we are. We are slaves of the Most High God! (Daniel 5:21) Yes, He loves us and has adopted us as His own allowing us to be heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), but we are His slaves here - now - on this earth (Romans 6:17), and it is good for us to remember that.

Praise God though that they were only required to do this once a year. Our heavenly Father does not want us to walk around defeated and feeling worthless. He loves us dearly; to the point of having His only son crucified for us! It is just good for us to take the time to remember we belong to our king and are here for blessing His name in all things, not our own.

That Hurt So Bad!

Take a few moments to watch this video. It cracks me up thinking about how childish we can still act at times trying to get sympathy and/or attention.

I'll let you come up with your own comparisons to the church body, so I don't get in trouble.
There are so many...

I'm not saying this to judges others, but for us to watch out for ourselves. How many times have you done this. Not sure or don't want to think about it? Ask God to reveal it to you. I admit I have in times past. The point is not to do it in times future!

Enjoy-
You Hurt My Feelings!