Joshua 1:8
"...[B]ut you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success." (Joshua 1:8).
"You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me." (John 5:39).
"And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13).
Convicted again. I confess it was wrong of me to be grumbling about our church and Fusco in an earlier post. Paul reminds me that it's the cause of Christ that is most important. Not whether I agree with this detail or that. Sorry guys. I love our church and Pastor Fusco because Christ is his and its foundation.
ReplyDeleteAnd sorry about complaining about the book. Its a great, convicting book and God is using it to wake us up!
DeleteThanks for your honesty, Joel! And I forgive you of course, but quite honestly I ought to be apologizing as well. Mary and I often critique the sermon after church. While it's good to discuss what was said, all too often we complain more than anything. I was convicted as well and also apologize. This Chapter should be convicting to most everyone as we're all human and prone to building ourselves up by tearing others down - whether it's a specific person, a detail as Joel noted, God's word, or even God himself!. This, otherwise known as pride, is at the root of all division if you really think about it. I was also convicted by what I'm building on my foundation...
ReplyDeleteThanks for your honesty too. Like you said most everyone should be convicted by this. Speaking for myself, comparing myself to others and a nasty lack of self importance has caused jealousy and envy and that is a sin. I need to wake up and realize that ALL credit goes to Jesus becuase His Spirit is working through these people. And God wants to use ALL of us and we just need yield to His Spirit in our lives, like Pastor Bill said last Sunday.
ReplyDeleteI think instead of "importance" I should have said "esteem". Obviously I'm not too important. haha...
DeleteI'm going to play from the other side for a minute, because while I agree that bill and fusco are both inspired, and yes God is working through them, I think its still important, and in fact necessary to e a discerning audience. Josh- you actually led me to be more of one! In the catholuc church there are levels of holiness. (Just stay with e for a minute), so what you find is that people listen to these holy men moreso as they moe upin the ranks, ie deacon to priest to bishop to arch-bishop to pope who is about as close as you can get to being jesus wrt holiness. Whatim getting at is that we can listen to a sermon, read books such as radical, read comentaries etc and hear god speaking to us, bbut they are still spoken/written by a man so they aren't without error. Or maybe they are perfectly sound but until we cross refernce the bible we ought to be discerning right? I have always found that the more I question aspects of my faith, the more I learn, and the more passionate I become in that respective area.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the typos. On the phone. In the dark. I will do better with the proof-reading.
ReplyDelete"I think its still important, and in fact necessary to e a discerning audience."
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly right. We NEED to cross reference everything we hear with God's Word. And if we hear something that seems contradictory to the Word, we should correct them with love and gentleness and respect. I think God, through Paul, is teaching us that we need to realize that we need to look to Jesus as our leader and not pastors and priests and authors and disciples.