Skip to main content

How Do You Take It


  You messed up. You done wrong. You took the left-hand path. You flubbed, forsook, and failed.

  It happens to all of us.

 Hopefully, you saw things for yourself but more likely somebody had to open your eyes to it. They called you to task. They slapped your hand. Told you no. You got chewed you out, criticized and critiqued

  How did you take it?

A wise son accepts his father's discipline, But a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.

Proverbs 13:1 

  I’m beginning to realize that a true mark of spiritual maturity isn’t perfection but the ability to listen to correction. Oh for sure there will be some that will criticize baselessly but a wise man can see that and dismiss it. A fool however does that to everything that is told to them. Even when their error is obvious, they will attack the nature of the person correcting them and the way they did it and when they said it. They never accept the fault only redirect it to others.

 However, we never grow much if we do that.

  If I want to be better it takes me realizing when I am not at my best. Self-deception is too easy a trap to fall into. We need others to help us see the wrongs to make them right. Accountability to others keeps us honest. To do that we must learn to listen to correction. No matter how bad it might make us feel.

 Sensitivity to rebuke needs to not be about getting our feelings hurt but rather a willingness to act to fix the problem.

 If we can’t be told when we are wrong, we will never end up in the right.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Until Midnight

    In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back.       I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gift You Give Yourself

    I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me.   There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15).  I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven.  So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives.  When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

  Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair   It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission.  It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...
Post a Comment
Read more