Hasty Condemnation Puts God In A Box
For children of the God of love, we sure can be quick to condemn each other. It seems like every prominent preacher, speaker, evangelist has a line of Christians in front of them shaking their fingers and publicly putting them down for something they said or did. While it’s true, the more we’re given the more that is expected of us by God and man, maybe we need to be a little more graceful in how we hold each other accountable.
From preaching styles, to music styles, to church service formats, to evangelism approaches, there seems to be no shortage of criticism for everything outside the 1970’s and 80’s norm. Just because we don’t understand it or like it, doesn’t make it wrong. Even when correction or constructive criticism is called for, there is an appropriate way to go about it, and it probably doesn’t involve going public.
God has a distinct history of working in unusual ways through far less than perfect people. How would we respond today if someone claimed God had told him to take his child’s life? How would we deal with being supplied just enough food (manna) to survive the day? How would we receive the chief of Christian persecutors who suddenly claimed to have “seen the light”? But each time God had a perfect plan to accomplish His mission.
1Corinthians 1:27 states, “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.” When we condemn those with different styles and methods, we are attempting to put God in a box that He refuses to stay in.
from my notebook 