Today I looked at Matthew 7 in my quiet time and a bunch of verses (pretty much the whole thing) popped out at me. Jesus is speaking and covers a wide range of topics that I will transcribe below:
7:3-5 "And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, Let me remove the speck from your eye, and look a plank is in your eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
I think that sometimes we as fallible human beings are prone to the bad like self-righteous prideful and vain conceit that gives us a false sense that we are always right and it is the other person and the whold world who is wrong or needs to change. If we adjust our view and rid ourselves of that self-righteousness, we may find that the speck we may have seen in our brother's eye was not really the fault of the brother rather a scratch in the lense of the glasses we had worn and the plank in our own eye inhibiting us from seeing reality and truth.
7:7-11 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!"
I think three things may be surmised from this passage: the goodness of God, the power of our communication with God through prayer, and the need to step up and do it.
God likens himself to an earthly father and a child. The child asks the father for something he needs and surely the father will provide for the child. This passage tells us that God is like this and so much more, because well, He is God and that father is only human and still has evil tendencies. The second thing to keep in mind is the power of prayer. God says that if we ask (pray), seek (continual prayer and keeping eyes open to the people and situations around you and going on with confidence in the direction of your request), and knock (again pursue with confidence in God and His grace to fulfill your request) and the door will be opened (request answered).
This next passage is critical to the Church in maintaining a biblically sound doctrine that adheres to the essentials of the faith. With our relativistic agnostic culture, it is rather easy to try to soften up or water down the message. When that happens the carriers of the message become less salty, and what is the point of salt that has lost its saltiness? We are to be carriers of the truth. To deny absolute truth would be to deny one of the laws of logic; the law of noncontradiction. Without further ado...
7:13-14"Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it."
Listening to the last bit of David Wheeler's sermon tonight I felt convicted of being indifferent to my fellow peers and fellow citizens. I go through these calloused stages that render me indifferent as a form of self-preservation and self-defense because if I don't care, then I don't have to feel, or rather I don't have to deal with the feelings I feel when they leak out of their compartmentalized box. I wrote in my previous post about those who are ignorant martyrs who walk around with a lum face as though they had got the worst hand. Have I ever stopped to ask them why they force a half-smile/grimace? have I asked them if there is anything I can pray for them for? For all I know, a tradgedy could have just taken place in their life and are still cleaning up the shattered pieces and piecing them back together. Each person deals with grief differently and I need to have compassion, and ACT on that compassion.
I read Chapter 1 of Building dynamic faith by Jerry Falwell and I suppose these are a few things that God has been showing me today, so Thank you Lord Jesus :)
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