How about other areas of our lives?
It's easy to see other peoples' faults but remain blinded to our own permissiveness. We must begin with ourselves, because we have to be careful -- we may not see our own compromise. As we read our Bibles, we need to ask ourselves where we may have slipped into the ways of the world. We need to ask the Spirit to show us where we have compromised and become more like the godless culture of today.
And we need to be careful when pastors or godly friends warn of spiritual dangers -- instead of getting angry and saying it's time to leave the church, we need to stop and prayerfully think about what we say and think and do . . . . is it all in line with God's Word?
Spiritual permissiveness is an everyday, every year problem. Like Nehemiah, we must immerse ourselves in God's Word to detect it, and we must carefully exercise righteous anger to confront it. Then we will hear the Lord say, "Well done" when we stand before Him.
Let's have some discussions today -- if you have time to leave thoughtful answers to these questions, I would love to hear your responses.
How can we know when to be restrained and gentle and when to be emotional and bold in confronting someone's sin?
What distinguishes righteous anger from sinful anger? How can we guard ourselves against justifying sinful anger as being righteous?
To what extent should we shelter ourselves and our families from the world as opposed to seeing how corrupt it is?
Choose one!
Choose two!
If you have time, answer all three! (Grin)
I look forward to reading what you have to say.
Wowsers...... those are heavy questions. I think that when we are confronting someone with their sin, or anything else for that matter, we need to be very firmly on the side of restrained and gentle. The boldness comes in the act of confronting them in the first place. Whenever the emotions are let in there is a large chance that sin will follow. Our emotions are big and unruly and can very quickly get out of hand. If the emotions are let into the discussion, even the emotion of anger, we risk the whole confrontation degenerating into an emotional yelling match.As sinful humans, saved by grace, I think we have to be very careful when it comes to righteous anger. Because our sin permeates every aspect of our lives, it gets into the righteous anger as well. I’m not sure as humans we can even do righteous anger. As for the third question, I think Philippians 4:8 covers that for all members of our families.
ReplyDelete"whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
I've been away for a long time, so I hope you will all allow me to respond. ;)
ReplyDeleteI think you have to rely on the Holy Spirit to guide you when confronting someone. And depending on the depth of the sin, you might be able to be gentle and suggestive, but if it is a deep and consuming sin, your brokenness might get through when gentleness might not.
Righteous anger would be driven by the Holy Spirit (again) and sinful anger would be because we feel someone is in the wrong and how dare they?! As Cathy stated, I'm not sure we can even do righteous anger as a human.
I believe that media, television and the entertainment industry as a whole is not what we need to be focusing on. I would and have left off a great deal of it, due to the sinful nature of it all. That is not to say that we need to ignore any information, because we do need to know what is going on so that we can pray specifically, and try to see how God works in it all. He uses everything for His purpose, no matter how sinful because he is God, and the Bible tells us that. We must be grounded in the Word, so we can know how sinful it really is. We must be responsive to the Holy Spirit so that we are convicted and led in the right path.