Opps, Sorry Pastor Dan, ol' shipmate Sir, didn't mean to launch a torpedo at you. Hope no one was seriously injured.

As a side note; Jody was a sailor also. Maybe when he is born again, he'll become a minister, and he too, can help others steer their boats around the blogs, and encourage them, to depend on the Captian of their salvation (Hebrews 2:10).

Until then, in the words of Mark Farner (that saved Grand Funk guy), "I'm getting closer to my home..." and all I can say is "Thanks Captian... Thanks Captian, what a great salvation you have provided us.

Robert...

P.S. Webyouthpa, yes we have talked about it before.

I was just looking through C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and ran across this in the chapter on forgiveness:

"Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hat the bad man; or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

"For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life--namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is in anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again."

Is our own brokenness what's missing in expressing how we feel about (another's) sin? And what effect would that, combined with our hope for the other's restoration and healing, have on our witness and our world?

And the bomb dropps

dropps is the greek word for droppas which is translated in the action of being dropped or in other words "drops"...greekianese is a artful form of language most casual Christians are not aware of

:-)

Good suggestion, Dan. I remember somebody (not here) slamming a preacher who was not preaching enough on sin during his mission work. The thought occurred to me, "just how much did Christ preach on sin?" The truth is that He became sin for us. Instead, in the beattitudes in Matt 5, He preaches of an anttitude of the heart. Most times when I go to judge somebody elses sin, the Holy Spirit quickly reminds me that in the past, I too had done those things. This is not to say that I condone sin, but I don't think there is something that we need to do, just be. We just live. I go out the door and often my travels and such, take me to places where I can share my faith, sometimes with groups of people. I like to assure them that God accepts them just as they are. I cannot change the heart of a man/woman, but HE can and does so in His own way, over time. Asking someone to change themselves very often just leads to dead works and inevitable failure. God is the One who must do the changing.

If we ask someone to come to church, are'nt we just asking a sinner to come sit with a bunch of other sinners?

There are extremes of course that may have to be dealt with, if somebody is disrupting things but even in such a case, a quiet word on the side will often suffice. The Lord has been changing my heart to see everybody as people, not as sinners and all the while my heart desires that none should perish.

Cam.

Oh they can come to church, but they better not sit in my seat!!!  And now the topic for the next blog...

I am joking about the seat thing Cam...and well said.  The Bible is specific that while we are to judge within the body, we are not to judge outside of it.

Hazard

Pastor Dan:

Loved it.

Simple.  Powerful. True.

My best,

Marty Daniels 

I met with this some time back when I used this, seemingly appealing line (maybe homosexuality was the topic?  I can't remember,) and another person chimed in to say, "So you just hate the part of me that "sins" then, I see."  Not at all what I meant, but the point had been made.

It was at that point that I needed to remind myself what sin really was.  Many people get caught up in this idea that sinning is disobeying one of those commandments listed back in Exodus and Leviticus and if you do all of that right, you'll be fine.  The same people profess that we're all sinners because the Bible says so, but having been there myself, I'm thinking they don't really understand what they're saying when they preach this.

Considering, though, that a sin is anything that comes between God and us, and that Christianity isn't about living some "perfect lifestyle" but about living out this wonderful relationship with our Creator; "sinner" really does take on a whole new meaning, then.  Because who hasn't had a selfish thought?  Who hasn't invested in pride?  That puts us all in the same boat, and I think that's part of the ultimate message that so many of us miss on.  It makes it not about fighting against this various act and that various act, but living in love for God because he loves us -- so much that He put us here though He knew we would fall into sin (away from Him,) so much that he sent His Son to redeem us from that sin (and bring us back.)  And accepting that into our hearts, it becomes a journey through which we grow close with God, knowing and loving him, recieving his unending grace which we, in turn, pour out through our love to everyone around us.

I think you make a wonderful point here, that it is the soul we must worry about first amongst the unsaved.  Once that is won, the Spirit will guide the rest.  (We really should learn to trust the Spirit more, that's part of having faith!)  I also believe that as long as we attempt to attack the sin before we approach and truly love the sinner, we are going to create animosity and cause Christianity to look like a legalistic lifestyle instead of the freedom in Christ, the lifestyle of unending love, incomparable Godly love, that it was built to be.

Just another thought, one that I'm sure we've all heard a thousand times.....you don't 'get good' and then 'get God'; you 'get God' and then 'get good'.  I agree, we need to be epistles read of men and let our lives speak instead of our mouths.