Gems from Pastor Jim for April 1, 2014

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Jim Hughes

Ps. 15:1, 3 Who may worship in your sanctuary, LORD? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill? Those who refuse to slander others or harm their neighbors or speak evil of their friends.

Worship that connects with God involves refusing to slander others. It is so easy to do, isn’t it? We find ourselves finding fault with others and magnifying those faults to the point where we become guitly of character assassination. We jump into judging others without knowing for sure that our judgments are accurate. We bring others down by the things we say about them.

Worship that connects with God involves not harming others. There are so many different ways we can harm others: physically, verbally, emotionally, and mentally. If we knowingly and intentionally harm others, our attempts at worship are in vain. We are commanded to love our neighbors and love does not go out and harm the ones we love. If we do not conduct ourselves in a godly way with others, the Lord will not honor us in His presence.

Worship that connects with God involves not speaking evil of our neighbor’s friends. It is easy to judge others by the company they keep. It is easy to judge people who we don’t even know. Let’s be honest about this. We do judge people we don’t know. We judge them based on our own prejudices. We judge them if they are different than us or live differently than we do. We judge them if they think differently than we do about things. God wants us to stop it. We should love all those for whom Jesus died. How can we reach out to a people we don’t love with the Gospel? We need to ask the Lord to broaden our love base so that we will have a genuine love for all people.

If we love with the love of Christ, we will treat others in a godly way and our worship will be accepted by God.

C Through Marriage

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