The Plumbline

Now, who will want to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way. Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, than to suffer for doing wrong! (I Peter 3:13-17) Have you ever done the 'right thing' only to have others criticize your efforts, or worse yet, not even notice that you did it? We can 'do right' and have all the 'wrong' motives for doing it. We can 'do right' with the 'right motives' and still be misunderstood by others, or not have our efforts acknowledged or appr

Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude. Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will grant you his blessing.  For the Scriptures say, “If you want to enjoy life and see many happy days, keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from telling lies. Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace, and work to maintain it. (I Peter 3:8-11) We improve our relationship to Jesus through time in the Word and in prayer. We can get down to improving our relationship with others only after we get our relationship with Christ right. Mom always used to say I was to treat others as I wanted them to treat me - the Golden Rule. The only way to treat others right is to be sure the 'rightness of our heart' is maintained through time with Jesus. T

I will praise the Lord at all times. I will constantly speak his praises. I will boast only in the Lord; let all who are helpless take heart. Come, let us tell of the Lord’s greatness; let us exalt his name together. (Psalm 34:1-3) As with all actions, praise is a choice. As Paul tells us, "...let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God, proclaiming our allegiance to his name." (Hebrews 13:15) I don't think it is unusual for us to allow circumstances or situations outside of our control to influence our choices - we all likely do it on occasion. There is one choice that must be made with a full awareness of what is involved in that choice: Praise. We are determining to praise no matter what difficulty we face - we will not allow those things to control our attitude. Could it be possible that praise is really an attitude? It just might be! Life's tough issues are bound to come to all of us and what we choose to dwell upon in those times will deter

" The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it. " (William James) It was Mr. James who also reminded us that one can alter our life by altering our attitude. Attitude can range from pretty positive to absolutely negative and everything in between. We can be consistent until our attitude gets a little tweaked over something and then we just let things go awry. We can commit when we are soaring high, but as soon as things get tough, our attitude toward our commitments can turn pretty negative. Amazingly, attitude can determine what we spend our time doing - what we invest ourselves in the most. If we are use our life well, we are to spend it on something that will yield good results and our attitude can go a long, long way in helping us to realize that goal. Don’t brashly announce what you’re going to do tomorrow; you don’t know the first thing about tomorrow. (Proverbs 27:1) Maybe we have been going through life thinking we will always have a tom

We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. (Charles R. Swindoll) Who is like the wise man? And who understands the meaning of anything? A man’s wisdom makes his face shine. The hard look on his face is changed. (Ecclesiastes 8:1) What are we truly able to change? Many times, we think we can change others, but that probably hasn't worked so well for any of us. We have a hard enough time trying to change ourselves, much less another! We might think we can change the circumstances upon us, but most of the time we can just 'adjust our attitude' toward them. We sometimes believe we could have changed the world, but the world likely didn't want to be changed as we wanted it changed! Change is inevitable, but our attitude toward it is not. We choose the attitude by which we will face change as it comes. We don't

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. (Philippians 4:8) I often go to this verse whenever I observe my thinking being a little too negative, my speech a little too critical, or my attitude just a bit off. Why? It is a reminder to me of the importance of taking particular note of what goes into my mind and what it is I allow my mind to contemplate over and over again. The old computer geek term of 'garbage in - garbage out' really holds true with this thing we call our brain. We do our best when our minds are filled with the right stuff - we don't do as well when there is input that '

Right now many of us have gone through periods of extended isolation because of COVID-19 and the need to 'stay-at-home' in order to reduce the likelihood of spreading the disease. Hanging out with each other hasn't been all that simple, has it? We miss those interactions and almost crave them a little. Who do you "hang out" with? You probably have a pretty "routine" group of acquaintances who you associate with more than others. Sometimes, we have groups at work or school, others at home and at church. They can overlap a little, but seldom are they all the same. When we have all these groups to associate with it is easy to be one person with one group and quite another with the other, isn't it? There is not a great deal of consistency between the members of the groups, so being a little different with each group usually doesn't present a problem. Until....one day, you find a member of one of your "groups" crossing-over into anothe

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up. ( John C. Maxwell ) As I was raising my children, one of the most important lessons I believed they needed to learn was that of taking responsibility for their actions. Perhaps they didn't always appreciate the significance of this lesson, but I think it has served them well in their adult years. There are many of us that go through life attempting to shift responsibility from one place to another because making it our own is kind of uncomfortable at times and downright hard! We like the comfort of shifting blame, but does that really bring us any comfort? Not if you consider the weight of guilt blame-shifting places on your shoulders! Have you ever heard someone say, "You made me do it", or perhaps, "I have this bad attitude because you did that..."? Our attitude is OUR responsibility - it isn't dependent upon how another

One of the neighbors recently blessed my grandsons with a huge tackle box and several smaller ones filled to the brim with all manner of fishing tackle. The lures in there were worth hundreds, some not even used yet, beautiful and shiny. The boys were overjoyed with such a treasure. As my neighbor is getting ready to move, he didn't think he'd need these any longer, so he wanted to bless the boys with them since they have many more years to enjoy their use. As you can well imagine, the fisherman with this much tackle must have had some rods and reels to go with it. He also blessed them with those! It was a double-day of blessing. The rod and reel alone is not much good without the tackle and vice versa. You need both to get the job done! There are times we try to get the job done with one thing in our life, but not another - we want the benefits of Christ without the commitment (the work). We want the blessing, but we don't want the one doing the blessing. We want the priv

I have always appreciated John Maxwell's leadership advice. He is an excellent teacher and one of my favorite thoughts from him is that "people may hear your words, but they feel your attitude." Attitude comes in louder and clearer than just about anything else because it is palpable. Even when you attitude is that of apathy or disinterest, there is a certain sense of 'feeling' that presents with your disinterest. Most of the time, we are making judgments about people and how certain interactions went not so much by the actual words, but by the attitude which was displayed while those words were shared. A relaxed attitude lengthens a man’s life; jealousy rots it away. (Proverbs 14:30 TLB) 3 Don’t be selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself. 4 Don’t just think about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and in what they are doing. (Philippians 2:3-4 TLB) Attitude is reflected

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up. (John C. Maxwell) Maxwell also reminds us that others often hear our words, but it is our attitude that comes through even clearer than any of our words! I have heard it said that our attitude determines our altitude - the way we will go is revealed in the attitude we maintain in our pursuit. We assume an attitude and it either carries us or weighs us down - it is simply that which "fixes" us to the point we are aiming toward. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.   13  For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.  14  Do everything without complaining and arguing,   15  so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people . (Philippians 2:12-15

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "The giving of love is an education in itself." Oh, so true!  If you don't believe that then just try to love someone who has been acting "unlovely" for even a tenth of the time and you will see just how much YOU have to learn in order to do just that!  When another offends, the immediate response for most of us is to get our feeling hurt and maybe even to want to offend them right back. We want them to hurt as much as we are hurting - this is human nature. What a huge volume of education we receive from the Holy Spirit's still small voice reminding us that love is not always reciprocated, nor does it always respond immediately or in the ways we would desire! Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. (Hebrews 10:24 NLT) Let me just assure you that I am still in the "learning mode" when it comes to this whole "love" thing. I don't have this all figured out, and I don&

Charm is that "magical" power to please or attract through one's personality or beauty, almost as though someone were "under the spell" of the one with so much "charm".  Charm is not a bad thing, but one can become obsessed with the things one believes will make them "more charming".  Beauty is not bad - but the continual, obsessive pursuit of the next greatest "fad" designed to make or keep you "beautiful" can become somewhat like the worship of beauty.  A great personality is indeed a plus for the one's who have to "deal with you" day after day, but sometimes we "label" someone's personality as "dry", "introverted", and the like.  We aren't always attracted to those individuals because they aren't "out there" in the lime-light all the time.  If there weren't a few "dry" or "introverted" individuals in this world, I don't think w

I remember how I always found it easier to obey mom when she was watching me than it was when she was away for hours and I was "without supervision".  The TV would go on before homework was done; chores would be deferred in hopes of playing a little with my favorite toys or reading a good book.  In essence, I was being a little two-faced - behaving one way when I was under scrutiny and quite another when I was thinking no one would know.  The long and short of it was the outcome - the chores were done halfway and the homework just didn't measure up to the level it could have because I rushed through both! What I think would have been more "honoring" to my mother was if I had of worked even harder to obey the rules of doing homework and chores first!  I was being a kid - totally consumed with whatever distracted my attention the quickest!  This is kind of how we fall into temptation in our lives - we get distracted by what grabs our attention the quickest.  I wo