The Plumbline

If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God. (I Peter 3:18) I am gonna meddle a bit this morning, so get ready. I have to ask you how your 'conscience' is fairing these days - is it clear some of t...

We all probably want a 'good life' and would do just about anything to get it. We pursue one thing right after another in earnest, just because we think it will help us achieve that 'good life' we desire. Most of the time it isn't that we don't have a 'good life', it is that we complicate it with stuff that shouldn't be there in the first place. Those 'complications' make it seem like we don't have a 'good life' at all. Sometimes the hardest things to learn are not really all that hard. Consider just how hard it is to get the knowledge we form in our heads to begin to affect our hearts. but this is important because when the heart is finally affected, the 'life' we have begins to take on a different impression within us.  It seems like we can almost be beaten over the head with the same lessons (knowledge) until we are almost numb, yet totally miss the formation of any wisdom which keeps us from doing the same silly thing...