The Plumbline

In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-8) Moral turpitude is a big way of saying a person exhibits behavior that is CONTRARY to the standards set forth by law, a community, or God. When someone has a problem with their behavior that is contrary to these standards, they're exhibiting behavior that may be vile, shameful or even corrupt. God's plan is for us to grow in his grace - to develop a moral standard that matches his standards. He took great pains to lay out those standards for us in scripture. Are we taking as grea...

Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. ( There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers. ) But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?" When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” (Mark 2:15-17) Have you ever noticed that sentence in this passage before? "There were many people of this kind..." What a way for people to 'label' other people. "Those people" - that is a label, isn't it? They didn't 'measure up' to the standards being imposed upon them - much like you and me on occasion. They didn't 'follow the rules' some of the time - like us rule-breake...

He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! (Isaiah 53:3-4) We often hear this passage quoted on Easter. It carries the message of a Messiah - the rejection of the one who would come to save us from our sins and restore our relationship with God the Father. Yet, do we hear the real message of this passage? "And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God..." We thought...just how many things do we get wrong when we think one way, all the while forgetting there could just be a different perspective we aren't privy to at all? God gave this prophecy so many years before the Messiah came, yet many missed it because they 'thought' one way and refused to see Jesus as the red...

Get the word out. Teach all these things... Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. And that special gift of ministry you were given...keep that dusted off and in use. Cultivate these things. Immerse yourself in them. The people will all see you mature right before their eyes! Keep a firm grasp on both your character and teaching. Don’t be diverted. Just keep at it. Both you and those who hear you will experience salvation. (I Timothy 4:11-16) There is much to be learned, much more to be incorporated into our lives, and way more to we can become consistent in practicing than most of us really want to admit. I always say it is a good day when I have learned something new. It might just be a clever way to recycle some object into a newly purposed item for my home or garden, or something more academic which I can use over and over to solve problems. As I go about the day ...

Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ— God’s  righteousness. (Philippians 3:6-9) As I have now taken the next step in my life known as retirement, I have been looking back over the years and there is one thing I know for sure - I did a whole lot of striving for things that really didn't produce as much as they promised along the way. That isn't to say I didn't accomplish good things along the way, but I am free now to look back at some of those times when I was merely spinning my wheels on stuff that really wouldn't matter much to anyone,...