The Plumbline

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. (Plutarch) You might think you are a very religious person. But if your tongue is out of control, you are fooling yourself. Your careless talk makes your offerings to God worthless. (James 1:26) I cannot help but think of the times I have droned on and on with someone about a topic I have such interest in, only to realize they have not been listening because I am the only one interested in the topic! I have had to learn to 'read the crowd', so to speak, and listen more than I speak. It was not an easy lesson to learn, but a necessary one, especially as it pertains to sharing the truth of the gospel message. I used to think I needed to preach a sermon, but then realized my life was speaking louder than my words. Know how to listen - this is our instruction today. The tongue can wag on and on, making it hard to really 'hear' what is being said. The more 'words' we use, the more we think others...

But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master. (Romans 6:23) Have you discovered that you no longer need to listen to sin tell you what to do anymore? If you are like the millions upon millions of others who have said 'yes' to Jesus, you likely still have a bit of a struggle in this area. Sin just doesn't 'go away' when you say 'yes' to Jesus - the ability for it to control you does, but the enticement to sin is still presenting itself. The issue is not whether sin still entices, it is really an issue of which voice we will listen to the most frequently! We can listen to our own inward lusts (desires), or we can listen to the sti...

We aim above the mark to hit the mark. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live... (I Thessalonians 4:11-12) Knowing where we are aiming is important, because our aim determines our course. We don't walk with an aim in front of us and then walk backwards. We set one foot in front of the other, hopefully in the direction of our target. Living a 'quiet life' is not having our head in the sand all of the time. We must engage in life, but in a respectful, peaceful, and kind manner. Christ didn't stick his head in the sand, avoiding all the tough issues, but rather he confronted them with a positive example, loving attitude, and kindness of heart that drew people to him. A 'quiet life' isn't a 'sheltered' life - one in which we withdraw from what is happening around us. In fact, accor...

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds. (John F. Kennedy) The mind of a person with understanding gets knowledge; the wise person listens to learn more. (Proverbs 18:15) I would like us to consider if we are listening to just 'hear', or are we listening to 'learn more'? The first option is a very common occurrence in society today - someone talks, we listen, but do we really hear their heart, understand their turmoil, or experience their grief? When we listen to 'learn more' there is an investment of ourselves in the life of the one we are actually 'hearing'.  God wants to be the first person we listen to 'learn more' from in this walk we undertake each day with him. He also wants us to develop this sense of 'learning more' when we engage with others who come across our path each day. It is good to hear but hearing alone doesn't really require that much effort. We get 'knowledge' as we hear, but we ...

Post a guard at my mouth, God, set a watch at the door of my lips. (Psalm 141:3) Before thermometers were a common thing in every medicine cabinet, parents used to "test" their children for fever by placing their lips on the forehead of the child. It seemed like an odd way to do it since we have seen people repeatedly use their hands laid across the forehead to "evaluate" the feverishness of another. Using one's lips to judge 'fever' was a pretty doggone accurate process! More accurate than the hand. The lips have a great many "sensitivity" receptors which allow them to be pretty accurate at interpreting what touches them. The "sensitivity" receptors of our lips should actually work both ways - affected by what leaves our mouths, and by what touches it! Maybe this is why our psalmist prayed for God to post a guard at his mouth - the entry and exit point for many a good or bad thing in his life! He is actually probably asking God ...

I'll throw out the old plan I set up with their ancestors when I led them by the hand out of Egypt. They didn't keep their part of the bargain, so I looked away and let it go. This new plan I'm making with Israel isn't going to be written on paper, isn't going to be chiseled in stone; this time I'm writing out the plan in them, carving it on the lining of their hearts. I'll be their God, they'll be my people. They won't go to school to learn about me, or buy a book called God in Five Easy Lessons. They'll all get to know me firsthand, the little and the big, the small and the great. They'll get to know me by being kindly forgiven, with the slate of their sins forever wiped clean. (Hebrews 8:7-12) The old saying "Don't throw out the baby with the bath water" always made we wonder. Just how many parents and nannies of those tiny children actually made them disappear with the bath water? Silly as it seems to consider that one, the...

We can become quite 'selective' in our hearing. Guess what? That might just make us a little too 'selective' in our "hearting", as well! Our heart may be less than responsive at times - a little to calloused for anyone or anything to actually break through. When this happens, it is time to get alone with God, spend some 'quality time' allowing him to renew that heart through the Word and times of worship! The most amazing thing about God's method of "dealing with us" is his ability to get right at the heart of the matter - what it is we need to have dealt with at that very moment! He certainly does not beat around the bush when it comes to "focusing" on an area of "opportunity" in my life, but I don't always pay attention to those areas he is trying to focus on. God does not mince his words - in turn, we can learn the right way of living that is reliable (trustworthy) and then walk in it - but to have our heart aff...

What or who do you listen to because you feel you "have to"? For some of us, it is our parents - we listen because we know we are to respect them and to listen to their wisdom. For others of us, it is our supervisors - because they are the ones who guide our days and provide that paycheck at the end of the week. For still others, we listen to no one and nothing, other than our own minds and hearts. How's that one been working out for you? I know it didn't work out for me! My heart and mind doesn't always know what it wants - it can be rather indecisive and vacillate with the ups and downs of what is going on around me. It isn't worth listening to sin tell us what to do - and it isn't worth thinking our own mind will actually always know how we are to respond. We need to be aware of the presence of God in our lives, learning to listen to him FIRST and foremost. Only then will we experience all the glory of the goodness he has prepared for us! But now that y...

Do you all get things right the first time you attempt them? Have you ever heard from someone there is a better way of doing something? What did you do with that advice? If you are like me, there are times you have embraced it, while there are other times you have 'let it go in one ear, then out the other'. Wisdom comes through a process of learning. Good judgment is something that must be developed. We'd like both to be "instant", but they only come in the process of time. They are a result of exposure to learning opportunities and time invested. The matter I choose to let out the other ear is not always the right matter! Listen, friends, to some fatherly advice; sit up and take notice so you'll know how to live. I'm giving you good counsel; don't let it go in one ear and out the other. (Proverbs 4:1-2) Ever see someone limping around after they have done some type of activity that they are not "used to doing"? It is like when I spend a da...

Our challenge is NOT in having the right advice to offer - it is allowing enough time to pass for the other person to actually WANT our advice! When I was in Bible College, one of the classes we took was designed to give us the skills to "listen" - really intent, serious listening. It was probably the longest and hardest semester learning the skills of biblical counseling - beginning with the skills of listening and ending with the skills of, oh yeah....listening. What was that all about? Somewhere along the way, our professors had learned that answering before listening is both stupid and rude. People were going to want to confide in us, hard things would be shared, and answers would be sought - but we had to learn to hear them out before offering the advice we were just chatting at the bit to get out! Answering before listening is both stupid and rude. (Proverbs 18:13) The failure to listen long enough or allow the time to build the trust that would be required to real...

I want to pose a question to the readers today.  When was the last time you took notes on a sermon?  It could have been something kind of formal like typing them into your iPad or even the app you use on your smart phone, or even a paper journal of sorts.  It may have been "on the fly", such as when you take a portion of the bulletin and write in the margins or something, just to not lose track of that poignant point the preacher made.  It doesn't matter how you made those notes, I want to ask each of us what we "did" with those notes once we were finished recording them.  I think we'd all have to agree it is the "doing" which actually made those notes important - not the "taking" of them.  When we actually "used" those notes to change something we were about to do, had been doing a while, or just didn't realize was a habit we might not want to be doing any longer, we benefited from the note-taking.  Taking is one thing - d...