Happy Monday! Come on, it's possible! If you are letting God speak his good news into your heart, you'll have joy even on a Monday. I'm sitting down with God and my Bible for a conversation. Come and join us in 1 Timothy 5:17-25. Bear in mind that the whole passage is regarding the appointment of church leaders. It may be a little more challenging to make a personal application. Let's see what God might want to say to us.
The first thing that jumps out at me is the encouragement to pay good pastors well (v. 17-18)! Somebody please listen and pass it on to your church finance people! The second thing that really resonates with me is the caution about not appointing people to leadership hastily (v. 22). That one has come back to bite me before! Nothing messes up a good church like delegating leadership to the wrong kind of person. The difficult thing is that it can take time before a person's true colors begin to show. He or she may appear at first to be everything you would want in a leader. But only later do you begin to discover the character issues and self-promoting motives they have.
The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. (v. 24)
Maybe that's what is most applicable to us all here. The point is that the holes in some people's character may be veiled at first and not surface until later. But surface they will. That's a good reason to take your time in dating relationships. A person can only put their best foot forward for so long before their real self starts to take over. So be sure to give enough time for that natural relaxing to take place. Then you can see who this person really is.
The statement above is also a good warning for me if I have become comfortable with sin in my life. We may think that we can keep it undercover, that no one will know. But whether our sins are up front and hit people in the forehead before they even get a chance to know us, or whether our pet evils trail behind us hiding in the shadows, we can't keep them hidden forever. They just have a way of getting discovered. Herman Cain and Pastor Eddie Long are dealing with that reality in the most embarrassing and painful way right now.
It's not skeletons that I want people to stumble across when digging around in my closet. It's the good deeds that I didn't tell anyone about.
In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot be hidden forever. (v. 25)
Holy Father, show me anything in my life that needs to be cleaned out. I want the blessings that come with holiness and godliness. I want the joy and the peace that a clean conscience provides. Thank you that in Jesus I am forgiven and that I now have the Holy Spirit's power to defeat the power of temptation. Amen!
Don't be silent. What is God saying to you? He often speaks through other people, meaning he may speak to someone through you! Comment below (sign in first or choose "Anonymous" from the "Comment as" menu). And please give us some love on Facebook by clicking the "f" icon below.
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