I’m sure you love it when someone points out your flaws…perhaps not! Those that are bold enough to point a finger in someone’s direction and step over the line of sensitivity are usually clueless of the three fingers pointing back at them in their own hand. People like this are unwittingly blind and perhaps insensitive to the fact that they have faults and shortcomings of their own.
It gets even worse if a family
member, coworker, or even a BFF colleague disappoints you by gossiping behind
your back. When truth is ignored and the
smut they spew is exaggerated as being the sincere truth about you, when
nothing could be farther from the truth, it hurts deeply.
It is shameful for what they
did, and the height of shameless behavior!
This harmful, cold-hearted disregard for honesty can be very hurtful
when the untruthful remarks find their back to the innocent party. It’s a deception that it is hard to
understand why people do such things, and just as hard to get over their
disheartening antics.
Demeaning another individual
and speaking ill about them is sin. I
think every person should consider what they say and reign in their tongues,
lest the consequences of their cruelty bring some kind of reproach upon
them. Disappointing God and disobeying
His word is not wise. The tongue is an
unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
(James 3:5-6), “Even so the
tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire
kindles!” (vs 6) “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that
it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set
on fire by hell.”
I am the youngest of four
children that Mom and Dad brought into the world. Our oldest brother was fourteen years older
than me. On more than one occasion he
told me that a person should never correct their elders or find fault in
them. Do you think he was trying to tell
his snotty nose brother something?
I cannot remember ever pointing
out his flaws, but when I became a Christian in my mid-twenties, the change in
my allegiance to whom I gave homage, made him aware, more-so, of his wayward
lifestyle. I was living a peace-filled
and happy life in Jesus.
The changes that the Holy
Spirit made in my life, disposition and desires, stood out to my brother. As the months went by, I noticed signs that
he was becoming indelibly affected in positive ways when I was around him. His personality was slowly changing.
When God saved my soul, I
became a different person. The old
sin-nature that had me bound faded away and all things became new in Christ
Jesus. This transformation was revealed
in my actions and vocabulary. The joyous
outlook I had on life and the peace I was experiencing made my brother even
more conscious of his shortcomings. He
was realizing that he wasn’t in the place with God that he should be.
Whenever an opportunity
presented itself, I shared food for thought concerning spiritual things,
especially when he perused my writings, looking for bad grammar and punctuation
errors prior to me posting them on my blog.
He was my proofreader.
I believe the Holy Spirit used
my writings to help open the door to his heart.
My brother was not timid to talk about God, which allowed the Spirit of
God to deal with his spiritual man.
Though he was not a Christian,
he knew the way because of an eye-opening experience he had with God in his
teenage years. It was an encounter he
never forgot. I believe later in life,
before he passed away, he must have had another experience with Jesus because
his grammar changed and he talked more about the things of God when we
discussed my writings.
I could tell there was
something different about his demeanor; the way he thought; and the way he
expressed himself. I saw a change in
attitude taking place, and he was becoming more receptive of what I had to say
about spiritual things. I believe his
soul was right with God before he died.
www.wordsfrompapa.blogspot.com
Written by,
Papa Boyd
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