Hypo-whatever...

You ever hear people talk about" yeah, I used to go to church"or"No I don't go there cuz church is nothing but a bunch of HYPOCRITES!"You know what, nine out ten guesses they are right. Churches are full of people the are hypocrites-so what!? So is your workplace-right? You got know-it alls,you have your gossippers, your adulterers,pimps, drug addicts ,alcoholics,and backstabbers. Well, maybe you should leave your job.Yeah, the workplace. Don't go to work because work has nothing but hypocrites or maybe find a different job with less hypocritically forbid you would quit working because your workplace is filled with hypocrites-you need your job to survive-right.If our employment has such a high priority in our survival in this world, stop and think if our relationship with God any more important a place where we come together and worship God. It is a place where we identify with other people what our true identity is in Christ.It is a place where we find the answers to our questions and learn more about Jesus.People are not perfect. Our calling is to love,not to be perfectionists.Jesus is. Christians are not perfect-Wer'e forgiven.Church is a place where the abuser and the abused can come and find new life.Church is a place where our common threads of faith come together to create a cloak of worship to our God. We all come from different molds.We all come together with various loads and burdens. But in church, we can carry them all together and find Christ as our source of strength.Hypocrites.We all are in some way.But the identity of Christ in our lives help us all togther seek and find truth and meaning in our so-called lives. Ready for church?Sunday is just around the corner.

Love stuff

Alright! Get ready for another of Artie's wonderful, wild , and all powerful venting sessions ! Love. I'm really sick of hearing that in the church today. Don't misunderstand me. We need Love. We were created to be loved. We were meant to Love. The unfortunate truth is that we in the church has " loved too much " .The church today and its leader-now that is a scary thing in itself, has expressed that we need to love on each other. Yeah, I was sucker- onied on that to.Here is the gripe.. In the area of sin- oooh now I'm starting to bug some of you already- the church has "loved" too much and not disciplined enough. We've gotten wimpy because the enemy and the world don't want us to be powerful- it would cut out all there fun! Confronting sin in aGodly and loving manner is not a popular thing to do in the church today. God's Word gives us guidelines to do it the right way. Since people don't take His Word seriously, they don't do it right and it blows up in their faces.Listen, sin has to be dealt with. What if, at your job-say woodworking, your boss doesn't show you how to properly cut on the saw correctly by pointing out the wrong methods, you will end up minus a few appendages. God loves the sinner but He hates the sin. We need to love one another, but true love is also best displayed when we confront sin in a Christ-like manner. Christ loved the Pharisees enough to show them their faults. Yet many of them didn't receive it well.Nevertheless, Jesus still poured out His life for them. Knowing the cost of rejection, He still confronted their sin from time to time and then died on the cross for their sins-now that is love.Jesus took a risk to against the world order of religion.Jesus love man but He also had the guts to confront man's sin and finally gave His life for our sin.
If we follow Christ's example and be true to His Word, The church may lose a few stiff-necked people but will find countless more achieving victory and deliverance from the bondage of sin.

The right stuff

If you drink tea-not iced tea, you know that hot tea is good. Not just good but great with sugar and milk. I was informed that you can't add half and half to your tea-add milk. Why you say? The half and half curdles in the tea the milk doesn't and half goes great in coffee-not the non-dairy-YUK- stuff! But in tea,No. In life there are some things that are acceptable for the believer.there are some things that aren't and cause growth problems. In the church today, Christians are finding it difficult to find that happy medium in what is permissible and what is not. There is no "happy medium" . The main reason is people don't look to the Word of God for answers and direction in this arena. We either follow what His Word says or we don't. When we try to add our own stuff we end up with a mess. The children of Israel tried to save the manna when God told them to eat what was necessary and leave the rest-what happened? It rotted and turned rancid-unfit for digestion-why? Because they thought ahead of God and compromised-Disobedience. When drinking in the tea of life, using the right ingredients can make the experience more enjoyable.

VULNERABLE

Vulnerable. That word causes a shudder in most people. Vulnerable. It means that a person is open. Everything that is hidden is revealed. What was once secure territory is now open for infiltration. Vulnerable. We think of that word in a negative metaphor to someone or ourselves open to danger to exposure. Open to revelation of some deep, dark secret in our closet look at that word again in a more positive sense. Vulnerable. Being open to God. Open to exposure-the Holy Spirit. Open and vulnerable to God means revelation, it means being open to His revelation. Being vulnerable to God allows those hidden things to be revealed-things that cause death, not life- repentance. Being vulnerable to God means being able to expose oneself to His will,His direction. If we are to be vulnerable to anything in this world, it is to the sovereign will of God and not will of the flesh and the devil.