Stand Up

     Our pastor preached a thought provoking message this morning on standing up for and standing against. His message was rooted in the following verses:

"1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: 

2 Mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance.

3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people. 

4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord." (Jude 1-4 NIV)

     Pastor Monty made a couple of points this morning that really resonated with me. The first one being that we are to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). This is an area of my life God has been working on me for a LONG time. I mean since I was a child and first started my relationship with Jesus. I have always been very much "This is the Bible and this is what God's says, and that's the way it is." Unfortunately many times in my life the truth was spoken by me, but it was not in love or even remotely with any kind of tact. I've made huge strides in this area, but still have a long way to go. I firmly believe in the timeliness of God speaking into your life; so I'm pretty sure this reminder will be needed by me very soon. 

     Secondly, that to stand for something means you stand against something and because of that we are often labeled intolerant. For this point, I really felt like God was speaking to me about my boys. That as we raise them, they need to understand that if you stand for something (like God's Word) that means you stand against some things (murder, lies, homosexuality, etc.) and circumstances don't allow us to compromise our beliefs especially when we are talking about God and His Word. Modeling this is so important, but this is an area where we definitely need to give explicit instruction as well. 

    As Christians if we are being labeled intolerant then we're probably not standing for and/or against the things we should be.