Thought of the Day !!

Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work.  They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance.  Show them great respect ad wholehearted love because of their work.  And live peacefully with each other.

                           1 Thessalonians 5:12-13 (NLT)

There are good leaders and bad leaders.  Test your leaders in the Church and if they are false, stay away.  But if they prove to be genuine, then honor them, and give them your respect.  These are people God has gifted with leadership.  I’m not talking just about pastors.  I’m talking about anyone who takes leadership within your church.  They might be in an appointed position, or they might be those whom everyone knows they ought to listen to.  Either way, pray for them.  Honor them.  Work with them.  And as Paul says, live peacefully with them.

Living peacefully with each other is not just with leaders though.  We must learn that as Christians we are taught to live peacefully with each other.  I’ve seen so many circumstances where fellow Christians verbally beat each other up behind each other’s back.  This just shows how little of Christ’s love they have within them. 

How many times have I come to new churches and someone has given me “the lowdown” on someone else, sharing all their faults. It’s time to get over petty things and live peacefully with each other.  Remember, if you have things to complain about, odds are, someone has a complaint about you.  They just might not verbalize it.

Then there are those who believe that their side is right, which means that the other side must be wrong.  So often Christians dig in so deep against other Christians that people mistake our faith for hypocrisy.

We’re better than this.  Let us be like Christ instead of like the world.  Let us love each other and do everything possible to live peacefully with each other.

In the love of Christ,

greg