A man said, “I have half a mind to tell that preacher off.. I don’t think he is the right pastor for this church.” “I have half a mind, I Don’t think.” That man may have diagnosed his own problem. He probably could have said, “I don’t pray either.”
Before you tell someone off, if you will spend a week praying them God will either change him, or He will change you so much you won’t see their faults anymore. In recent years our society has become rapidly more secular and just as rapidly more uncivil. Crude and rude are celebrated and often mistaken for boldness.
The scriptures tell us to speak the truth in love. The love helps the hearer to accept the truth. A group of pastors in a certain small city got together for breakfast every Monday morning. One pastor asked another, “What did you preach about yesterday?” The other pastor replied, “I preached on Hell so hot they could smell the smoke!” His friend asked, “Did you preach it with tears in your eyes?”
According to the words of Jesus, Hell is an awful place of torment where the unsaved are going. He spoke of it eleven times as recorded in the Bible. But He didn’t come into the world to send sinners there. He came into the world to save sinners and present them from suffering such eternal punishment. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Neither should we!
In the midst of an increasingly anti-Christian society, let us speak the truth in love. Let us be bold but never rude.
GOD HELP US!