Saturday, September 15, 2012

The Right Spirit


The Right Spirit

 

A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?  (Proverbs 18:14 NIV)

 
Of the many tasks a church may have, certainly high up on the list is making certain none of its members have a crushed spirit.  There are countless ways a spirit can be crushed but never should it be a Christian who does it.  Jesus rebuked and sometimes fiercely.  His admonishment of Peter for insisting that Jesus would not suffer death was astonishingly stern and yet we can tell it did not crush Peter’s spirit nor was it intended to do so.  When our pride is struck a blow, our self-interest threatened or our greed throttled, viciously we go after the spirit of another and with the force of a hammer come down upon it with all we have.  We must pierce our own sin with the same tenacity of a surgeon going after infection but it is not ours to go after the sins of another.  We are too prone to cut off the arm when we find a sliver in the hand which we would never do about our own slivers. The tender generosity we have toward ourselves is not what we show toward the sinners we have grown to dislike.  We can tell just how far we have come by the way we view the atrocities of family members with whom we have grown weary.  A husband or wife or parent or sibling is our best barometer of real spiritual pluck.  If we give in to the temptation to try and batter the spirit of those closest to us for “making us” not like them, we know just where we are.  We have lost our mooring and strayed far from the Spirit’s shore.  It is hard to pray for one you dislike but it is the beginning point for regaining the love of Christ and the happy Christian life.  Certainly, if you cannot pray for the beast, then keep your mouth shut and stop being the beast.  Give yourself a chance to be the one those closest to you love to think about and find when they are with you gain renewed strength to rise above the sickness that comes upon us all.

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