Hello,
Today I want to focus on sharing knowledge, and the thin line between a special secret and gossip. Some thing are black and white, or yes and no, some are not. I want us to find the balance between sharing a special tidbit of knowledge with a Sister or friend and passing on information that is hurtful, harmful and or deadly. I know that sounds harsh but let me explain. Often times in God's word, He references death as a consequence for an action. Now in some cases it can mean physical death, but more importantly it is referencing our spiritual deaths. Our spiritual life and health is the most important thing we have. It is what governs our physical health, prosperity, well being and life.
Deuteronomy 30:15 “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. 16 For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy. 17 “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy. (NLT)
In a nut shell, if we stay within God's boundaries, we are safe and protected. I have this visual of when you put a baby in a playpen to keep them from getting into things they shouldn't get into. That's what God is trying to do for us with His word.
Webster defined Gossip as: 1. a person who habitually reveals personal or sensational facts about others. 2. a rumor or report of intimate nature.
What does God say about Gossip:
Exodus 23:1 You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.
Psalm 15:1-3 A psalm of David - Lord, who may dwell in your holy hill? 2 He who walks uprightly in his heart, 3 He who does not back bite with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor does he take up a reproach to his friend.
So what do we do? Meditate on God's word. Confess it over ourselves daily. Here are some scriptures I came up with, spend some time digging into God's word and find some for yourself also.
Psalm 141:3 Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth, keep watch over the door of my lips.
Remember the part about not letting our ears be trash cans, guarding what we hear? Faith comes from what we hear, good or bad. Want faith in good things?
Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.
Romans 6:15-23 Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! 16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. 17 Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. 18 Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.
19 Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy.
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. 21 And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (NLT)
Proverbs 4:23 Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
Remember - Seed (God's Word) Time (you reading and confessing it over your life) and then comes the Harvest.
I hope this has helped you to realize, having to know everything that is going on around you, is not really as important as you thought it was. Sometimes it is better to be left out of that loop. With everything there is balance and I pray that everyone that reads this will ask God to show them the balance for their life.
Blessings,
Lynn
Showing posts with label Want to know a Secret?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Want to know a Secret?. Show all posts
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Want to know a Secet - Part 2
How did you do with the questions from last time?
I have had situations where I just had to know what I was missing. And then I was very disappointed. I had built up the mystery in my mind only to say - oh was that all it was about. God tells us to be anxious for nothing; Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. The fact that this curiosity is so intense should be a clue that we are teetering out of God's protection. See whatever we think we are missing takes on a whole new level of responsibility. Yes with knowledge comes responsibility. Once we know something, we must act on it.
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden, their eyes were open and they KNEW they were naked, and then felt responsible to cover up. Genesis 3: 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. They were ashamed! So going back to the questions from last post; What Emotions did this "knowing" bring to surface in you? Happiness, joy, satisfaction, guilt, disgust, fear? For them it brought in fear - something they didn't have before. God did not design us to have fear, look at 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. However, when we don't operate in obedience to God and His word, we step out of His protection zone.
Someone once told me "Don' t let your ears be trash cans!" This is such a powerful statement and can pertain to so many circumstances that we encounter daily. Some of these are obvious, some are not so much. Sometimes we actively participate in filling our ear up with junk and sometimes we don't. If faith comes by hearing, good or bad, then what we hear becomes an integral part of who we become and how we act. Therefore who we want to become is what we should allow our ears hear.Here are some more questions to ponder that will help point out areas your ears are being trash cans. Remember, once we "know" something it takes on a responsibility in our lives to act or react.
1.) Have you ever had a time where someone tells you something personal about someone else?
2.) Did it change how you felt about that person?
3.) Has someone "vented" to you about a fight they had with someone else?
4.) Did that cause you to have an opinion about the other person?
5.) How did you feel once they made up and weren't fighting anymore?
6.) Do you struggle to be nice to someone after you have heard "trash" about them?
Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.
Next post I want to go over some of the ways we can be pro-active instead of re-active. There are things we need to know in life, and wisdom we should seek. God was well pleased with Solomon for asking for wisdom. But there is a difference between knowing and wisdom. As I continue these next couple of posts, I want to point out some ways we can be more balanced between good knowing and bad knowing, and how to use Gods wisdom and self control.Be
Blessed,Lynn
Posted by Lynn
I have had situations where I just had to know what I was missing. And then I was very disappointed. I had built up the mystery in my mind only to say - oh was that all it was about. God tells us to be anxious for nothing; Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. The fact that this curiosity is so intense should be a clue that we are teetering out of God's protection. See whatever we think we are missing takes on a whole new level of responsibility. Yes with knowledge comes responsibility. Once we know something, we must act on it.
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden, their eyes were open and they KNEW they were naked, and then felt responsible to cover up. Genesis 3: 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. They were ashamed! So going back to the questions from last post; What Emotions did this "knowing" bring to surface in you? Happiness, joy, satisfaction, guilt, disgust, fear? For them it brought in fear - something they didn't have before. God did not design us to have fear, look at 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. However, when we don't operate in obedience to God and His word, we step out of His protection zone.
Someone once told me "Don' t let your ears be trash cans!" This is such a powerful statement and can pertain to so many circumstances that we encounter daily. Some of these are obvious, some are not so much. Sometimes we actively participate in filling our ear up with junk and sometimes we don't. If faith comes by hearing, good or bad, then what we hear becomes an integral part of who we become and how we act. Therefore who we want to become is what we should allow our ears hear.Here are some more questions to ponder that will help point out areas your ears are being trash cans. Remember, once we "know" something it takes on a responsibility in our lives to act or react.
1.) Have you ever had a time where someone tells you something personal about someone else?
2.) Did it change how you felt about that person?
3.) Has someone "vented" to you about a fight they had with someone else?
4.) Did that cause you to have an opinion about the other person?
5.) How did you feel once they made up and weren't fighting anymore?
6.) Do you struggle to be nice to someone after you have heard "trash" about them?
Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.
Next post I want to go over some of the ways we can be pro-active instead of re-active. There are things we need to know in life, and wisdom we should seek. God was well pleased with Solomon for asking for wisdom. But there is a difference between knowing and wisdom. As I continue these next couple of posts, I want to point out some ways we can be more balanced between good knowing and bad knowing, and how to use Gods wisdom and self control.Be
Blessed,Lynn
Posted by Lynn
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Want to Know a Secret?
The Price we pay for being in the "Know"!
Part 1
Much of our lives is governed by a curious nature. We are driven by not wanting to be left out.
Eve was deceived by wanting to know what God knew. Read Gen 2:15-17 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
It continues that God did not want Adam to be alone, so God put him to sleep took his rib, and made Eve to be his helper, Genesis 18-24 .
Verse 25 - Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Now lets read Gen 3:4-5 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
See Eve was "hooked" in by the temptation on "knowing". She had to know what she was missing. She wanted to know what God knew, or so she thought.
My husband and I get a chuckle out of our youngest daughter's curiosity. She just has to know. If we need her to respond to a message or text right away, all we need to do is say something like "Guess What"? or "I got a surprise to tell you", and she calls right back. She is catching on to this a little but it still works. Because like Eve we are all naturally/fleshly curious. We don't want to feel like we are being left out!
Much of our lives are governed by this, take television, they end a season with a cliff hanger to bring us back next year, we want to know what happens next.
Over the next few posts I want to point out some of the hidden traps that our curiosity gets us into. What dangers we can suffer from having to know, and what Gods word has to say to help guard us and save us from those traps.
Here are a few Questions to ponder about wanting to know.
1.) When was a time that you just had to know something?
2.) How did you feel after you found out?
3.) Were you happy or disappointed in you findings?
4.) What Emotions did this "knowing" bring to surface in you? Happiness, joy, satisfaction, guilt, disgust, fear?
I pray this series of posts will help you to grow. Until next time -
Blessings,
Lynn
Part 1
Much of our lives is governed by a curious nature. We are driven by not wanting to be left out.
Eve was deceived by wanting to know what God knew. Read Gen 2:15-17 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
It continues that God did not want Adam to be alone, so God put him to sleep took his rib, and made Eve to be his helper, Genesis 18-24 .
Verse 25 - Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Now lets read Gen 3:4-5 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
See Eve was "hooked" in by the temptation on "knowing". She had to know what she was missing. She wanted to know what God knew, or so she thought.
My husband and I get a chuckle out of our youngest daughter's curiosity. She just has to know. If we need her to respond to a message or text right away, all we need to do is say something like "Guess What"? or "I got a surprise to tell you", and she calls right back. She is catching on to this a little but it still works. Because like Eve we are all naturally/fleshly curious. We don't want to feel like we are being left out!
Much of our lives are governed by this, take television, they end a season with a cliff hanger to bring us back next year, we want to know what happens next.
Over the next few posts I want to point out some of the hidden traps that our curiosity gets us into. What dangers we can suffer from having to know, and what Gods word has to say to help guard us and save us from those traps.
Here are a few Questions to ponder about wanting to know.
1.) When was a time that you just had to know something?
2.) How did you feel after you found out?
3.) Were you happy or disappointed in you findings?
4.) What Emotions did this "knowing" bring to surface in you? Happiness, joy, satisfaction, guilt, disgust, fear?
I pray this series of posts will help you to grow. Until next time -
Blessings,
Lynn
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