“Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people.”
Jude 1:3 NLT
If this is not an example of a true Christian, I don’t know what is! We are not like the rest of the world because what we see in that is their continuous desire to share about things that they like and avoid the hard conversations, or vice versa. Rarely do they have a reason to do both as they seek what makes the most sense for the individual they are talking to. That is a sign of selfishness. Jude has the want to share about the joy of salvation but he has the wisdom to bring up their lack of representing God in their other relationships instead. As a father you need to find what sort of interaction is most effective for your chid’s development, and sometimes this may take some mature humbling and sacrifice. Is it best to give your kid tough love and whip him into shape, or would it make more sense to speak to him with firmness while also providing also providing guidance? It is selfish to go the route that we WANT to go, instead of deciding to do what is most beneficially effective for the people we are teaching. We all have a natural longing to connect with others and we often do this by sharing things we all like, but do not mishandle the relationship by avoiding things that need to be talked about just because it is difficult or inconvenient. As a pastor, I imagine this wisdom is primal for effectively leading the Body of Christ, otherwise you face the inconsequential slippery slope of creating a cult out of a group of believers that follow a shepherd that only works out of his own comfortability. This is the same as building a slaughterhouse around a blind flock of sheep assuming they are being led to life and salvation. We need to be very careful about how we bring Glory to God. Make sure it is not glory to ourselves and our own feelings and heartstrings. We are not masters of puppets. We submit to God because He is our master, don’t get it twisted. and what a loving master He is, I would add.
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