Nobility or the Status Quo?

 

Are you nobler than those who are quite satisfied with their comfortable beliefs? Read the below before you answer.

Acts 17:
11 Now, these Jews were nobler than those in Thessaloni′ca, for they received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

When we are challenged by credible sources that we respect regarding the teachings of Holy Scripture, are we noble and do we give honest prayer, thought, and research to their challenges? Or, like anyone else who prefers the comfort of their own presuppositions, the fear of honest assessment, and the need to avoid the unknown, do we brush them off? (or like the Jews in Thessalonica, go on the attack?).

Does the "truth set you free" or are you the warden of your own captivity? The search is for Christ NO MATTER THE COSTS.

"My word is truth, and the truth will set you free" - Jesus (John 8)

Is it the "salvation" that Jesus offers that we truly want?

How We Find Out

 

By their fruits, you will know them Matt. 7:20

We find out what people are really like by the way they take the things that happen to them. One might think a woman very charming, yet find her fail in the day of trouble, or one might be with a man when a fire broke out at a theatre, and find that he was immediately in a panic; or one might see someone, whom one had always regarded as very commonplace, do a very beautiful act. In each case, one would say, 'Well, I never thought he or she was like that! The circumstances of life reveal character.

Our Lord willed to come into this world and bring with Him nothing, to start with the poorest and to meet life as it came, and each thing as he met it revealed His character. Hate came to him, and He revealed His love. Success came to Him, and he revealed His humility. Failure came and revealed his faith. All things came to Him, eventually death, and death itself contributed to his royalty, for it revealed that He is alive forevermore.

Life finds us out, and our first discovery may be very like the discovery of St. Peter when he went out and wept bitterly after denying his Lord. But that was not the last word about Simon Peter, nor need our failures ever be the last word about ourselves. We can learn by our mistakes, and, if life finds us out, we can find out our God in our lives, and through its challenge and His grace bring forth the fruit that shall make us known as His children.

Father Andrew - Meditations, pg. 273

Doing Right or Getting the Right Result?

 

James 1:

2 My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; 4 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

The surprising statement no doubt came out of St. James's own experience. The only way in which we can read "trials" is by taking it as being for the testing of the will, and that is surely what the apostle means. It has to be proved that we are doing right from the highest motives; that we are doing right because it is right, and not because it is profitable; that we are doing the true thing because it is true, and not because it is polotic (politically expedient).

... if we do right from thoughts of punishment or reward, we may be doing right things but we are not really doing right.

-Father Andrew, Meditations, pg. 272