Ready. Aim. Fire.

"If we don't love others, we are just a lot of noise."

WHAT IS UP with “Christians”? And I put that in quotes. I go online, and there’s a post with a list of “types of people” who are headed to hell. 1) What’s the purpose of this? 2) There is no two. I scroll down and someone else has a picture of the Jordan River, Israel, with a historical comment, which would be interesting except they followed it by saying “a lot of people with bad ecclesiology” get baptized there. 1) What is the purpose of this? 2) What does that word mean? Airheads, the lot of them. God is love.

Stop taking potshots at each other. So what she believes if she walks with a slight limp on Tuesdays, she will move closer to God. So what he believes he needs five crosses tattooed on his upper left pec. I have a newsflash for you. Jesus loves her and him. And another factola: He will save both of them. Factoid 3: He will take them both to heaven.

Jesus rejects no one for wearing shorts to church. For having the wrong skin color. (There is no wrong skin color. He created all skin colors.) For being a man OR a woman in the wrong environment. You know what that is. Stop using the apostle Paul as an excuse to keep women under your thumb.

In the Scriptures, there is one word translated both “valiant” and “virtuous.” The Proverbs 31 woman is VIRTUOUS, and she is also VALIANT. King David was VALIANT. He was also VIRTUOUS. Neither one are male-only or female-only qualities.

In heaven, there are no denominations. You will not find Baptist Street or Pentecostal Corner. Hold up. I’ll meet you over on Methodist Way. Meanwhile, we cross the street and stay in our lane. When Jesus chose His disciples, He chose fishermen, a tax collector, and a zealot, amongst other cultural types. In the book of Acts, people couldn’t believe God would use them. Hey … Aren’t these guys Galileans? The answer to that is yes. But there they stood speaking in a multitude of languages they’d never learned.

Jesus made a murderer the greatest voice of the New Testament, and that man counted everything he’d been as nothing more than a pile of crapola.

We grieve the Holy Spirit, we grieve our Savior and our loving heavenly Father with our potshots. Jesus died for whosoever, and we believe that, but we’ve put a qualification on it. He saves them, then they have to fit into our Christian mold. Stamp. Next. Or we refer to their background continually. (mumbles) That’s the guy who used to work in a … a … bar. I think he spent time in jail. (clears throat).

So what. I have watched some of the most fabulous worship videos of men and women praising God while in prison. Full of God, their voices lifted higher than those sitting in the pew. God loves them. The Holy Spirit fills them. Jesus speaks to them.

Minister Jesse Duplantis tells a story from his wild youth. He was a rock musician and a drug addict in his younger years. But he had a godly mother who would not stop praying. And one time, he was in a bar in Mexico, wasted, when the bartender asked in faltering English if there was a Jesse Duplantis there. He didn’t go by his real name and knew instantly who had called. God told his mother where he was, and she called and told him to leave the bar. Pronto.

God saves men and women in bars. He saves rock musicians, hip hop artists, gang members. We’re all for this. But now that you are, please set aside what you have been trained in. Did you know there is Christian hip hop genre? There is Christian heavy metal and Christian bluegrass. The Holy Spriit actually writes all genres of music. You don’t have to like it or listen to it, but you do have to love the person who writes it and stop taking potshots.

If their “ecclesiology” is wrong, who cares. Pray for them. If they were baptized in the Jordan River or the Amazon or the Mississippi, who cares. Love them. If a woman is preaching behind the pulpit. Please support her. Whoever that person is, whatever their occupation is, whatever their shortcomings in the faith, we are to encourage them.

Condemnation is from the devil. Strife and malice and derision are from the enemy. And just because you have a smile on your face and a suit-and-tie on does not give you license to criticize. I have felt the love and mercy of God on a scale that is unimaginable. Two mornings in a row, I woke up and the room was filled with it. God gave me this experience because there is no church outside of the love of God, and I needed to know.

We can have the faith to move mountains, and speak in angelic languages, we can give away all we own to feed the poor and be the smartest people on the planet, but if we don’t love others, we are just a lot of noise. And here’s the truth of these Scripture verses in 1 Corinthians, Jesus told us our faith could move mountains. The Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost and filled all kinds of people, causing them to speak in other tongues. Jesus gave His body to be burned for any who would believe. The Father’s heart is to feed the poor, to prosper them. God is love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 is an instruction to us. But it is also a description of God. And I have said this on repeat, but nowhere in the gospels did Jesus turn anyone aside for all the petty reasons we criticize them. Love never fails. When all else is removed, when prophecy and tongues have ceased, love will go on. And Jesus will return for a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle.

A church made up of Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, those in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians. Men and women who have lived lives that we could have taken a part in. We could have loved them. We could have encouraged them, made them laugh, helped them get past that bad place in their life.

Or we could waste our words shooting arrows on social media.

“Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.” (Psalms 31:20)

“When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?” (John 8:10)

“idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, arguing, jealousy, anger, selfishness, contentiousness, division,” (Galatians 5:20 VOICE)


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com