One of the best ways to make yourself miserable is to focus on all the bad things you can think of, rather than your blessings. I am not suggesting that you wear blinders and pretend that all is well. We need to be knowledgeable of what’s going on in the world, but we shouldn’t obsess over it. What’s happening should get our attention and provoke us to action – proper action.
As unpopular as it is, sin should be denounced, but if we aren’t careful we will spend all our time condemning what’s wrong rather than contributing to making things better. In these troublesome times it’s easy to see, as Paul said, that the world is getting “worse and worse”(2 Tim.3:13). And sadly we Christians have developed the habit of criticizing the conditions and acting as though it’s everyone else’s fault rather than ours.
We see the sins and are shocked, but why are we surprised? Isn’t that what the Bible tells us will happen? What I wonder about is why we lay all the blame on the doorstep of the world when we ourselves have failed so miserably.
We can expect meat to spoil when there is no salt, but are we not “the salt of the earth”? And we expect men to stumble in darkness, but are we not called to be “the light of the world”? That being the case, the corruption of the world can be attributed, in part, to our failure in not being salt. And the confusion of the world relates to us failing to be light. So, rather than cursing the conditions of the world let us confess our own failures. We can’t control or change the world, but we can have an influence on those we come into contact with.Think about it! -HDS
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
Humble,Tx.
