Deep Well Discipleship

HEAD, HEART, HANDS Have you ever met a know it all?  You know, the person that tends to know everything about everything.  They might even know about your life more than you do as well.  The problem I tend to see in the life of a know it all is that they often fail to live out some, if not all, of the knowledge they have.  They know what foods not to eat but they eat them anyway.  They know every call to make at a sporting event but they don't coach or officiate.  Know it all types tend to posses lots of knowledge but it never seems to move from their head to their hearts and from their hearts to their hands.  This is often true in the realm of Christians, more than many would ever admit. James writes that faith apart from works is foolish (Jas 2:20).  He is not saying works save you but if you indeed claim to have faith in Christ your works should express that faith.  Often as Christians we have lots of knowledge that we have garner...

I’m not racist but… For years the phrase that makes my skin crawl always starts the same way “I’m not racist, but…”  What follows is always a racist statement.  It is as if the first part of the statement clears the way for us to be horrible people and get away with it.  It is akin to “Don’t take offense to this, but…”  Like someone will say “Oh, since you said don’t be offended I guess I can’t be…”  Seriously, you are just looking for a way to be a not very nice person and have an avenue to justify yourself.  Racism is unfortunately still a problem in America and it is even more so unfortunately a problem in churches.  I have had more than one “Christian” come to me with the crushing and sinful statement “I’m not a racist, but…” and follow up with something that is racist yet they justify it as not racist because they said they weren’t racist.  The reality is we can say “I’m not a racist” but if our words speak in a racially demeaning way ...