How To Respond to Criticism

How To Respond to Criticism

What are we to do when we’re condemned by others? We are all going to be unfairly judged. So we’d better address how to deal with it.

It’s so easy for us to be defensive and lash out. Hurt people hurt people. But you don’t have to. You can break the cycle.  Here’s how: Ignore or Confront… but Forgive and Bless.

Let’s draw this out a bit…

Ignore
Nehemiah didn’t stop his work on the wall to confront those who unfairly spread lies about him. Maybe this is the tactic the Father has for you. Ask Him and obey what He says. But be careful if its in your personality to avoid conflict because you may just be assuming the Father is telling you to ignore it.  

Confront
Jesus confronted the religious leaders of the day when they said it was by satan that He was casting out demons. Perhaps it serves the Father’s purpose for you to confront.  Don’t do this because you enjoy it. You’re in the wrong place if you enjoy putting someone in his or her place. Still, don’t back away if the Father tells you to stand.

Forgive
We’re taught to forgive others for our sake, not for theirs. When we forgive others, Christ can forgive us. 

Bless them
    Let’s let the words of Paul to the church in Rome expand this concept:

Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say,
   “I will take revenge;
      I will pay them back,”
      says the Lord.
Instead,
   “If your enemies are hungry, feed them.
      If they are thirsty, give them something to drink.
   In doing this, you will heap
      burning coals of shame on their heads.”
Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.
Romans 12:18-21 (New Living Translation)

I have given you authority... to overcome... the enemy... Luke 10:19

Use Your Authority!

I have given you authority... to overcome... the enemy... Luke 10:19

Has satan singled you out for attack? Are you wondering, 'Why would he even bother with someone like me?' The answer is - influence. Job's influence was a constant irritant to satan. One day God said to satan, 'Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him?' (Job 1:8 NKJV). Shortly after that conversation satan attacked Job's health, his children, his marriage and his business. You can't get God's attention without getting satan's too! Whatever glorifies God, enrages our enemy. But you have the power to overcome him. Jesus said, 'I saw satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority... to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you' (Luke 10:18-19 NIV). Notice, you haven't been called to defeat satan; Jesus already did that 2,000 years ago. You have been called to enforce His defeat each day. Jesus already disarmed and made a public spectacle of him at the cross (Colossians 2:15). When General MacArthur met the Supreme Commander of the Japanese forces at the end of World War II, he took the sword out of his hand, declared victory and enforced the terms of unconditional surrender. And that's what Jesus did for you at the cross. When He died and rose again He stripped the devil of his power and declared, '..."All [power] in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go..."' (Matthew 28:18-19 NIV). Go in His power. Go in His strength. Go in His name. He has given you authority over the enemy - use it.

The Whole Armor of God

The Whole Armor of God

10 A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. 12 For we* are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

13 Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. 14 Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. 15 For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared.* 16 In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil.* 17 Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

18 Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.*  19 And pray for me, too. Ask God to give me the right words so I can boldly explain God’s mysterious plan that the Good News is for Jews and Gentiles alike.* 20 I am in chains now, still preaching this message as God’s ambassador. So pray that I will keep on speaking boldly for him, as I should.  

Why should I save sex for marriage?

When God creates something, He creates it with purpose and design. The Genesis account of creation makes it clear that God'screation is “good”(Genesis 1:31). But mankind has a history of distorting what God has made, whether out of ignorance or just plain stubbornness. The golden calf (idol) of the Israelites, for example. Gold is beautiful to look at, but God clearly did not want His people worshipping it.

Sex (and yes, sex was God’s idea) is no different. God created it, and therefore it is reasonable to expect that it is good. But when man distorts it by ignoring God's specific standards, it becomes harmful and destructive. So the question we've asked “why save sex for marriage” is really a question of understanding God's purpose and design for sex. We can choose to do things God's way, and experience the beauty of His plan, or we can choose to do things our way, and experience harm and destruction (Proverbs 16:25).

So, let's talk first about why God created sex. One reason is obvious: procreation. When God told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), they probably figured out that He wanted them to have sex. But God also wanted them to develop intimacy with one another, and He knew that sex would help them do that, in a way that nothing else could.

God also knew that because sex is so powerful in creating intimacy that there must be some constraints on how it was to be used, so He specifically relegated sex to the arena of marriage. The kind of intimacy that God desires between a married couple cannot occur between one person and several others; it can only be experienced between one man and one woman. 

Hence God has specifically said, “Do not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14), and “Flee sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18). That is, do not have sex with someone who is not your spouse. Obedience requires that sex be reserved for one’s spouse.

So far we have two basic reasons to save sex for marriage: (1) God tells us to, and (2) God's purpose and design for sex cannot be fully achieved any other way. Many, though, have argued that non-marriage sex is not all that harmful. Let's look carefully at the potential consequences for this particular area of disobedience.

Sex outside of marriage causes damage in at least two areas: (1) physical consequences, and (2) relational consequences. The physical and relational consequences of sex outside of marriage are painfully real. 

Leaning on the everlasting arms

What a fellowship of what a joy divine
Leaning on the everlasting arms
What a blessedness what a peace of mind
Leaning on the everlasting arms

Leaning leaning safe and secure from all alarms
Leaning leaning on the everlasting arms

oh how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way
leaning on the everlasting arms
Oh how bright the path goes from day to day
Leaning on the everlasting arms

What have i did dread what have i to fear
Leaning on the everlasting arms
I have blessed peace with my lord so near
Leaning on the everlasting arms

Sing to Jesus

Come and see, look on this mystery
The Lord of the Universe, nailed to a tree
Christ our God, spilling His Holy blood
Bowing in anguish, His sacred head

Sing to Jesus, Lord of our shame
Lord of our sinful hearts.
He is our great Redeemer.
Sing to Jesus, Honor His name.
Sing of His faithfulness, pouring His life out unto death

Come you weary and He will give you rest
Come you who mourn, lay on His breast
Christ who died, risen in Paradise
Giver of mercy, Giver of Life

Sing to Jesus His is the throne
Now and forever,
He is the King of Heaven.
Sing to Jesus, we are His own.
Now and forever sing for the love our God has shown.

Sing to Jesus, Lord of our shame
Lord of our sinful hearts.
He is our great Redeemer.
Sing to Jesus, Honor His name.
Sing to Jesus His is the throne
Now and forever,
He is the King of Heaven.
Sing to Jesus, we are His own.
Now and forever sing for the love our God has shown.

Create in me a clean heart, O God

• Create in me a clean heart, O God,
  And renew a right spirit within me.
  Cast me not away from Thy presence;
  Take not Thy holy Spirit from me.
  Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation;
  And renew a right spirit within me.

Lord I give You my heart I give You my soul

This is my desire, to honor You
Lord with all my heart I worship You
All I have within me
I give You praise
All that I adore is in You

Lord I give You my heart
I give You my soul
I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I'm awake
Lord have Your way in me

A controlled tongue -- James 1:19-27

James 1:19-27

 (NIV)

Listening and Doing

 ¹⁹ My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰ because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. ²¹ Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

 ²² Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³ Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵ But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

 ²⁶ Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. ²⁷ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

I love you Lord

Our Father, who art in heaven

Our Father, who art in heaven
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

I Exalt Thee

3 Roots of Job’s Faith

I realize that as much as Job is an extreme example of trials, he is also an extreme example of faith. His faith was so deeply rooted that it was not as easy for Satan to sift him as he thought. So I realize that I’m no Job and that you’re no Job. I realize that the roots of some of our faith are barely below the topsoil. But I also realize that the substance of Job’s strength should be and can be ours. So I will expose Job’s roots, that is, show you the under-the-surface theological foundations that made him (and can make us) hold up under duress.

Know that Suffering Can Be Good

Since the fall of mankind, death and disease and sickness and suffering have entered our world. We live on a cursed planet with cursed people. So while suffering is linked with evil, it also can be linked with good. Sometimes suffering can be good because it is for our good. Job understood this. That is why, when the commodities of his comfortable life were snatched away, he didn’t view it as something purely evil. He didn’t say, “What’s the Devil up to?” or “Why has this great evil come upon me?” In fact, nowhere in his reactions and replies do we have the remotest suggestion that Job saw suffering as abnormal or immoral (or satanic).

Job realized that material and spiritual prosperity are divine gifts, and as divine gifts they can be freely given and freely taken away. He must have known that peace, prosperity, self-security, and happiness can become perils that threaten to hinder or prohibit one from undertaking and continuing the arduous journey of faith. He must have believed that suffering possesses the strange but beautiful power of liberating one’s soul from the seduction of safety and the love of temporal, perishable goods. In these ways, he anticipates the Christian necessity of cross bearing (Luke 9:23)—of persecution for righteousness’ sake (Matt. 5:10), learning obedience from hardships (Heb. 5:8), and sharing in the sufferings of Christ (Phil. 1:29; cf. 3:10).

Trust in God’s Providence

It used to be you could use the words providence and God interchangeably. People took for granted the reality that God rules every aspect of the universe, every event of history, and every detail of our personal lives; that God even numbers the very hairs on our heads, as Jesus said. But since the Enlightenment and the rise of the scientific worldview, it seems now that only American insurance companies recognize something of God’s continuing activity in the world. To them, at least on paper, God can be credited (or “blamed”) as being the architect and builder of both personal calamities and national catastrophes.

Why is it more historical, scientific, and sophisticated to reason that if God is all-loving, then the existence of suffering tells us that he must not be all-powerful; and if God is all-powerful and yet such affliction exists, well then he must not be all-loving? People say that today, don’t they? And then they think they are so clever. They smugly wash their hands of God and Christianity and Jesus and religion. God-problem solved. Case closed. Debate won.

There are, however, at least two flaws in such logic.

1. First, such a view refuses to fathom that human misery can in any way contain elements of divine love. Yet this is the message of our faith. At the very center of the gospel is God’s omnipotent love incarnate, a love that is pierced through the wood of an old rugged cross. A love that suffers, a love that dies!
2. Second, such a view assumes that if suffering appears to be pointless to me, then it must be pointless. Sometimes we are so arrogant and ignorant. While we know from experience (as we look retrospectively to times of suffering in our lives and see the benefits of such times), we still assume that if our finite “minds can’t plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can’t be any!”

Job had no idea what was going on in the heavens. He wasn’t privy to the chamber room conversation. And yet he gave God the benefit of the doubt. He knew who was the potter and who was the clay, and as the clay he didn’t say to the potter, “Do you know what you’re doing?” Rather, he was able to be cracked and battered about because he trusted that he was still in God’s hands. He trusted in the purposeful providence of God.

Believe in the Resurrection

Believe that this life is not all there is. We live. We die. And then there is the resurrection.

It is not apparent that Job believed in life after death, in a day in which all wrongs would be judged and made right. Yet as Job speaks with his friends, it becomes apparent that he believes in a bodily resurrection. This is nowhere more evident than in Job 19:25–26, where he answers his friends’ false accusations, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed [after this body is turned to ashes], yet in my flesh I shall see God!” Job held the belief that there would be a resurrection and that in that day there also would be retribution.

If we would look toward the afterlife and live in light of the resurrection like Job did, then our troubles would be far more tolerable. The apparent tyrannies of providence would be more palatable, for we would remember that God still “has time,” so to speak, to remedy any and all injustices of history. By looking forward to a future vindication and the joy that will accompany it, we can affirm Paul’s words in Romans 8:18: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (cf. Heb. 11–12).

The LORD Is My Light and My Salvation

Psalm 27

The LORD Is My Light and My Salvation

Of David.

 ¹The LORD is my light and my salvation;
    whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life;
   of whom shall I be afraid? ²When evildoers assail me
   to eat up my flesh,
my adversaries and foes,
   it is they who stumble and fall.
 ³Though an army encamp against me,
   my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me,
   yet I will be confident.
 ⁴ One thing have I asked of the LORD,
   that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
   all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
   and to inquire in his temple.
 ⁵For he will hide me in his shelter
   in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
   he will lift me high upon a rock.
 ⁶And now my head shall be lifted up
   above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent
   sacrifices with shouts of joy;
 I will sing and make melody to the LORD.
 ⁷ Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud;
   be gracious to me and answer me!
⁸You have said, "Seek my face."My heart says to you,
   "Your face, LORD, do I seek."

 ⁹ Hide not your face from me.
Turn not your servant away in anger,
   O you who have been my help.
Cast me not off; forsake me not,
   O God of my salvation!
¹⁰For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
   but the LORD will take me in.
 ¹¹Teach me your way, O LORD,
   and lead me on a level path
   because of my enemies.
¹²Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;
   for false witnesses have risen against me,
   and they breathe out violence.
 ¹³I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD
   in the land of the living!
¹⁴ Wait for the LORD;
   be strong, and let your heart take courage;
   wait for the LORD!

Philippians 1:6

Psalm 139:13

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139: 13

When we suffer we recognize our inability to walk this life with anything less than the sustaining power of the Lord.

When we suffer we recognize our inability to walk this life with anything less than the sustaining power of the Lord. 

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. -1 Peter 1:6-7

                                    

Put on the full armor of God

Ephesians 6:11-19

 
¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

 ¹⁸ And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.