Did the Rules Change?

Usually my blog posts are funny or light hearted. Today, I woke up with a heavy heart. The first thought I had this morning was a message to my heart. How much have I changed in my walk with God? Have I grown closer or have I edged away seeing how far I could go and still be connected to Him?

I don't want to slip farther away and only touch Him with my fingertips. I want to be drawn close to the heart of God. I don't want Him to have to yell at me so that I can hear Him over the noise of my life. I want to be close enough that I can hear Him sigh or whisper.

It is so easy to distant myself from Him, but why would I want to do that? He is my everything! Life without Jesus would be a nightmare to me. Life at a distance to Jesus is no better. My mother used to tell me to remember that Jesus is always with me and I need to remember not to offend Him. This caused me to know that He hears everything. He sees everything. He knows everything I am doing.

Some may say that is a given. God knows everything, but when you put it personally where He is sitting with you, walking with you, and working with you...it changes your speech, your reactions to others, and your habits.

My heart hurts when I hear of Christian friends who have taken up either cursing or vulgar language. I didn't get the memo from the Bible that this had suddenly become acceptable. Before you stone me, know that I know it is easy to slip into this behavior since the whole world seems to not care about keeping their speech clean. You may scream at me saying, "We aren't supposed to judge each other!" This morning, in the Bible, I Corinthians 5:12 says: "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside..."

The words around this are about excusing sinful behavior of those who are Christians. We aren't to scream at each other about this stuff, but we aren't supposed to support bad behavior. In chapter 4 of I Corinthians it says: "Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers..." As you know, fathers correct our bad behavior. Just because they correct us, it doesn't mean that love is not the motive. In fact, love is the motive. When a child who is not mine misbehaves, I can walk away and ignore him. If he is my child, I will correct him because I want him to become everything I know he can be.

I know many will misunderstand this post. That's okay. I am a mother and a grandmother. I feel for this generation when the mothers and grandmothers who are Christians have stopped living up to the Christ like standard. We must keep out language clean. We must love others. We must dress modestly. (You can be in style and do this.) We must behave ourselves in a way that others know that we know that Jesus is walking and living right by our side. The rules have not changed. God is holy and we must strive to live close to Him...within whispering distance.