Today, in Matthew 6:22-23, I read this, "The eye is the lamp of the body; so if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness ..." I read this and I thought 'We (Christians) always talk about guarding our eyes, but I think we say it out of habit too often.' This needs to be serious. If our eyes are clear we will be full of light. People can see this light! If we call ourselves Christians and then go out and watch a bad movie, they won't see the light! They'll see darkness! That is not what we want them to see in people who have claimed that they have been saved and changed by Christ! Guard your eyes not only for your own sake, but for Christ's name and his glory!
For His Son's Glory,
-Kole
The Lamp
Excuses and Blame-shifting
Why do we make up excuses and blame shift the responsibility on someone else? It may be because we don't want to get in trouble. Or maybe it's because it really wasn't our fault. Regardless, I think the main reason is because of PRIDE. We don't want people to think badly of us, or we think that we would be too responsible to make that mistake. We think ourselves to be better then we should.
So if the problem is pride, what is the solution? The solution is being humble and confessing our transgressions. One way to be humble, is having a right view of God; so that we have a right view of Man and with it our total depravity and need for Him.
Proverbs 28:13 says, "He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion."
Hebrews 12:1-2 says, "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entraps us (let's say the sin it's talking about is pride), and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of faith." We'll stop there. This passage tells us the way to run this race in life is to fix our eyes on Christ. I encourage you, today, to fix your eyes on Christ, and lay aside every encumbrance.
-Kole
