GROWING ALONGSIDE OF WEEDS

GREETINGS IN THE NAME OF JESUS:


  Everyone who has ever planted anything knows what it is to pull weeds.  Even in the smallest flower garden, those pesky weeds become a part of the landscape that if left alone will ruin the looks of everything else you have taken the time and care to nurture and plant, water and cultivate.  If your garden is a farm where your livelihood depends on the outcome of the crop that you have planted the appearance of weeds or others types of pests can be a real problem.

  That is the same kind of thing that happens when we find weeds in the church body.  While we don't like to say anything needlessly to people who become an irritant to an otherwise unified body of believers in Christ, I have yet to find a church that does not have a few living and growing right alongside the good grain which has been planted there

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  The first church certainly had its own crop of gossipers, backbiters, and false teachers too, but it has always been a problem while trying to bring the truth, and good solid Gospel teaching to new Christians who are susceptible to getting pulled off of a healthy journey toward Christian maturity.

  Most of us do not know how many relatively NEW Christians are among our numbers in the church today.  Because of that, we tend to discount the number of WEEDS that are also among us who in some way tend to harm the growth of those who do not know how to detect what a weed looks like in the churches.

 Apart from seeing someone put their hands on someone's throat and choke them violently within the church service, it is hard to see who is doing a disservice to our newly committed Christians.  It is important that we all watch out for our new brothers and sisters because it is our duty as a church body  (or family) in Christ to protect young Christians from the deceit and lies of this world, and there is no better place to find that going on than right in the middle of the church.

I would really like to see us start to protect our babies in Christ a little better than we have been doing because my friends we are losing many people out of sheer neglect.  I face that is a part of a weeding session I want to have with you in the next blog.  It deals with the way we plead and cry over someone to come to Christ and then when they do within 6 months we treat them like they should know everything that we do about Christ.  Unfortunately, I fear that many of the new Christians DO know as much as most of the rest of us and THAT IS SAD!

  By its nature, the Church should be a place of protection and stability for the new Christian to learn and grow in.  The church is the last place where we need to cultivate weeds to grow along with the good grain.  Paul warned about things like this constantly too so it is not something that is new to this generation of people, but it is something that I believe we need to be ever more mindful of as time grows closer and the world gets ever colder.  May you richly bless God through your life in Him.



THE UNWORTHY SERVANT