Speaking Grace in our Homes and Local Churches

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” – Ephesians 4:29

The New Testament uses family language to describe the local church. We are brothers and sisters, the household of God, and as Paul says in Ephesians 4, “we are members one of another.” We belong to one another and labor with great care the building up of this household for God’s pleasure. Our heavenly Father commands your mouth, which He created for His good pleasure, to speak grace toward the ears of His beloved church to build her up.

The reality of Christ’s cleansing of your heart is displayed in the purity of our speech (Luke 6:45). Our Lord commands your mind renewed and heart pure to love His church, and He sanctifies His beloved by His truth to put away “all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander along with malice” and “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:31-32).

In this new year, make this doctrine an emphasis in your home. Encourage your household how to think purely and speak about purely the other households in the church of Jesus Christ. This means our marriages and homes must be atmospheres which greatly discourage corrupting talk and commands repentance for corrupting thoughts of other members of the local church. This also means we must cultivate homes with the foundation of Christ’s peace to speak only what is good for building up and speaking grace to one another.

There is something beautiful in speaking blessing to one another. Whether another family in our church family is struggling or well, communicate blessing to their ears to hear. “God bless your home with His peace, brother,” is something that must resound in the hallways of a church building far more than criticism. May God grant you wisdom, restore peace and joy, comfort you and your home, protect you for the evil one, remind you and your home of His steadfast love and mercy. 

To speak a blessing, not simply as the act itself but from the heart, can only come from a Christ-like love and care for each other with tenderness and forgiveness (vs32). A genuine love from someone being matured in Christ to labor and build up His church in peaceful unity (Ephesians 4:12-13). May God bless you and your home by His truth that you may bless the other members of Christ’s church. May He build us up for His good pleasure.

Heavenly Father, forgive our hearts of any corrupting thoughts and purify our hearts and minds by Your truth. As You have forgiven us in Christ, grant us tenderness to forgive others in Christ. Grace our mouths, which You have created for Your good pleasure, to speak grace in our homes and toward one another. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Love One Another

In the upper room on the night Jesus was betrayed, our Lord shockingly put on the form of a servant and washed His disciples' feet. Soon after, Judas Iscariot leaves the Passover Meal and makes his way to members of the Sanhedrin to receive payment in exchange for betraying Jesus.When Judas leaves, Jesus tells the remaining disciples God is about to glorify Him. Our Lord gently calls them "little children," telling them He is to be with them only a little while longer, and where He is going they cannot come.

"A new commandment I give you," Jesus proclaimed (John 13:34). Think about this. Jesus, Lord and Judge of the universe proclaims a command to His followers. Jesus, who is described in Revelation as having "eyes like a flame of fire" and a "voice like the roar of many waters" and "from His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and His face was like the sun shining in full strength" (Revelation 1:12-16). He is commanding you and me as Judge and Ruler with an expectation to obey.

"Love one another," the Lord ordered. How?

Jesus continued His mandate, "As I have loved you, you also are to love one another." How have You loved us, Lord, that we may love one another in the same way?

Love is patient and kind
Love does not envy or boast
Love is not arrogant or rude. 
Love does not insist on its own way
Love is not irritable or resentful
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  
Love bears all things
Love believes all things
Love hopes all things
Love endures all things.
                                (I Corinthians 13:4-7)

The church is the bride of Christ, and as our Lord took on the form of a servant and washed His disciples' feet, He washes His bride whom He died for with the water of His Word (Ephesians 5:25-26). When our Lord had finished washing His disciples' feet, He said, "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you." Our Lord has given us an example of loving service He is commanding you and I to obey in His church.

This is what a church is to look like who is "bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:1-7). To disobey the love one another command in rebellion to the Head of the Church is to disrupt her Spirit-given unity and peace.

As described in I Corinthians 13, love in the church bought by Jesus Christ who loves His church is a patient, long-suffering love brimming with kindness towards one another. There is no air of arrogance or rudeness. No voice of boasting how much better we perform our Christian duties than others. Love does not demand from each other to accomplish our preferences and get our own way. Love dispels any and all tension of irritability or resentful desire to injure others. Love rejoices in the truth, not at wrongdoing.

Charles Spurgeon comments, "This love both covers and bears all things. It never proclaims the errors of others. It refuses to see faults unless it may kindly help in their removal. It stands in the presence of a fault with a finger on its lips. It does not attempt to make a catalog of provocations."

Spurgeon said in reference to "believing all things," 

To our fellow Christians, love always believes the best of them. I wish we had more of this faith abroad in all the churches, for a horrid blight falls upon some communities through suspicion and mistrust. Though everything may be pure and right, yet certain weak minds are suddenly fevered with anxiety through the notion that all is wrong and rotten. This unholy mis-trust is in the air, a blight upon all peace: it is a sort of fusty mildew of the soul by which all sweet perfume of confidence is killed. (Source)

 Instead, this love which believes all things

believes good of others as long as it can, and when it is forced to fear that wrong has been done, love will not readily yield to evidence but will give the accused brother or sister the benefit of many doubts. Some persons habitually believe everything that is bad about others; they are not the children of love.

The Apostle Paul concludes this thought in his letter to the local church in Corinth with this, "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

In his book, Charity and its Fruits, the Great Awakening preacher Jonathan Edwards writes,

Do not make an excuse that you have not opportunities to do anything for the glory of God, for the interest of the Redeemer's kingdom, and for the spiritual benefit of your neighbors. If your heart is full of love, it will find vent; you will find or make ways enough to express your love in deeds. When a fountain abounds in water it will send forth streams.

Let God's love which is poured out into our hearts send forth streams of love for Christ's church. Brothers and sisters, let our love be genuine and love one another in obedience to Christ, our loving Bridegroom. For our Lord's love for us bears all things, is patient and kind with us. He is "merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Psalm 86:15). We love because He first loved us (I John 4:19). Praise be to God for His great love and amazing grace for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Redeemed Marriages

“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” -Colossians 3:18-19

Recently I ran an errand to the grocery store where I witnessed an older married couple make snappy comments to each other aisle after aisle. She would start with making a snappy comment about him over something trivial, and he would return a snappy comment about her. The expressions on their faces displayed for each other and for the world a relationship of joyless conflict. 

The wisdom of God in Colossians 3 commands we Christians to put on as God’s beloved people set apart from the world “compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (3:12). Our Christian relationships, especially our marriages, are to be a place for “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (3:13). Husbands, love your wives by leading this bearing with your wives. Lead in forgiveness from a compassionate heart of kindness, humility, meekness, and patience with her. Wives, you are not to be in competition with your husbands, but in the fitting of God’s pleasure, submit to your husband with the same Spirit given character.

Our conflicts arise, not because of our disagreeable spouses, but sin in our own hearts. God told Eve after the Fall in Genesis 3 that the wife’s desire will be the competition to be like her husband, desiring to lead, and her husband’s response will be to lord it over her. The hope of the marriage of Adam and Eve which was broken by sin came in the previous verse: a Messiah will come and crush the head of the serpent. The Lord has forgiven us through Jesus whose heal was bruised to crush the serpent’s head, so wives peacefully submit to your husbands as fitting to the Lord and husbands love your wives without lording over them. 

Since the Fall in the Garden, every marriage is the fitting of two sinners in need of grace. You enter sin in your marriage as does your spouse. Worldly marriages display joyless competition and conflict, making comments of each other where they can do nothing right. No encouragement. No peace. Bitterness and preference rule the hearts in conflict. Confess your sin of competition and pride of heart to your spouse and seek Christ to bear with each other in His peace to rule in your hearts (3:15). Put on Christ’s love “which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (3:14). Anything in contrary to this command of God upon our Christian relationships, especially our marriages, is sin to be repented of.

Heavenly Father, forgive us of hearts ruled by pride, competition, and preference. May our hearts be ruled by Christ’s peace, our relationships a display of Your love, and our marriages point to Christ’s relationship to His bride, the church. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Grace When You Are Unraveling

“In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry to Him reached His ears.” Psalm 18:6

Some of our greatest griefs are when others depend on us being strong, but we’re falling apart. I have to be strong as a dad and husband, as a pastor and friend. To be able to be trusted in feels good. What happens when others depend upon me but I’m unraveling, my heart aches or has become numb, or I find little rest in my mind?

There are people who need me. If I lose sight of my Lord’s grace, my pride will let that sentence make sense. People need me. Am I sovereign over creation? Where was I when God laid the foundations of the world (Job 38:4)? Do I have secret wisdom that I alone can give? Do I alone have power that God’s creation depends on and needs?

Although the Lord uses me to be a means of grace to others, encouraging them in the faith, discipling or caring or comforting or counseling or teaching, the Lord does not need me. Rather, I need Him. No moment teaches this glorious truth of my need for God than when I am unraveling, breaking, falling apart in the midst of others depending upon me.

When others need me rather than God in and through me, that is a problem. I don’t have the energy, strength, wisdom, or ability that God alone has. If I am not dependent upon God, and celebrate that dependence on Him, then I will unravel and break apart. 

However, in your distress, in your unraveling, you call open the Lord for help. Your tearful pleas reach His ears. He doesn’t turn away from you simply because you are unraveling. He knows those depending on you to be strong are in need. He is the only Savior. He comforts, guides, counsels, corrects, teaches, loves. 

Parents who struggle, knowing you are depended upon, remember to depend upon the Lord yourself. Pray. You don’t need eloquence, just a cry for help. When you are needed at work and needed at home, remember you are in need of the Lord’s help. When life, relationships, jobs, money, whatever wears you down, depend less on those things to sustain you. God’s grace sustains you and preserves His people (Psalm 55:22).

Are you unraveling now? Weep. The Lord who will wipe away tears for the last time (Revelation 21:4) hears your cry for help from His temple. He draws near the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). He mends. Are you growing weary in doing good? Remember Galatians 6 is about carrying each other’s burdens as a church family, directing our attention to depend upon God together. God has given us each other to depend upon Him, and we rejoice in our dependence upon Him together.

Heavenly Father, forgive us for believing in our own strength and ability, as well as our pride believing we are needed. You are needed Lord. For the sake of others, bless us by Your mercies. For the sake of Your name, hear our cries in times of distress, rescue, lift, and carry us. May You be glorified in and through us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.