“Somebody going to come along and condemn you?” says Jordan.
“Hey, by the way, you condemn yourself better than they would do. When somebody
says something about you and you get all proud and huffy, if you’d just sit
down for a minute and realize that you can think about yourself a lot worse
things than they’re saying about you.
“You can, and in fact, you do at times. That’s what makes
you so aggravated when other people do it because you know it’s true.
“Winston Churchill said it: ‘There’s nothing more
exhilarating than being shot at and missed.’ Maybe what they’re saying about
you isn’t exactly true, but if they knew all the stuff you know about you,
you’d be mute. So who is he that condemneth? Who really has the ability to
condemn you?
“Romans 14:4 says, ‘Who art thou that judgest another man's
servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up:
for God is able to make him stand.’
“Paul said in Romans 2 about some people trying to get around
responsibility: ‘Therefore thou art
inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou
judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same
things.’
“So who is it really who’s going to condemn you? It doesn’t
help to say, ‘Well, you did it, too,’ does it? Because that’s really not an
excuse.
*****
“You look at all this stuff going on down in Ferguson,
Missouri, and it’s who gets the best press. The kid or cop. Everybody’s just
looking for a way to condemn the other guy and excuse themselves.
“Pointing your finger at someone else for doing something
bad to excuse yourself is the height of absurdity. Either you’re guilty or you
aren’t guilty; it doesn’t make any difference what anybody else did. And, by
the way, you’re probably guilty.
“That’s why that verse 34 in Romans 8 is so important.
Somebody comes along and wants to condemn you; it’s Christ who died . . . Two
thousand years ago God knew everything I was going to do and He died for all of
it; none of it caught Him by surprise.
“Someone called me the other day and said, ‘My husband’s an
unbeliever and every now and then I’ll mess up and he’ll get mad and look at me and say, ‘If those
people at the church knew about you and knew how you acted here at home, they
wouldn’t let you open the door!’
“She asked, ‘What should I do?!’ I said, ‘You need to look
at him and say, ‘You know, sugar, you’re absolutely right.’
“You know what you just did? You took the club out of his
hands. Because he is right but you can acknowledge the fact you made a mistake
and did wrong.
“One of the most powerful things you’ll ever do in
relationships with other people is you look at them and say, and I deal with
this in marriage and inter-personal conflicts all of the time, ‘They’re 95 %
wrong and I’m 5% wrong.’
“Let’s say that’s true. If you say to them, ‘You know,
friend, I’ve been wrong and I’m sorry,’ you may only be confessing 5% of it in
your mind, and they’re guilty of the rest, but that’s them and this is you and
you know what, that is such a powerful thing in relationships.
“You say, ‘How can I do that?’ ‘Who is he that condemneth?
It’s Christ that died.’ If He doesn’t condemn you, what matters if anybody else
does? Can I say to you God is for you.
“In verse 26 Paul says, ‘Likewise the Spirit also helpeth
our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought:
but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered.’
“An infirmity is somewhere where you have a weakness. In my
mind, the weakness in this verse is defined for you. ‘Likewise the Spirit also
helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we
ought.’
“The ultimate weakness you have in life, especially in your
prayer life, is you really don’t know how you ought to pray.
“When it comes to taking what God says and applying it to
the circumstances of your life, you often throw up your hands and say, ‘I’m not
really sure,’ because there are more places where He doesn’t tell you what to
do directly.
“He never says buy that car, marry that person. He’ll say,
‘Don’t marry that one,’ but He never says, ‘Marry that one.’ Isn’t that
interesting? God expects you to make some of those choices. He expects you to
work with Him. Take His word, let it work in you and make some choices and some
decisions.
*****
“I was raised in a religious system where every time you did
anything you were happy about you figured it was your flesh because you
couldn’t be happy. That’s flesh. I remember reading that verse in I Timothy 6
about how ‘God’s given us all things richly to enjoy,’ and I used to puzzle
over that and think, ‘If He’s given us all things richly to enjoy, then why do
I have to be miserable all of the time to be pleasing to Him?’
“Then it dawned on me one day that I didn’t have to be. I
could have some joy that had nothing to do with it being attached to my flesh.
“The Spirit of God takes His Word and makes intercession.
He’s for you. You’re not left abandoned. God’s for you.”
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