No need for self-defense mode

Here’s some great advice from Jordan in a study he gave the other week:

“People say, ‘Oh, Brother Jordan, so and so said you did that,’ or, ‘So and so said this about you,’ and I often respond, ‘If you can believe that I did that, then believe it. If you can believe I said that, then believe it.’

“You say, ‘Well, don’t you want to defend yourself?’ I got over having to defend myself--having a desire to defend myself--a long time ago. When you get into the self-defense mode, you just show how important you think your identity is. And you know what your identity is? In you it’s nothing, but in Christ it’s everything.

“Grace tells you it’s okay, because, as Romans 8 says, ‘What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?’ Paul says, ‘Who is he that condemneth?’

“It’s God who justifies and it really isn’t what people think and you don’t need to be in the self-defense mode because that begins to show how much you think of you. You’re not thinking very sober about the issue.

“You’re able to relax and say, ‘Hey, if you’ve known me to be that way, then believe it.’ When you get there, you’ve got to have a track record to depend on and that’s when you need to remember that when you’re going through things, people are watching. Maybe not right there but down the road.

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Paul writes in II Timothy 2:9, ‘Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound.’

Jordan explains, “He wasn’t an evil doer but he suffered trouble AS an evildoer. There were people who thought Paul was a crook. That’s why he says in I Thessalonians 2:10 says, ‘Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe.’

“Among the Believers, they knew better. The Romans, the world, the government would have said whatever. The ‘lewd fellows of baser sort’ could have said whatever they wanted to, accused him of sedition and all kind of riot.

“But the people who knew him, and can I tell you that’s one of things you learn . . . Paul advises in I Thessalonians 5:12 says, ‘And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you.’

“One of the reasons for that is you know who they are (putting the right people into the jobs) but the other thing is you know them so that when you hear things about them . . . ”