Reach out don't judge

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, 

and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 

                                                                                                 Matthew 7:1,2

Is it me am I the only one that is getting sick of hearing Christian, particularly evangelical Christians judging the world.
I am fed up of hearing preacher after preacher in the media trying to stomp out those whom they disagree with.
I am sick of Christians playing politics with the goal to destroy those they disagree with.
Jesus never sent Christians out to judge the world. He sent them out to save the world.
Jesus made things crystal clear when he said,

“He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.  

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, 

but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” 

                                                                                                                Mark 16:15,16.
He also said in Matthew,

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.  

Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and 

as innocent as doves.” 

                                                                                              Matthew 10:16
Note those last three words of Matthew 10:16, “innocent as doves”
If we are innocent as doves people can’t possibly get upset with us and they are more likely to open dialogue with us.
Opening a dialogue with any group of people is the only way we will ever win them to Christ.
It is wrong to make people think they have a “special sin” all sin is equal and we should be careful what we call sin.
You can’t just look back in the old Testament and cherry pick laws that we think apply to the twenty-first century.
We are under grace and we should be presenting God’s grace to all mankind.
To the Christian who is reading this I would ask are you judging people, perhaps even without realizing it.
I live in Ontario Canada and we’ve just got our first female premier, she also happens to be openly gay.
As soon as she was elected I heard Christians criticizing her. They had never met her and they haven’t given her a chance to accomplish anything.
The same people who judge her are not judging the leader of the opposition that while in office under another party leader never voted against his party even though they did things against the poor that Christians should have stood up too.
Christians need to step back and take a good look at themselves and see if they are truly doing the work of God or are they attacking people simply because they don’t agree with them.
God allows the governments to reign over us. He allows all groups to have their say.
In God’s world everyone has freedom of speech. They have the right to their own beliefs.
We all, Christian and none Christian will one day be judged by God, NOT by Christians.
 It is a Christians job to evangelize the world. To turn people against us by attacking them has eternal consequences.
Think about it.

What is it with some Christians????

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.   For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” 
                                                                                  Matthew 7:1,2

I just heard today about a Christian organization that receives some government funding to drill wells and build latrines in third world countries, had it cut because they had anti gay material on their website.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report that, “Until Tuesday, the organization's website carried a list of "sexual sins" deemed to be "perversion": "Turning from the true and/or proper purpose of sexual intercourse; misusing or abusing it, such as in pedophilia, homosexuality and lesbianism, sadism, masochism, transvestism, and bestiality."
  I happen to have a great deal of respect for the organization. Still however they are very much old school. They tend to without realizing it I’m sure have “special sins”.
Here they linked pedophilia, bestiality with homosexuality and lesbianism what garbage. There is no “special sins”.
I don’t care what you are, gay or strait the bible makes it clear when Paul writes, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference,  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”
                                                                                                             Roman’s 3:21-24
It’s interesting that my pastor this past Sunday noted that all sins are equal. There is nothing special when it comes to sins. And I would raise the question is homosexuality a sin? And YES I know what the Old Testament says. But we can’t go back to the Old Testament and cherry pick what laws we want to obey. What laws apply to today.
Consider these laws,
“Keep my decrees.
Do not mate different kinds of animals.
Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.
Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.”
                                                       Leviticus 19:19 
Note the last line, do you wear a cotton polyester mix, or a cotton wool mix?
Here's another one,
“Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.” 
                                                                                                                  Leviticus 19:27 
How about eating pork or shellfish, the list goes on and on.
It is not the church’s place to judge sinners. It is the church’s place to be as all inclusive as possible.
We are to go out and evangelize the world. To reach the world for a loving God who wants all people to come to know Him in a personal way.
God is no respecter of person. He loves and cares for all people.
Read the words of Paul to the stoics and epicureans in Athens,
"Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. 
 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.  And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.  From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.  God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.  ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 
 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” 
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”  At that, Paul left the Council.   A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others"
                                                                        Acts’s 17:24-32 
Neither Jesus or any of his followers every spoke out about the sins around them. They went into a world that I am sure shocked them. They were Jews going throughout a secular world that had practices dynamically opposed to what they had been brought up with. Yet they simply presented the gospel and let God do the rest.
In doing so they changed the world.
It is something the Church in the twenty-first century needs to be doing.
We have no need to list sins on our website’s. We've all sinned, be we the average person on the street, the pope or the leaders of the organization that prompted this blog.
We need to extend our hand to people in every walk of life and say “God loves you, and show them the way to heaven.
      Think about it.

You can't pick the laws you wish to obey

Read Galatians 2

For through the law I died to the law 

so that I might live for God. 

I have been crucified with Christ

 and I no longer live, 

but Christ lives in me. 

The life I live in the body, 

I live by the faith in the son of God, 

who loved me and gave himself for me.

“I do not set aside the grace of God for 

if righteousness could be gained though the law

Christ die for nothing.

                                                                                     Galatians 2:19-21
Paul makes it clear we can’t choose the law when it suits us and lay aside grace. Either we live under the law which cannot save us or we live under grace.
Many in the church today mix the Old Testament teachings with the New Testament. They conveniently pick the laws they choose to follow and forget about the rest.
The law is their to show us right from wrong. This in itself is not a problem. The problem arrises when those within the church choose to pick which laws they wish to observe.
There are many out there who say capital punishment is supported by the bible. Which it is. But the bible also forbids the eating of shell fish and pork.
Do those who are out there justifying capital punishment by using the bible also refrain from eating shell fish and pork?
You can’t have it both ways. This is what Paul was saying. We now live under grace.
I firmly believe that Christ came at a crossroads in time. God knew a new era in the world was beginning. That’s why he sent Christ when he did.
God knew the gentile world would have a hard time with some of the laws. That in parts of the world especially in the times of the early church it may be impossible to even obey the laws, especially the food laws at times. That’s why he made it easy for us to obtain salvation.
The Council in Jerusalem recognized that there was a new era coming. In Acts 15 it made a simple statement to the gentile believers.

“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit  and to us 

not to burden you with anything 

beyond the following requirements; 

you are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, 

from blood, 

and from the meat of straggled animals

 and from sexual immorality 

you will do well to avoid these things. 

                                                                                                     Acts 15:28,29
Something to think about.
The message of Christianity is one of love and forgiveness. Not rules and regulations that cannot save anyone. It is about freedom not do’s and don’t.
God want’s us to live for him and not sin. We should never sin deliberately. Paul make it clear in Romans salvation through faith is not a licence to sin.
Still when we sin, and we all do, it is important to know we can turn to God and as John states, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
                                 1 John 1:9  
That is the message of Christianity. God’s loving us so much that he sent His Son to die for the forgiveness for our sin.