Speaking God's Truth in Love "Thank You for the Comments"

I want everyone to know that you can comment on any of the subjects I right about.  If you aren’t familiar with how to submit a comment let me lead you through the process.  In order to comment you simply go to the bottom of each blog and click on the comment button.  Make your remarks and click the post comment button.  It will then show up on the comment page and in the comment archives.  It will not show up on the main page unless I post it there.  However, anyone can read the comments by clicking on specific remarks to the left side of the page. 

Let me post a couple of comments from yesterday’s blog to give you the idea.  We welcome any comments to the blog as long as they are in good taste and no foul language is used.  You might wonder why I would add the disclaimer about foul language when most people that read this are Christians, but I am hoping that people other than Christians read and ask questions about subjects.  Here are yesterday’s comments concerning “Blessed are the Flexible”.

Brother Gary Dempsey wrote-  Good Advice...I think I'll take it.

Brother Ray Earley wrote-Neil, I liked this one. Curious though...how far do we flex and at what point do we begin to compromise the Gospel? I agree w/about everything in your blog and am always up on the current daily production of it. However, upon examination of some translations of Scripture and lyrics in songs (hymns and choruses) we have to put a maximum flex capacity don't we? Thoughts... Ray

I appreciate both comments and would like to address them in today’s blog. 

Brother Gary is a Director of Missions and I believe he sees the idea of flexibility from a somewhat different perspective.  Even though he has many years of experience as a pastor, he also has experience with pastors, as well as church members, that can be inflexible at times.  This inflexibility slows down the process of churches working together for the good of the kingdom many times. 

I also appreciate Brother Ray’s comments.  He also hits on a very good point about where flexibility ends and compromise begins.  We do have to be very careful as leaders to scrutinize the translations we use from the pulpit, while still understanding that you can use just about any translation to lead a person to Christ.

It is the pastors job to lead  his flock in the proper knowledge of Bible translation, but you can talk to a Jehovah’s Witness at your front door and use their own translation, (though a very poor one indeed) to show them the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe that the apostle Paul was practicing flexibility from Mars Hill when he came at his audience, at first, from their own perspective.

Having said this, it is still true that we have to be careful to study what is acceptable for our congregations to use in their Bible study and in their praise.  The inflexibility I was referring to in my blog concerns the belief that only one translation is the truth and all others are terribly flawed.  This, of course is not the case and we should be able to lead our churches to understand the differences.  However there are still churches that will use the Bible translation issue as grounds for not calling a pastor or removing a pastor if a particular translation is not used.

I want to thank those that make comments and also those that simply read my daily blog.  My goal is to be thought provoking and excited about God’s Word.  I also want to be evangelistic in what I write because I have been able to research those that read the blog and am finding out that many people across the world are using search engines to find answers to problems in their lives.  They end up reading what is posted through topical searches.  I can’t keep up with all of them, but there have been searches from India, China, British Columbia, South America, Indonesia and many, many others.  We have to remember that we aren’t limited anymore to only our area of the map, what we say and do can be dissected from anywhere on the planet.  Thanks again for taking the time to read these daily ramblings.        

Comments

[Ray Earley]

Thanks Neil...
Be blessed in blogging.