Pounce, Peace, Preach and Delete

The Bible cautions me about the power of my tongue. I'm to bridle it. I'm to keep any bad language, coarse joking or deceitful speech from crossing my lips. I'm to employee it in speaking words that will bless the hearer. I'm to keep His praise flowing from it -- continually.

All of these directions are completely contrary to everything I am outside of Christ. Shall I spell it out for the sake of contrast? Before I called Jesus -- "Lord," I swore like a sailor, innuendo was my specialty and I had no strong conviction about lying if it was to save myself. I couldn't have cared less about speaking grace or words of blessing -- blessing?! -- to the hearer, and neither He nor His praise were even on my radar.

I know something about myself. On this recent post, friends and blog friends alike were invited to describe me in one word. I got words like: faithful, trustworthy, obedient, honest, funny, straight-forward, Godly-mother, encourager and faithbuilder. Those are very nice words and I do appreciate the encouragement that they are to me. Though, I notice that nobody accused me of being nice or warm; kind, sweet, friendly or gracious. It's not necessarily that those words can't apply, but they are clearly not the first attribute that comes to mind when thinking of Grafted Branch.

The truth is that I am some things at the expense of others, but I'm thankful to have finally come to a comfortable place where I can say that He made me the way I am, and it wasn't an accident or even something for me to overcome. He certainly wants me to eradicate sinful behaviors as I'm conformed to His image. He desires me to exercise discretion within the bounds of my personality, but I know someday that He will tell me that He made me the way He did for such a time as...

It would be wrong for me to be anything else for the sake of something or someone, at sometime -- somewhere.

And that brings me to this week. This is a week that I need to blog about more than ever to purge a tangled twist of knots in my stomach. I've rubbed a handful of people the wrong way this week. I didn't mean to, but sometimes when you're more inclined (or designed) to be straight-forward than you are to dance the social minuet, it happens. Occassionally people extend a little grace to cover an offense they know wasn't intended, sometimes they ask for clarification and give me a chance to explain, sometimes they pounce on me and other times they erase me and pretend I don't exist. All those things happened this week.

But I just kept on keeping on. I've been saturating myself in 1Peter these days and was praying that I would seek peace and pursue it. I didn't do it perfectly, but came to find out that the incident over this post was just practice for something much more difficult that would come my way the next day.

Friday afternoon I was surfing around from the eliptical machine at the gym and came across an old read I don't frequent very often anymore. In the post, the very talented writer paints a picture for us in which she witnesses a parking-lot fender bender between a feeble widow type and a burly, tatooed teen.

With her toddler on her hip and his safety of her mind, she observes the lonely woman's flustered behavior and feels moved to action by the injustice of the teen's tirade. But in the end, she is relieved by his premature departure from the scene. There is no exchange of information, and because this writer admittedly ignores the still, small voice in her head and stands there and does nothing (even after the potential for danger has passed) there is no witness now either.

In the moments afterward, while the old woman sits still and shocked in her car, the writer is compelled by her conscience, but fails to put one foot in front of the other to offer a word of kindness, compassion or help. She watches the woman drive away, and then she packs up her own car and leaves.

Therefore to him that knoweth how to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
James 4:17

Then comes the confession of shame. She hopes her son will not remember the day his mommy did nothing. She knows she must set an example, and so a second wave of shame settles over her. She finishes the haunting post with the mirror of God's Word that tells us that the religion that is acceptable to God is that we care for the orphans and the widows in their distress.

It's an extraordinary post, really. Her detail really moved me and dozens of others, too, who left comments at the end. I didn't read every one carefully, but the general gist seemed to be one of, "Don't beat yourself up. Who knows what any of us will do in such a situation?" True enough. We can't condemn her for her lack of response, but...and here is where things got messy...the Lord can.

Her vulnerability and the depth of her self-examination sounded like a clear-cut case of sin and repentance to me, and so when the other commenters were holding up the corner of the rug for her to sweep her shame under, I exhorted her, "DO NOT let anyone convince you to NOT repent." I went on to remind her that 1 John 1 tells us that we must confess if we are to be forgiven. And I quickly encouraged her to, "Rejoice!" and expect to be able to do it differently the NEXT time because she will have been cleansed of whatever held her back THIS time.

It was a message of hope.

Of course, she didn't need my forgiveness; she needed the Lord's.

And I thought she knew that.

I would find out later that, in fact, she did not.

It took a couple of walking-on-eggshell exchanges to understand that while she, "knew that (she) fell far short of God's glory that day, she didn't think that was sin." She stated clearly that she, "didn't think she needed forgiveness as much as strengthening."

Then, over the course of 5 or 6 private exchanges via e-mail, she solicited more information and I prayerfully and carefully gave it to her. The first thing I explained was that I was coming to the conversation with the understanding that to fall short of God's glory IS sin.

And the next morning, both my comments on her blog were erased.

But, even though Adversary would try to stifle me with doubt and fear about my ability to graciously give the hard Truth to someone who proved they didn't know it, I will not be silenced about something as serious -- as deadly -- as dying in our sin because we fail to recognize our desperate need for Christ.