Posted on 05/01/2011 1:55:29 PM PDT by WriteStuff
My best friend’s name is Steve. We’ve known each other since high school in the late 70’s.
How this fits into topics I’ve already covered has to do with what happened in our lives over a 12-month period a few years ago.
After the collapse of my marriage and the ensuing divorce Steve was there for me.
(Excerpt) Read more at toddfitchette.wordpress.com ...
The Christian community will never be obsolete. It's made up of true believers. That's all that counts. It's not a numbers game except to those who want to make it so.
When they went silent on abortion and homosexuality.
I think it is partially a numbers game. The Bible asks us to evabgalize and be a good Christian witness. To the extent the “numbers” are not good there is evidence of us not doing what Jesus asks us to do. Saying it is not a numbers game is like a liberal saying it is the “good intentions” in the policy that matters, as opposed to looking at the results of the policy.
I don't buy that. We can evangelize all we want. But if the individual doesn't accept our work, or allow the Holy Spirit into their heart, our work isn't fruitful. What happens is beyond our means.
And, this gets us beyond the 'good intentions' idea of the liberal agenda. It's not the intentions that count but the results. And those are out of our hands.
Therefore, it's between God and Man. Either we accept or we don't. But enough will accept that there will always, always be a Christian community. Man is sin. Man will always reject God. But some will become true believers. And that's what counts.
All this talk of “the collapse of my marriage and the ensuing divorce” deliberately ignores the fact that we have two consenting adults, presumably both Christians, who took an oath before God and the assembled witnesses, to love, honor and cherish each other so long as they both shall live.
“Marriages” don’t collapse. The event that tied two together, the wedding, is a completed event, an historical fact. The documentation is still on that piece of paper, the marriage license. However, the two people in that marriage choose to stop “bearing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things”. Yes, there are some few cases where divorce seems to be unavoidable. But, “incompatibility”, or “we just fell out of love” are not among them. Love is not a matter of loosing one’s balance, i.e., “We fell in love”; “we fell out of love”. Love is a matter of consciously choosing, daily, to place the NEEDS of another ahead of my own WANTS.
Todd Fitchette asks, “When did Christian community become obsolete?” The Christian community in it’s simplest form is a husband and a wife being true to their commitments to each other before God. This makes up the “bricks” with which we can build a larger Christian community.
Commitment.
It is not always Convenient nor Comfortable, but it is Essential.
If you build a building with lousy bricks, bricks in which each grain of sand is “committed” (firmly adhering) to the other, then that building will collapse. This is what has happened to the larger Christian community.
/rant
One of the finest responses I have ever seen on FR. Well done.
So true!
Thank you. I am truly humbled.
Too often I just rant and rave in my posts. Sometimes a rant is necessary, but we must all endeavor to build up one another. “Ye are salt & light...”
Thanks to Free Republic for providing a Forum for us to vent and to exchange ideas.
"bricks in which each grain of sand is “committed” (firmly adhering) to the other, then that building will collapse."
should read
"bricks in which each grain of sand is NOT “committed” (firmly adhering) to the other, then that building will collapse."
Good post.
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