Thursday, April 22, 2010

Are You Listening?

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

Sometimes doing the good part is easy. And sometimes it is not. Sometimes we allow pride to get in the way of doing the good part.

I don't want my pride to be a stumbling block to my own self or anyone else. And so I need to make a public apology.

Several months ago I posted a blog post about people leaving the church who were telling some things about our Pastor that shocked me. I knew in my heart that my Pastor had never said the things he had been accused of saying and so it began to burn inside of me and I was very angry. Instead of going to the people that supposedly said those things, I vented on my blog post. Although I never mentioned their names, my heart was wrong, my spirit was wrong, and my blog post was wrong. I allowed gossip to stir up anger in my heart.

Although I removed that blog post, damage was already done.

Pastor Goodman has said many times that it is not the gossiper that bothers him, it is the one that listens to the gossip. And that's what I did. You can't help what you hear, but you can help what you listen to. Instead of blogging about it, I should have called them and talked to them about it.

I have asked their forgiveness privately and want to publicly apologize to them. I don't know if I should say their names or not. If they want to comment on this blog post, they are most certainly welcome to. But I want them AND my blog readers to know that I love the Lord and want to do the good part by making things right with my Brother and Sister in Christ.