Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Critical of Being Critical

Last Friday I found myself back with an old friend again, I was reading Oswald Chambers Utmost for His Highest.  As I read the words compiled by Oswald's precious wife "Biddy," I was really struck by the thoughts for the day which I have included below. 

Oh how I need to grow in this area of my life.  Being a little type A, with some perfectionist tendencies I find it easy to see ways things could be done a little better and I often feel the need to point it out.  I need to learn to be quick to point out what is done right, commending a job well done.  Let the better way reveal itself another time in another place.


THE UNCRITICAL TEMPER
By Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest for June 17th
"Judge not, that ye be not judged." Matthew 7:1
Jesus says regarding judging - Don't. The average Christian is the most penetratingly critical individual. Criticism is a part of the ordinary faculty of man; but in the spiritual domain nothing is accomplished by criticism. The effect of criticism is a dividing up of the powers of the one criticized; the Holy Ghost is the only One in the true position to criticize, He alone is able to show what is wrong without hurting and wounding. It is impossible to enter into communion with God when you are in a critical temper; it makes you hard and vindictive and cruel, and leaves you with the flattering unction that you are a superior person. Jesus says, as a disciple cultivate the uncritical temper. It is not done once and for all. Beware of anything that puts you in the superior person's place.

There is no getting away from the penetration of Jesus. If I see the mote in your eye, it means I have a beam in my own. Every wrong thing that I see in you, God locates in me. Every time I judge, I condemn myself (see Romans 2:17-20). Stop having a measuring rod for other people. There is always one fact more in every man's case about which we know nothing. The first thing God does is to give us a spiritual spring-cleaning; there is no possibility of pride left in a man after that. I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.

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