Judgement
I would be very foolish today to believe that everyone in the community would like Richard Gardner. I use to try hard for everyone to like me but I soon found out that I would never accomplish that and had to make a major decision on pleasing God or people. Jesus Christ didn’t please everyone and how was I to expect Richard to please everyone.
Several years ago right here in a small community I learned one of the biggest and most important things of my life. I met a gentleman that had suffered a stroke and a heart attack and had recovered somewhat from his illness and I found myself next to him having lunch together. He began to share many of his life’s experiences, like he had known me all his life. He shared with me that his illness had been brought on by his own actions, which was that he use to be an alcoholic that had help lead to his problems and sickness. But he was quick to share that he was the one to blame and that he had brought it on himself and to his own family. The more he talked the more intense I began to listen. He shared about the many times that he had been drunk, laying on the outside of a bar or on the curb of a street or just off the road side in the grass, that sometimes when he wasn’t completely out of it that I would be surprised as to what went on. That no one ever in all those years stopped and offered to help him. But he did remember they spit on him, searched him for money, kicked him, and just left him there. Many of these people that passed him by he recalled were so called Christians and he could remember the slander that came from their mouths but never offered any help. I could go on farther with his story but I want to stop at this point and make a statement from this man that I will never forget. He said," you know something, Richard, none of these people that condemned me and never once offered to help me will ever be my judge. Jesus Christ will be my judge, no one on this earth will ever be".
What a statement he had just completed in his last few words and how positive it was. What he had just said was that no Pastor, Minister, Priest, Judge, President, Christian nor society folks, no not the first person on this planet would judge his past, only Jesus Christ would be his judge. It reminded me immediately of a story I had read many years ago about an Irish man. In a small community there was a certain man that would walk the streets with a vest on, an on the back of his vest it had patches all over it and on the front of the vest only one patch appeared. One day someone stopped him and asked how come he only had one patch on the front of his vest and the back of it was full of patches. He was very quick to say that the patches on his back represented the sins of others in the world and the patch on the front of his vest represented his sins which were very few.
How quick we can point out other people’s sins but when it comes to our own sins or short coming’s we tend to push them aside and find fault with the rest of the world. I quite often find more love and humility in people that don’t profess any Christianity at all, then in those that do. I find in the Bible in the Scriptures of 1 Peter 4:17"For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?". In this scripture it should be an example to God’s people to strengthen the church and themselves, rather then to chance themselves to endure the sufferings in the lake of fire to come.
Only in a certain way do I care what people think about me today but as long as I stand for Jesus Christ, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the Bible as my guide, will I be what God wants me to be and not what someone else wants me to be.
See when we take a direct stand for God and what we believe in, it cause’s many consequences, you lose so called friends, people tend to judge you at every angle of your life but as long as what I do brings Glory to God, I’m going to do it. In Mat. 28:18 “And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto me in Heaven and Earth”. Meaning that absolute sovereign authority belongs to Jesus and that he is Lordship over all.
Could it be possible for everyone of us that condemns another, that if they would be out telling someone about Jesus Christ and what he can do for us that a recent tragedy in our own community could have been avoided? How many soul’s have you led to Jesus, our soon coming King, this past year.
