BACKING UP

I Was Just Thinking About – BACKING UP.

My father-in-law was twenty-five years older than my mother-in-law. During their courtship, he loaned her his Pierce-Arrow automobile so she could drive fifty miles from Chattanooga, TN to Menlo, GA to visit her parents. She knew how to drive forward but she was unable to back up. Fortunately, at the farm, there was ample room to maneuver the car, so backing up in that instance was not an issue.

One of the difficult areas for the professing Christian is the ability to back up carefully and gracefully. Some hard-chargers are like a snow plow being driven rapidly and snow/ice splattering the landscape. It may accomplish passage in a driving lane but it has piled the snow and ice in such a way that driveways and crosswalks are blocked. Some parked cars become trapped in a growing snow bank. Just as the snow plow cannot reverse its action, even so the professing Christian cannot easily reverse their course of action. It becomes easy to say that the parked car should have been moved before the plowing began. Lame excuses are often utilized to rationalize an action taken or a statement made.

Chuck Swindoll wrote in Insights For Living, May 17, 2016: “Wouldn't you love the ability to go back in time and change something you did or said? I know there have been moments in my life—awful moments when I acted on the impulse of the flesh—that I would dearly love to call back. But alas, I cannot. The sad fact is, we cannot go back. None of us can. We cannot undo sinful deeds or unsay sinful words. We cannot reclaim those moments when we were possessed by rage, lust, cruelty, indifference, or hard-headed pride…we must live with the consequences of our words and our actions. What we sow, the Scriptures warn, we will also reap (Galatians 6:7)."

Jesus shared an important principle in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:24-25, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” How often have you seen this principle both embraced and implemented?

A further step in reconciliation is stated by Jesus in Matthew 18:15-17. How often have you seen this principle both embraced and implemented? Is it possible that the Word of God is being selectively believed and practiced? It seems obvious that in this area and several others that there is a need to back up and do that which Jesus Christ taught and directed His followers to do.

James 1:22-24 reminds us, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves. For anyone who hears the word but does not carry it out is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, and after observing himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.”

Prayerfully – consider these things with me.