Speech

Christine Wyrtzen Devotional:

GOODBYE TO AMBIVALENCE

I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.  Psalm 119:163

    I have spent most of my life feeling ambivalent.  If I watched a talk show where there were two opposing viewpoints, I found myself somewhere in the middle.  If asked personally about where I stood on issues, I would have a hard time laying out concrete convictions.  Part of this was due to ignorance.  Part of it was due to a desire to flee controversy.  The remainder was because I failed to live in the Word enough to understand that God is rarely ambivalent.  He loves truth and He hates falsehood.

    David has spent enough time in the Torah and enough time in worship that God's appetite has rubbed off.  How our culture needs more like him.  There are far too many prominent Christians in the spotlight who, when asked where they stand on current issues, fail to answer the way Jesus would.  Their tolerance makes them palatable to the masses but erases their saltiness.  They have confused loving people with condoning what people do.  They have abdicated their chance to speak the language of the kingdom in order to draw others onto the narrow pathway that leads to eternal life.

    Having grown up in legalism, I was used to a regular diet of dogmatism.  A church or Christian organization defined themselves by what they were 'against' rather than what they were 'for'.  They had a poor track record when it came to loving people.  Perhaps some of our Christian tolerance, our ambivalence on critical issues, is an over-correction to legalistic Christianity.  In our woundedness, we have made opposite choices that are equally as detrimental to the advancement of the kingdom.  The cure for any of us who fail to speak clearly about what we love and what we hate, whether it is rooted in fear or poor theology, is time with Jesus and time immersing ourselves in His Word.  Christian education, in the context of relationship, cures ambivalence.

   Today, I follow Jesus who ate with sinners, put his arm around the broken and repentant, but simultaneously, spoke clearly about righteousness and unrighteousness.  His speech was so clear that his audience felt NO ambivalence.  They left everything to follow Him or they picked up stones to murder Him.  If others fail to react to me in the same way, my speech is still diluted and I have a ways to go to look like, and sound like, my Savior.

Sharpen the sword of my mouth with the sword of the Word.  Clearer speech, compelling speech, in the remainder of my life.  Amen