Kids say the best things

Our niece is here visiting.  She'll be 5 on August 20th.  Jana is a very smart almost 5 year old, but she is so tiny.  She looks like a typical 3 year old, but then she opens her mouth and you KNOW she's not 3.  People are constantly commenting on her beauty and I don't think I have to explain that to those of you who have seen her pictures or met her in person that she is just a gorgeous child.  The other day we were taking a walk and she said, "Auntie, why do people always call me beautiful?"  I said, "Because you ARE beautiful, Jana."  She said, "What's beautiful about me?"  I said, "Well, there's your skin.  It's the perfect color, not too dark and not too light.  Then there's your big, BULGING, beautiful brown eyes (that's from a movie, but true about her, and she giggled), and your hair is so black and shiny and silky and wavy...you're just beautiful!"  She said, "Hmmm."  At that point her end of that conversation was over.  The next day, or possibly that evening, I can't remember, someone, again, told her, "You are so beautiful," and she responded, "I know."  Joe said, "Jana..." and she said, "Thank you."  I guess if you're told you're beautiful often enough, it's no longer a matter of thanking someone, it's a fact of life.  She didn't say the "I know" in a snotty way at all.  She just stated it, much like people often state how beautiful she is.  

My prayer is that her insides will always match her outsides.  Her mom is teaching her that beauty comes from the inside.  Cathy will show Jana a fit-throwing child in a store and tell Jana, "See?  When you act like that it makes you ugly no matter how beautiful you are." 

1 Peter 3:5 talks about true beauty coming from a quiet spirit.  I don't think you have to be a "quiet" person to have  "quiet" spirit.  A quiet spirit isn't easily riled up or upset...isn't easily offended, and bears things that most people would blow up and lose relationships over.  That's not to say that a quiet spirit doesn't admonish, but it definitely puts up with a lot more.  

I guess my point is this, if I can teach my children and the children whose lives I'm allowed to touch, that the mouth is the focal point of Christian hypocrisy, that most people lose their Christian witness by the evidence of their mouths, then I've done a good work for God.  I mean, how many Christians do we know that say one thing and do another, that gossip relentlessly but call it "discussing an issue?"  Jesus said that 'Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks."  If envy and discontent are stored up in a heart, that's what will come out of the mouth in the form of problems with everyone else around.  Don't get me wrong, I am far from mastering my mouth and even Solomon said that the tongue is untamable, but in the last 3 years I've learned that being quiet often does far more good than adding fuel to a fire.  I take my stands when need be, but when it's just taking a stand for the sake of taking a stand, it's fruitless.  We're called not to argue, but to live peaceful lives. (1 Tim. 3:3, 6:4, 2 Tim. 2:14, 2:23, and my favorite, 2 Tim. 2:24 "And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.") Proverbs 17:19 says, "He who loves a quarrel loves sin..."  Proverbs 20:3, "It is a man's honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel."

You might be asking how in the world all of this thinking came from conversations about beauty with my soon to be 5 year old niece.  It didn't. It's something I've been teaching my kids for years, but I felt like it needed to be written down in my journal of life which is what this blog is turning out to be.  Well, it's like this, when you think of beautiful people, you may think of people in magazines, but I don't.  The most beautiful people I know are the most gentle, yet thought provoking; the most peaceful, yet the most effective admonishers; the most kind, yet the most convicting people I know.  It IS possible to be an effective witness for Christ while having control of your mouth, but standing firmly against the things that starkly contradict God's Word, and maintaining a calm and quiet spirit while doing so.  I don't want to be a fool who argues for the sake of arguing, who argues for the sake of showing off my Biblical knowledge which, compared to Satan, is severely lacking.  I don't want to be a person who is known for controversy and strife.  I want to be known as peaceful, but convicting and there IS a way.  God says so, that settles it!

I'm also not against being admonished.  Again, I'd be a fool to say that I don't relish someone pointing something out to me (all through Proverbs God speaks through Solomon about the wisdom of loving discipline and instruction and how fools become mockers of God's Word.)  The problem is that most Christians equate admonishment with being "judgmental" and it's just not the same.  To judge someone is to condemn them to hell for something, and I mean that in a literal sense.  To say, 'You are going to hell for XYZ" is judgment passed that is not our place because only God can see into the heart of a man.  Just because a person is acting like a heathen doesn't mean they aren't saved, although that point is arguable because Galatians 5:22 says we'll know them by their fruits and the "fruits of the Spirit are...."  If someone doesn't have the fruits of the Spirit, are they saved?  Have you, as a Christian, lived a life that would speak to people in that way, or have you gone through a wilderness period, a "winter of the heart" period?  I rebelled and came back to God, but people who met me during my rebellion would've said, "She's not saved" when I was.  So, again, I say, you can't just arbitrarily say, 'You're going to hell.'  We don't know that, only God does.

However, to say, "God's Word says that these sins are worthy of hell" is different because you're not saying it from  a personal perspective, but from God's.   Your words may convict a Christian to stop living like a heathen, or convince a heathen to come to Christ.  (I use the word "heathen" to reference non-saved people, but it's in no way an insult any more than calling a doctor a "doctor" is insulting.) The difference between admonishment and judgment is that, through admonishment, you can look someone squarely in the eye and say, "This is not right.  You've got to stop because God says..."  The problem there is that most people just don't want a confrontation, but if you are doing what God has called you to do, you don't have to fear that.  There's a song out right now that I like called, "Say what you need to say."  It isn't "Say what you WANT to say," but what you NEED to say.  I would say that God wants us to stop being so easily offended, take words for their face value, and if someone says we need to change, to examine it through prayer and Bible study and go from there.  I won't lose a relationship over something like that.  I just don't want to be that easily offended. 1 Peter 4:8, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins."  Christians have to learn how to love God's way or we'll never reach our own families, much less the world around us.