We all have experienced “Bold People & Bullies” in our lives and there is a vast difference between the two. Many, if not all of us, have experienced bullies when we were small and today I think bullies are on the rampage in many adults.

No one likes a bully unless you are a bully yourself.  Maybe the worst part about talking about bullies is that they can be secular or religious. For me, I understand secular bullies but religious ones seem more evil because they are supposed to represent knowing and loving God. It’s one thing to see a bully who confesses he or she is one, but it is a travesty when a religious person tries to hide their bullying nature by using scripture and religious words to fool people while claiming to be humble.

When someone has boldness, especially about their faith in Christ, we admire them but we need to know what motivates them, pride or humility. Pretending to care about issues or scripture while wounding and harming other believers is a sin against the body of Christ and Jesus does not treat those who wound his people kindly. 

Let me be clear, sometimes we are called to challenge or rebuke fellow believers when necessary and those rebukes can and often do cause pain initially, but the motives for any rebuke need to be anchored in the love of God and not being motivated by pride,  arrogance or any measure of animosity or hatred. Let me also be clear that God warns all believers not to judge others, meaning we are not to condemn others with our spiritual knowledge. Lastly,  it is my belief that the average believer needs to leave the rebuking to church leadership who hopefully have the spiritual discernment and attitude that God requires of them.

Here is just an interesting background on the word “BULLY”:

The term “Bully” comes from the Middle Dutch word boele, which means “lover”, which seems surprising. At that time, bully was used in English to mean “sweetheart.” Its use then became more general, coming to mean “fine fellow,” and, eventually, the opposite. Bully began to be used in a negative sense around the 1700s.  This goes to show that the roots of words can and often do lose their true meaning and become twisted over time.

One of the best scriptural illustrations of a bully being created is when Israel began to desire a king. God warned Israel many times that having a king ruling them would lead to their downfall but the Israelites kept pestering Samuel primarily because they wanted to be just like the nations around them. Why you might ask? Because the Jewish people wanted to “FIT IN” with all the other nations instead of standing out for their beliefs in the one God. All the other nations believed in multiple gods. Many Christ followers compromised their faith for the same reason.  It is sad when believers want deception just to feel good about themselves.

As Christians we are called to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus and we can fall into the same trap of not wanting to stand out from the people around us so we end up compromising on so many levels, from our morals and ethics to scripture. When we as parents compromise with our kids they end up wanting to wear revealing clothes or listening to inappropriate music just like worldly, secular kids.

Why do parents wonder why their kids leave Jesus and the church when they leave the house for college?  Believers, whether young or old, compromise either because of fear or a lack of true commitment, which leads to the destruction of their faith. They may say they still believe but their lifestyle does not reflect the love of God.

If you are on Facebook at all like I am, you witness this same bullying spirit in the people that post as Christ followers. Every day when I post a devotional I review what people are posting to see what is going on with so called people of faith and I am sometimes disgusted. Although there are believers posting about trusting God in their every day life there are far too many looking for someone to beat up in the name of religious purity.

Unfortunately, there is one consistent thread from people who claim to follow Jesus and that is arguing about who is wrong and who is right. A vast majority of them are slamming different believers either because they believe a certain doctrine differently than themselves or because they don’t read the KJV bible. I have never seen such mean spirited people who claim to know God and yet want to put other believers down and ridicule them. They claim they just want to warn others of their sinfulness but you realize they are just mean in their souls and not loving at all.  Simply, they are just being bullies!

A bully can be religious or secular but they drink from the same well and that well is “PRIDE”. Humility, which comes from brokenness, softens the heart and while pride hardens the heart. If you are a strong believer you can smell pride a mile away and there is much pride being advertised on Facebook.  So, you can imagine what is bubbling in people’s souls when they attend church each week critiquing others in the name of God. 

Here is a key for those of us who claim to follow Jesus. This key is a warning and an encouragement from God

James 4:6                                                                                                                                                                                                                  But He ( God ) gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, but gives greater grace to the humble.

If we want “GREATER GRACE” from God we had better check our heart to see if pride is motivating our conversation and actions or if we are being motivated by the love of God. 

The “Spirit of Pride” is given and motivated by Satan himself and he has many ways of disguising pride to look and smell good to unsuspecting souls. Don’t fall for his deception but rather be filled with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Make today a “SPIRIT” led day by walking in the love of Jesus and glorifying your Heavenly Father. By doing so, pride will not find a home in your soul and your heart will stay soft and pliable as you chose humility rather than pride.

Questions:

1) Have you been attacked by religious people on Facebook or in person? Realize where that spirit comes from and it’s not God. Pray for them that the deception would be exposed and they would find freedom in Jesus.

2) Have you been caught up in bullying others? 1 John 1:9 is a good place to find wisdom and then confess and apologize to those you have wronged.

Desiring to walk with a pure heart and encouraging others likewise,

Pastor Dale

With all the upheaval going on in the country it is easy to watch the nightly news and become frightened and discouraged as you wonder why God does not intervene. Is it possible that God is in all this turmoil? Although I don’t believe God is causing all this, I do believe he is stripping the mask off of evil to expose the lies of Satan and it is getting ugly!

As people watch the recent shootings in Texas where 19 young kids and 2 teachers were killed by an 18 year-old boy, it should be a stark reminder of how violence is the outcome of a heart devoid of God. Seeing such sights reminds us of what demons did, and still do, in and through people devoid of the spirit of God. Throughout the gospels Jesus was constantly casting out demons that torment people. These demonic spirits are more active today as we get near to the return of Jesus and the final judgement of Satan and his demons.

Each year people make what are called New Years Resolutions. The reason, supposedly, for making these resolutions is that people are hoping to resolve something they did or didn’t do in the last year. Sometimes there was a mistake or sometimes they could have done better. Sometimes they didn’t do anything at all. The problem with resolutions is they are often done half hearted and we are only slightly committed to them. Mind you we may have good intentions to resolve these missteps, but rarely do we have any real conviction about them.

This article comes from a devotional subject I posted a few days ago on my Facebook page entitled “Are You Being Deceived?” in which I posed the question of wether we are discriminating in the kind of people we fellowship with, or are we allowing people who lie to us and others into our lives? One person asked the question of “Is It Always Wrong To Lie” or are there situations in which lying is allowed by God. So let’s get started!

Let’s be honest and not just biblically correct, although I want to also be biblically correct. I find I’m frustrated with so much that is going on in the world that I have to wrestle a lot with my emotions. After all, there is so much to get anyone mad who is awake. From politics, to the economy, to people loosing their business and people loosing their jobs– there is plenty to get me fired up about. The thing that bugs me a lot is feeling like I can’t do anything about it. Do you find yourself in the same boat? Read on.

It’s so easy in our current world environment to assume our observation and analysis of current events are solid when, in fact, they often are not. We start taking sides about who is right and who is wrong about the same facts that we end up hating people who we once embraced.

We are looking into the life of Elijah to learn principles of how to walk strongly with God in a broken and twisted world. We always need to remember that the brokenness of the world shaped much of what we expect from a good life and often those beliefs are misleading and also very harmful in walking with God. If you haven’t read the first article on this subject please do so before reading this one.

When I was a young boy I dreamed and played “Army” with my friends. As young boys we played such games because we had heroes with character traits that we admired. John Wayne was one of the people that we looked up to as a “man’s man”. He portrayed courage in the face of fear and valor when the battle was raging.

This is now the fourth article on Christmas and I want to move from the negative things that keep us quiet to the positive things that result in an expectation that God will use them in ways they may have not experienced as of yet. God is constantly on the lookout for believers that will “Believe” that He is able to do “Extraordinarily More” than we can ask for when it comes to touching the world for Christ. If you haven’t read the first three articles please do so first so that you are able to track my thoughts throughout this topic. These articles are all starting with “Christmas Time”.