Fighting a Critical Spirit - 133

"I used to attend his church, but as a pastor, he just doesn't live the same anymore. God is definitely not happy with him!"

That comment floated across my Facebook feed as I was aimlessly flipping through my feed killing time about a week ago. I went back to read it again because then I noticed the comment was made by a person that has always attended church with that pastor, even way before he was leading a church. They were long time acquaintances and it kind of surprised me about the comment ... but then it didn't surprise me.

The reason was, the commenter was still living heavily in legalism, the pastor had studied his Bible and took being saved by grace and not works at face value and was living in the freedom God had given him.

My first thought was, "And you have a direct connection with God to know what God thinks? Really??!"

I did understand why the comment was made. You see, I grew up in legalism and under the influence of a critical spirit as well. It was a practice that was handed down to me from my parents and my old church family and it is still a battle today. I fight a critical spirit all the time. It's only by the grace of God that over the years I have found a new meaning in the Grace that Jesus gave us when He died on that cross so that I could live in the freedom He gave as well.

We have to take Galatians literally if we are going to say we live by the Bible. It's not by works, it's by grace. God didn't give us the power to judge. That is God's job! It's our job as Christians to live in God's grace and love others like He loves us, unconditionally. We show them the love of Christ without passing off the criticism and let God take care of the rest.

So how do we fight that spirit that resides in so many of us? This week on Connecting the Gap, we discuss some ways we can overcome the urge to criticize and potentially run someone from God for an eternity.

You can visit my website at www.connectingthegap.net for all my platforms I am on. Please subscribe and share this if you know of others that might benefit from this podcast. Have a blessed week!