BOOK: Exhortations

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Volume 12 ... #5

 Speak to Edification, Exhortation, Comfort

Our little church group is trying to learn how to share properly with the church.  We are in multiple cities around the USA so we share by email.

A woman gave a report about seeing on her husband's company's work information that full benefits are now offered to same sex married people.  She was shocked.

She sent email telling of this.

I didn't see what had happened until another woman in our group responded by telling mayor in a city is homosexual but has a wife also and children.

Then I saw:  The first woman's fruit provoked evil from the second woman.

Both women should have checked themselves by following:

Paul speaks of "prophesy" but it really applies to all talking or writing.

Paul says:  I Cor. 14:3... But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.

Measure what you speak by following:

Edification:  to instruct or improve morally, spiritually ... to show God ... build in the faith in God

Exhortation: to urge earnestly by advice or warning

Comfort: easing of a person's feeling of grief or distress or pain ... to cause person to feel less worried, upset, frightened or angry

One of these three things should be in what we write or speak.

You might have an exhortation, warning, that would cause a person to feel worried but that is certainly in line when that person needs to wake up and heed what they are doing so they can make godly corrections.

A very important consideration is the follow spoken by Jesus.

Mt. 12:33-37 ... Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.

O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

Beware of that which you allow to remain in your heart for that can grow up and bear evil fruit.  Sometimes we will hear others speak evil but we must take that evil to God in prayer and allow God to give us the antidote for the evil poison spoken so that evil will not lodge inside our heart.

Here is an example of uprooting evil:

A man called the Bible "legalistic".

I heard of this and turned to God.  I said, "What this man said about the Bible troubles me."

A few hours later, I was reminded of the following words of Jesus:

Matthew 7-12:13    Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. 

As I looked at this scripture, I began to rejoice!  

I saw how this man who called the Bible legalistic wants freedom to sin.

We want freedom from sin.  The strait way of the Bible is freedom from sin.

The fiery darts of the wicked were extinguished by the truth from God so the evil spoken against the Bible would not grow in my heart.

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We might hear things or read things we should not be speaking.

Controlling your tongue is part of pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God.

James 1:26 ... If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.

Here is a scripture brought to my attention several years ago, and I really kept this before me and tried to do it.

Eph. 4:29 ... Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

Often we have to warn the church and that might disturb the church but it is warning to bring them to the way of God and to move them from the way of destruction.  Therefore the warning is edifying though troubling temporarily until the individual chooses the way of God, the right way.

But we, the church, are not a newscast, troubling people needlessly as the world does or as those secular talk shows do.

So learn to speak to edification, exhortation, comfort ... always showing the way of God to others by what you say.

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What Bible says about homosexuals and lesbians:

Romans 1:26-27 ...For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

Today homosexuals try to justify themselves by saying they were just born homosexual.

But the Bible says they went against nature.  This is a way they chose.

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