"I have never met a person I could despair of, or lose all hope for, after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God."  Oswald Chambers - My Utmost for His Highest

There is an account in scripture where Jesus told some "self-righteous"leaders to take a look at their own life before criticizing another person.  He said to them in this person's defense, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:7 ESV)  The men Jesus was speaking directly to were, unfortunately, religious leaders who were carrying out what they thought was their perceived "responsibility" as Pharisees and scribes, which was to police the morality of their community.  However in this particular incident this was not their biggest concern, for they were attempting to use it to stump Jesus with making a choice to either endorse sin by denying the religious regulations of the time, or show His compassion and defend the woman being charged.  It was a ploy by these self-righteous leaders to trip Jesus up, but Jesus masterfully turned a bigger question back to them where they would instead have to make a choice.  They understood what He was teaching, for they walked away from the woman and Jesus without throwing a stone.  You can see how Jesus' questions drilled into their hearts, and they do the same today when we apply them to our life.  We cannot avoid this.  But we can try to ignore it.  This is why I ask you today,"Do you understand that His question still applies for you and me over two thousand years later?  Will we throw stones at others when we are as guilty as the one we criticize?"

Concerning the story in the scripture above, it is still being taught and preached and talked about today, but we fail miserably to connect it with our own life?  Listen to the words of criticism that escape our mouths or those that flood into our hearing from gossip and slander that from friends.  Sure we like to read about Jesus putting those Pharisees in their place.  They are easy targets, for they make us feel so much better about our self, don't they?  But the question we must wrestle with is if we will allow Jesus' challenge tothose Pharisees to invade our thinking about our self?  Are we so critical of another person and his or her glaring errors that we fail to look at our own self-righteous blindness?  Believe me I have been there, and I will tell you that the Holy Spirit will not allow us to remain in our self-righteous condition very long before He will begin a "time of adjustment" in our life.  He will shake us and stir us until we get it, and when we do learn to yoke our hearts and tongues to Christ He will invite us to help bring His blessings to other lives.  But this blessing must first begin in our own heart, by becoming brutally honest with the realization that we have no legs to stand on with any pride in our self.

Why does this become a serious offense and condition for the Holy Spirit to overcome in our life?  I believe it is because we can become so saturated with our self, our pride, and our perspective that every one else must compare to our way of thinking, or they are wrong.  After all, this person thinks he has things figured out and others do not. Right? Know anybody like this?  They are nauseating aren't they?  We don't want to be around them or receive theirself important words do we?  That is what we think about them before they say anything. But we must be very careful with this thought, for this is how spiritual pride and self-righteousness begins in our own life.  We compare other perspectives to our own, and the person fails to measure up to our acceptance if the perspective is not the same as ours.  Right?  Honestly, did you think of someone else before you thought of your self with my question?  If so it may reveal a "blind spot" of pride in your own life.  Because we are often blind to this condition the Holy Spirit will begin a work to reveal it.  It will be a difficult process, but I am happy to say that if we allow Him to lead us it will lead to a Christ-like perspective, which God's man should be always praying for.

Pride is a debilitating condition for a disciple of Christ and it will be something God challenges us with until we are broken from it.  But our self-righteousness is something more.  It is a spiritual pride, which might be the biggest target of all for the Holy Spirit, for it might be the most offensive to Him.  As long as this spiritual pride remains in our life there will be a spiritual disability that will be preventing God's best work from flowing through us, and that is why He wants it removed.  This week I want to explore the problem with how and why a critical spirit often invades our life to wreak havoc, and hopefully challenge us all to change our words and thoughts that we expend or harbor within us toward people we do not understand.

The first challenge that I want bring to both you and me is to realize that we do not have all of life and all of God and His ways figured out.  If you do not see this in your life you might not want to read what follows the rest of the week, for I will likely offend you, and I don't to hear your defense.  Understand that even as members of God's family we have no right granted to us by Jesus Christ to serve as a critic or an evaluator of another man or woman's "rightness" before God.  Only Jesus retains that right.  So let's empty our self of any perspective that our set of rules and values that we have adopted for our self is the set of rules that everyone should follow to be right before God, unless what we follow is Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life.  If that is the case then you and I will understand quickly that Jesus will challenge anything we think we have figured out with these questions, "Are you so prideful to think you have figured everything out that you can point out some else's flaws and not look at your own?  Are you living out in your own life those things you criticize in others?  Are you ready to throw a stone at yourself as readily as you are willing to throw it at another person?"

I believe our stone throwing of criticism will in fact become so damaging to our life that we will eventually beat our self up worse that we do others.  Therefore I ask you to ask God to show us any blind spots in our life that reveals a critical spirit, and then to show us how to leave this condition behind.  We will talk about this tomorrow.