Still Mystified

            As I look at the state of the Body of Christ, the Church at large, I’m baffled.  How can there be such a wide variety of denominations, doctrines, practices, and temperaments of professing Christians?  How can God use them?  Rather, how does He use them?  Believers certainly don’t have the unity outwardly that Christ prayed for in John 17.  How can people come to Christ under the ministry of those practicing that which God disapproves?  I’m not trying to sound judgmental and “holier than thou,’ but we can know specific things He approves and disapproves as we read the Scriptures.

            I was once taken to task by a friend who chastised me for questioning how the Holy Spirit could use something that didn’t make sense or seem right to me.  Who was I to limit the Holy Spirit?  While I try to be more understanding, I frankly admit that I still have questions and just don’t get it.

            What about what we see in the Bible itself?  How is it that God used such flawed men as Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and even Paul?  When you read their stories in the Bible, they all did some pretty horrible things, such as lying, adultery and murder.  At the calling of the prophet Isaiah, he acknowledged he was a man of unclean lips.  These examples aren’t a mere acknowledgement that nobody’s perfect.  These people were sinners.  Yet, these are great men used of God notably, otherwise I wouldn’t even be referring to them here.  They’re part and parcel of God’s Holy Bible.  I’m glad God didn’t pull punches when He gave the accounts of these men and so many others.  I’m definitely glad He proved His mercy and great grace to them.  Therefore, there’s certainly hope for each of us.  That’s good because another thing that mystifies me is how God can use someone like me—someone considered a nobody by the world at large.  Thankfully, Scriptures give guidance concerning how to cope amidst bewildering Christianity.

I Cor. 11:18-19—“For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.”

Rom. 6:1-2, 6, 11-13, 16-18, 21-23—“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer Therein?… Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin….Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God….Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness….What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

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