November 17, 2021: Learning Good Practices in Our Lives Can Lead Us to Bad Judgement with Others.

In "Our Daily Bread", entitled, "False Confidence", the subject speaks about our false confidence that we can build up in ourselves based on different disciplines we have come to learn to practice in our life.

These types of learned practices can lead us to becoming over-confident in ourselves, which in turn can lead us into judging others on how we are becoming. The writer uses an example of a person who received a stern talk from their physician regarding their health and took it to heart and began to change his lifestyle. Over time, his cholesterol and weight went down, and his self-esteem went up.

But then something not so good happened: He began noticing other people's dietary choices and began judging them. It is funny that often when we find a scoring system that grades us well, we use it to lift ourselves up and put others down.

We as Christians often do the same thing in our own lives when it comes to our walk with the Lord. As we begin to grow in the Lord, we go to church on a regular basis, we read our bible every day, we give our tithe, we begin to serve at the church and so on. All this is good in what we do, but once we begin to judge other people for not doing what we are practicing, this becomes bad. We begin to judge others in their walk with the Lord based on our walk.

Luke 6: 37

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."

I fell into this trap at some point in my Christian walk. What brought me to my knees was first my full and absolute surrender to God. It was when I realized what a wretched sinner that I was...that there is nothing good in me at all, no matter what I do. Read chapter 7 of Romans when you have time. This chapter will help us understand how sinful we can be. As we come to the cross of Christ with our brokenness, we come to realize that there is nothing good in us at all. All is but filthy rags. Every day I wake up, I know that I am a sinner, saved and forgiven, yes, but still a sinner.

PERSONNAL COMMENT:

If we can keep this prospective that we are forgiven by the grace of God, that there is nothing good in us that earned God merit for His gift of salvation through Jesus, then we are able to serve God through a heart of "thanksgiving" for what He has done for us, and not with a heart of bad judgement toward others.