Now first off, I want to express this very clearly. I do not take lightly the responsibility of writing this blog. Years ago when God called me to be a Bible teacher, I shivered. I had heard the scripture:

“Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” James 3:1

I did not want any part of that, who wants to be judged more strictly? I never put my hand up for that. But God did call me – a few times, and after a while, you just cannot ignore it anymore. It was not that I was more “favorable” or “lucky” or anything like that. I believe I am a slow learner and I learn by doing, that is my bent. So I first do the deed, write it down and then if I am lucky, I remember, if not, repeat, repeat and repeat some more. God has shown me that I need these lessons even more than most people.

Now that you know that I write totally for me, if you benefit from my lessons, that is an awesome outcome, but know that mainly, the lessons in the blogs usually pertain to me.

My son came over the other night and was on a bit of a rant about a driver that had cut him off in the intersection right in front of my house and then fingered him. He, like most of us, had not enjoyed the exchange so he gave a duplicate salute with a few choice words to follow.

Road rage. Heat rage – it was 32 degrees out, a little hot under the collar type of thing.

Do these kind of circumstances give us the license to answer back. Do we not have a right to be treated decently? Do we make judgments onto the other person who offended us?

I gave my son a little pep talk about our words, and being kind, it seemed to fall on deaf ears.

I find for me, that I often let my politeness go within my family, perhaps family feels “safer” so you can make those judgments or name calling and not feel as guilty. Words like: “don’t be so stupid”, "how dumb are you?", “why are you such a jerk?”(or worse). But really, are you the “standard” of what others should act like?

The next morning I got up and was looking out the window and saw a couple people and all of the sudden a very derogatory word flitted into my head about one of the people outside. It shocked me. It never escaped my lips, but it sure was in my head. I sat down and thought, so much for the little “be kind” pep talk I had given last night when my head has these kind of awful things floating around in it.

God has been talking to me about “Judging”. Basically it is fairly clear – Don’t. But there I was again in my kitchen, thinking how I had blown this one.

I had just been reading in my morning devotions about “judging”, funny how a walk from the bedroom to the kitchen seemed to have erased my memory so quickly.

In my devotions there was a phrase that I thought would be the one, the one I would remember, the one that would cause me to wake up to judging period, the one that kicked me in the stomach and I thought, “Oh boy I sure do not want that.”

Here it is the phrase that spoke to me: “How many of us would be willing to stand before God and boldly declare to Him, “Judge me as I have judged others.”

Hmmmm……. I need more work on this one, how about you?