Confessing unloving spirit toward those I disagree with: Clip from Consider Revival V

Treating Those Who Differ in Theological Views

One that I think goes along with that is, he says treating those who are different than me in theological views. So we would say how we treat those that we feel are wrong spiritually, theologically. And let me give you kind of a summary of what he says.

Not praying for men of contrary judgment, who have different views, but using reservedness and distance from them, which you mentioned. So, all right, I don't say a lot of nasty things about them, perhaps, but I just let it be known by the lack of giving myself to them that I got no use for you.

So then he goes on, being more ready to speak of them than to them. So you've got problems, but I don't want to talk to you about it. I'll talk to everybody else. Or to God for them. Prayer. So good test for us.

Do I speak, any person that I'm disagreeing with, do I speak more about them to people than I speak to them or to God for them? Very simple test. Not weighed with the failings and miscarriages of others, not weighed down with their failings, but rather taking advantage thereof for justifying ourselves.

In other words, I told you I was a good, orthodox, solid Christian, and the evidence is Joe over here is not, and look how good I am compared to Joe. Talking of them and sporting at their faults, rather than compassionating, rather than being caught up with a real compassion for them.

Love, Compassion, and Refusing to Mock the Fallen

And this goes with that lack of love. If you have a child in your home that is rebelling and breaking your heart, you don't mock them to your friends. You hardly even want to talk about it because it's just so sad.

You can't sleep easily through the night. You've been up crying out to the Lord. Things don't seem to be getting any better. But really, them returning to the Lord, you know, it's so important to you, you wouldn't think of mocking them to others.

But that's because of love. But if another person is drifting from the Lord that's not in your home and that's maybe a bit of a hard person to like, and you see them, you know, we can think of maybe people on the national scene going into heresy, and we didn't like them in the first place.

It is so easy to mock them to other people for their heresy because you do not love them. It's not because we love truth so much that we mock heretics, it's because we don't know, like you mentioned, we don't have the heart of Christ or of Paul, both of whom broke their hearts over the unbelieving Jews.

The Danger of Delighting in the Falling of Christian Leaders

I think of prominent Christian leaders who have fallen recently and how easy it is to, like you say, kind of point fingers and maybe find something that you were critical of to begin with in their ministries and to just sort of almost delight in their falling.

And when you consider the world's view of the church and how grievous that is for the Holy Spirit to see those occasions for the mocking of the church generally, not to mention the tragedy and the pain and suffering of immediate family members, the folks that were involved in that ministry, and so on and so on.

It really is just like night and day for me to think of those different perspectives and frankly, very convicting.