Confessing Profanity: Clip from Consider Revival V

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And what we want to do today is we want to look again at the account of the ministers in Scotland in 1651 when they gathered together to consider the reasons or the causes of God's displeasure with their land.

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Why was he judging Scotland? And the answer they came up with was the sin of the land.

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Strangely for us today, their next choice, their next thought was, but it's not the culture out there that rejects

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God that is first to be dealt with, it's the church. And in dealing with the church, it's the ministers.

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And so the ministers themselves spent many days in this conference together considering their sins, and as Steve mentioned in our previous episode, how deep, how wonderfully penetrating.

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This is the opposite of kind of just a quick list of, well yeah, well we haven't been perfect. This is quite a soul -searching list, and we are only going to be able to pull out a couple.

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And so we're gonna get to that today. And so this is taken from their statement in 1653 when they actually published their document,

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The Sins of the Ministry of Scotland, where they said they wanted it to be clear, they wanted to justify

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God's judgment of Scotland, that he was right in how he was treating them, and they wanted it to be clear how deep our hand is in the transgression of the land, which is quite really just quite a wonderful picture of a truly godly leader.

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And as we mentioned last time, application far beyond just ministers. Anyone who has spiritual influence, who has been trusted with the

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Lord to influence younger believers, to teach in Sunday school, to teach, you know, in Christian schools, homeschool your own children, dads and moms, husbands, just so many applications.

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Well Steve, why don't you kick us off with one that you felt was particularly helpful?

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Would love to. One of the first ones, I think this actually may be the very first one, lightness and profanity in conversation.

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And I think the use of the term profanity there is not the way we would tend to think of it today, it's not cursing, it is the lack of respect for the sacred, it's the worldly.

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And they echo this in a couple of others, there's one a little further down, fruitless conversing ordinarily with others for the worse rather than for the better.

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And one of the things that struck me about this John is, I mean, I'm a lawyer, I deal in words, and you know, we live in a day when free speech really isn't very free in our nation, and to raise the topic of religion is a very controversial thing in a lot of contexts.

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In fact, it can get you into a lawsuit in the context of the employment setting, for example, that sort of thing.

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And so I think we live in a time, certainly I feel it pretty keenly, that we're always kind of self censoring our speech.

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You go on an airplane or you're just engaging in conversation with a stranger for the first time, and the temptation is to ratchet everything down to the lamest level, the banal.

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You can talk sports, maybe, if you don't have a rabid fan, but to talk religion, and sometimes even with our brothers and sisters in the church, it's not an easy thing to take seriously that our words are deeply impactful, whether for good or for evil, for really, as this one says, conversing ordinarily with others for the worse rather than the better, and to really give thought to what we say to one another in the limited time that we have with one another, and what a profound difference it can make in the spiritual life of an entire nation, ultimately.

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Yeah, we at the church where we attend, we have lunch every Sunday, and that's always a concern.

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You know, do we use this time of just friendship? Do we use it in a way that's beneficial?

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You know, you want to avoid that kind of falsely religious where you put on a mask, and everything you say is kind of King James Version, you know, and that's not helpful, but that kind of walk with the

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Lord, and then the carefulness that you mentioned on top of that, because it doesn't just naturally happen, you know, effortlessly.

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Even when we walk with the Lord, though we do want to talk about the Lord when we walk with the Lord, but even then, there is care required, so that how

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I speak to the person across the table from me, I am thinking, what would really be lastingly beneficial, and not just casual?

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As Proverbs puts it, a word fitly spoken is really a special thing, and it requires, like you say, it's just not natural, requires forethought, requires sensitivity and insight, often given by the

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Holy Spirit Himself, to where that person is, what kind of struggles they're dealing with, and the like.

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So just to take our words seriously, that this is a tremendous gift we've been given, but a great responsibility, just to be able to converse with one another as our daily walk transpires.

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Yeah, I mean, you can apply it, you know, at the workplace if you are the Christian there, to be prayerfully anticipating, looking for the openings, where the emptiness of life is expressed by, you know, your co -worker, and you have a chance to say something about Christ.

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Richard Owen Roberts shared with us some years ago when he was at the church that whenever he boarded a plane, he would pray about the person he was going to be sitting next to, and for an opportunity to speak words that would have a lasting effect to that person.

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I've employed that often, but I can't say every time I've boarded a plane. It's a sobering thought, too.

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Yeah, and again, and then with the Christian, not just at church. I mean, oftentimes how we spend time with each other at Christ Church in New Albany is having folks over for supper, and so you have a couple families from the church over, and you're able, you have an opportunity just to be friendly, or you have an opportunity to be friendly, but also to be friendly in a way that the focus is directed toward eternal things, and that,

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I find, that that really does take some work. A lot of times my wife will say to me, let's make sure we're careful that this is a really beneficial time with the people, because I spent 10 hours getting ready for it, and if we're just gonna, you know, goof off, which

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I'm often guilty of, then like, well, why did we invite people over? You know, so it does take some care, and they saw this as a genuine sin.

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That there was something wrong in my heart that led me not to be careful. Thank you for watching the clip.

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We hope that it was helpful for you. If you want to hear the full audio of that podcast, you can find it on any of your favorite podcast apps.