November 19, 2024–Pastor Bill’s Reading Plan

There will be a new reading plan that will be available at church on Facebook on Sunday.  The next reading plan will begin on Monday- November 25.  Thank you for continuing to study God's Word. I pray that you are finding it profitable.

Paul sounds a lot like a father talking to his children in this section.  He tells them they have been misbehaving and that if he comes back again, he will not be lenient.  He is very much like a father who cares for his children and wants them to get back on the right track.  This was truly coming from a love for the people and not a meanness.  Some of them may not like what they heard, but they needed to hear it.  It is sometimes funny how when we hold people accountable for their actions, they somehow want to turn it around and make us the bad guy.
  I remember one of my kids spilled something in the kitchen and made a pretty big mess.  It was an accident, so I was not really upset, but I asked them to clean it up. In essence I was simply asking them to fix the problem they created and take responsibility for their mistake. I was even going to help them do it, but I wasn't going to do it for them.  The reaction to that was somewhat amusing to me. " Why do I have to clean up the kitchen?  This is not fair.  Your being mean."  Any other parents have a similar reaction to kids being held accountable? Anyone see an adult act the same way?  You would think that I had made a mess and then asked a poor innocent child to clean it up based on the reaction.  Paul was asking people to take responsibility for their actions and based on the fact that he talks about 2 visits and still needing to fix things before he may return again, it seems like there may have been some stubbornness when it came to being fixing the messes that they had created in their own lives. Paul loved them too much to back down from holding them accountable.