Life's hardest lessons...

...are usually the simplest.

Ephesians 4:2-16 NLT

Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. ² Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. ³ Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. ⁴ For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. ⁵ There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.
⁷ However, he has given each one of us a special gift^[a] through the generosity of Christ. ⁸ That is why the Scriptures say,

“When he ascended to the heights,
    he led a crowd of captives
    and gave gifts to his people.”^[b]

⁹ Notice that it says “he ascended.” This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world.^{[c] 10} And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself.

¹¹ Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. ¹² Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. ¹³ This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
¹⁴ Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. ¹⁵ Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. ¹⁶ He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

But they just don't seem so simple do they? Speak the truth in love...

Yesterday, I was asked to weigh in on a discussion about when it is appropriate to confront another person who claims to be a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ, yet doesn't appear to be following those same teachings. 

This is a very difficult question, and it has an easy answer, that's not all that easy; Speak the truth in love. 

Balance that with the example of Christ, who confronted the religious leaders of his day by pointing out their hypocrisy and hubris; the example of a man who saw the abuse of his Father's house, the temple of God in Jerusalem, and went into an angry cleaning spree. His example is one of love for others; touching the sick, eating and drinking with the unwanted, speaking to social pariahs, and much worse by the standards of the Jewish faith at the time. But what of his confrontation of sin in the religious leaders of the day? How does that fit in with love?

Well, there's the old proverb; "Spare the rod, spoil the child," which while not exactly biblical, has roots in the Bible Proverb: "the rod is for the back of fools." Previously, this writer has discussed the proverb about arguing with a fool and correcting a fool, and perhaps that bears weight here at times. We can all point to times in our lives when we've been foolish and done things that were really mind numbingly stupid. It's at those times that we all need a brother or sister in Christ, a fellow member of His Body, to come up to us and lovingly use the rod of God's word on our foolish back. We then must humbly submit to that, in love as well, and look closely at our lives and repent. In the same way, when we see a brother or sister in Christ, to whom we are close, stumbling and sinning, and we do nothing to lovingly help them find their way, we become co-conspirators with them and, I believe, are just as guilty as they.

Then there are the times we need to step back and say nothing. The American Author; Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, said it best: "A closed mouth gathers no feet." Following the principle found in Matthew 18, when we've confronted someone, gone through the proper channels and so on, it's time to let them go. There's not much else you can do. This also applies to those minor times when we may want to give another person a piece of our mind, but instead choose to walk away. 

The Apostle John wrote: God is Love. That's big, but when we show love to others, we are really showing God to them. That's big too.