CONVERSELY, though, just because he now says that he feels he made a mistake, that doesn’t mean for a second that there is not some extremely useful material in his published work.

The REAL danger would be to limit ourselves to learning only from those are are getting it right and not making any mistakes. Not one of us lives up to that standard. Any of us that are being used by God must understand that it is in spite of ourselves.

He may be at a point where he is seeing the need to drive with a different kind of passion or to embrace a different understanding of what it means to serve and disciple, but we are all often the worse judges of our own fruit, especially when trying to compare it to the fruit of someone else.

The gospel is not a message to be memorized, debated, intellectualized, or finalized solely in the academia of “theology.” It is to be lived as a message of peace and hope.

What is the difference between a church that is sensitive to the heart of a seeker and a church that is sensitive to the heart of the religious traditionalist? It all depends on the person to whom you are trying to reach out. Christ demonstrated a high value on being sensitive to knowing and speaking the language and getting to the heart of a seeker and making sure that the connection was made before he invited his seeker to come (go) and sin no more. It was the religious leaders, pious and proud of their holiness that he rebuked and to whom he challenged to live with the faith of children.

So whether Bill looks back and recognizes God working through his imperfect life, books, and messages or not, we don’t have to question the possibility of God working through people all around us.

Let me know if you find the pastor/ speaker whose material *shouldn’t* be filtered through context and comparison to scripture.

Yours in Christ
Dawn

http://www.matthewsblog.waynesborochurchofchrist.org