Convictions: the left wing cries for them to be extinguished while the right wing fights tooth and nail for their existence.
Many of today’s Christians hold convictions that or more thoroughly based on man’s traditions then ever they were on Scripture. Yet many still, hold no convictions at all.
Some will put everything at stake to fight against smoking, drinking, and dancing. But as I sit in my pew and notice those in front, behind, and to the side of me, it just doesn’t seem to threaten me in such real way! On the other hand, I am constantly tempted with direct disobedience to the simplest of God’s commands! When has gossip been a conviction? Could that maybe be a real biblical danger that needs convictions to stand against it? What about forgiveness? Could that be such a conviction that it allows for no exceptions? What about love of the brethren? Could that be enough of a conviction that we begin to prove to the world who’s followers we actually are? The list goes on and on. Where are our convictions when it come’s to the commands of Christ? I have never seen a sin like gossip; so rampant among Christians yet so rarely preached against from the pulpit. Forgiveness? We don’t even know what that is! How many church splits, one after the other? How many families get up and walk out the door due to offence? How much gossip goes around and rumors started due to lack of forgiveness? Then the first and foremost of all commands: love. How many unbelievers are daily turned away from christianity due to the bickering and fighting amongst christians? How is the world to know that we are His disciples? They don’t know because there isn’t any evidence!
Then there’s those that just say “no” to conviction. Let’s not define and not draw lines. Let’s ‘up’ the toleration. Let’s be a little more excepting. Let’s not be so snobbish and radical that we can’t get down on the world’s level and minister to them.
Thus, here we sit: pious and complacent christians, who keep our thoughts to ourselves. We can’t tell the world of a living savior because we don’t want to turn them off. Our witness will be that we read our Bibles, pray, and go to church (they wont be able to tell by our daily life style because it’s no different), but surely by this they will know that we are a christian and will ask us how they too can be saved. We can’t speak out against sin amongst fellow believers because there needs to be peace and unity, not dissension.
O for the day we had conviction to preach the gospel to every people, nation and tongue! Conviction to prove our authenticity by our love for the brethren! Conviction to do all things to the glory of God! Or…JUST CONVICTION!!! for crying in a bucket!
My Heart in His Hand 
Lydia, I think our God is the same. He always seems to be working in our lives in the same area at the same time. Forgiveness and gossip both been areas of conviction lately. I have always known both were big issues among people claiming Christianity, but I have seen it absolutely rampant lately.
On a lighter note: when you talked about preachers preaching against ‘sin’ that isn’t exactly a problem with the people he is preaching to it made me think of a sermon (I use that word VERY lightly in this case) I heard at a meeting when I was a kid. This man preached on the evils of women wearing there hair in beehive hairdos. Seriously! The biggest thing wrong with that is the fact that he was adding to Scripture. You cannot say that is sin. On the funnier side women hadn’t worn those in 25+ years at that time.
“No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.” ~G. K. Chesterton: ‘The Secret of Father Brown.
(Your blog made me think of this Chesterton quote.)
I’ll seen it in my own Church that people lack forgiveness. Holding grudges ,dislike, and down right hatred for the person next him or her. Its only eats them up from the inside out! Sunday morning its all hi ,hello ,an “nice to see you”, and during the week its just the opposite! “By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Its all about following the example of Christ Himself.
If the Church was unified the way it should be many people would be drawn to believing on Jesus Christ ,and be convicted that He is Lord!