It is very, very important that you read the posts in numerical order.
Scripture quotations are from 1984 NIV of The Holy Bible unless otherwise noted.
The RefTagger Tool uses the NKJV of The Holy Bible for Scripture Quotations.True Worship
In the sixth chapter of Matthew, Jesus commands us to do certain things privately to please our Heavenly Father instead of publicly to look good to men. Giving to the needy, praying, and fasting are to be done privately, in secret, when only you and God know what you did. We all have a public self and a private self. Our behavior changes when we are around people to put up false fronts and project an image. At work, we act differently when the boss is around. Sometimes we won't do certain things unless someone is there to see us do it so we can get the credit for doing it. This is just image manipulation. Its the same thing with dating and being in a relationship, we put our best self forward. We naturally get distracted by people and constantly do things to impress them. Our private self is who we really are, and that's when we focus on God the most, when we are alone. When our private self equals our public self, then we are "keeping it real" all the time. To the saying, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," you can add "praise, and worship" to get "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, praise, and worship." So when we perform good deeds, or acts of love, when only God can see us, and we are not trying to impress anyone but God, that is how we worship God in spirit and in truth.
1 John 4:16 "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (17) In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him."
Our Collective Responsibility
Proverbs 4:7 "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding."
Everyone should seek wisdom on their own, but most people don't know this and so they will not do this at all because of our natural selfish ignorance. It is the responsibility of those who know and understand to share their knowledge with those who don't know. You can't force Love or Wisdom on anyone, but you can give them information and let them decide if it is useful or not. All you have to do is believe that God made people rational and therefore:
"When people have the right information, they will make the right decisions."-- Thomas Jefferson
BECAUSE
"People do what they think is best, given their current knowledge, in any given circumstance." -- Sten Morten Anderson
"When someone shares something of value with you and you benefit from it, you have a moral obligation to share it with others."
The more we share our wisdom, the better the world will be. Ideally we want a culture of people sharing wisdom freely and building each other up instead of trying to exalt themselves over their fellow man. So when you freely share useful information with others, they will do the same for you. This is called "edifying each other" or Mutual Edification / Reciprocal Edification. Edify -- v. to instruct or benefit, especially morally or spiritually. Hopefully, if we:
Sow Seeds Of Wisdom to Reap
better behaved Seed Sowers
who will do the same,
because in a system,
what goes around comes around and
you Reap what you Sow.
better behaved Seed Sowers
who will do the same,
because in a system,
what goes around comes around and
you Reap what you Sow.
How often could you drive your car if each of the thousands of components had to decide whether or not to obey commands when you wanted to use it? Thank God we can only make non-living, and therefore automatically obedient, things.
The Problem Is Choice.
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