2 Peter 1: 12For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth.

When my daughter was a baby I went to the priest of our church and asked to have her baptized. The priest sat across the desk from me and we had a heart to heart talk. He ended with, “Susan, go home and sprinkle some water on her head. The way you are living it will mean the same thing.” I wasn’t offended by him at all. I knew the rules of my faith and I knew I fell short. He explained how he didn’t believe in limbo and how making a vow is important and what the promise meant. As I think on him today, I pray God blesses him abundantly, he and all the other men and women of God who loved me enough to tell me the truth, and who loved their faith enough to not compromise it for numbers or popularity. I can visually see the scene in my head to this day and I see that woman speaking to that priest and she was dying, and he was offering her a chance a real life!

This past weekend I preached on one of those touchy subjects about knowing each other by the fruit we bear. It was a total God thing and I didn’t even blog this past week because I was studying for this message and trying to put it all together, in less than book form, and something more like what your rear end can handle in a service and still be effectively causing the process of thinking it through.

Can I be honest and say I do think about how people will take it? I have to reconcile the process of having peace without the acceptance of sin. Or rather, loving someone through a process rather than telling them all is well when it isn’t. You see, I appreciate the priest who spoke the truth to me. I count him as one of the seeds that was planted in me that caused me to change and become more aware of what I was doing and why. I believe still today that he cared more about my soul than he did of whether I liked him or not. That’s love.

Today I read the recent Gallup Poll that said 60% of Americans, of which 78% of those profess Christianity, say they do not think having a child out of wedlock is morally wrong. They still think having an extramarital affair is wrong but not having a child out of wedlock. As one who had a child out of wedlock, that would seem like good news but it wasn’t then and it isn’t now. Kids need a mom and a dad and they need those two people to get along and to function as a family.

To speak against this is to be thought of as hateful, judgmental, a hypocrite, and all the other terms thrown at Christians today. So I write today to settle your soul and mine. These ways of life created by God are there to save us from heartache. Whatever the world may say about you, boldness and love shall prevail.