{"id":5256,"date":"2020-12-27T04:31:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-27T10:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5256"},"modified":"2023-12-15T20:43:12","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T02:43:12","slug":"devotional-on-proverbs-61","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-proverbs-61\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Proverbs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-MTTFgHdu11I\/X4tVOZuVjqI\/AAAAAAABG-E\/AXU72ikIuKM_0MSgLcTsQdPeK5gCViOxACPcBGAsYHg\/s400\/11cripple_creek.JPG\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2003 &#8211; Cripple Creek, CO<\/figcaption><\/figure>Running out of wood can be a good thing<br \/>\nProverbs 26: When you run out of wood, the fire goes out; when the gossip ends, the quarrel dies down.<br \/>\nAs a pastor I have a pretty strong influence on what happens at church.  There is, I suppose, always the chance that someone will attempt to take control of a church service but that&#8217;s unlikely.  I have the main say concerning the order of worship and, of course, what is said in the sermon.  However, what happens &#8220;out there&#8221; during the week is out of my control.  Because of that, all the efforts on Sunday to create a loving, supportive family of God can be derailed if that same crowd spends the week fanning the flames of division.  Knowing this is humbling to me and it reminds me that I\u2019m not nearly as influential in my own church as I think I am.  However, it also reminds me that my greatest resource is not my leadership ability.  Instead, my greatest Resource is the One I serve.  It\u2019s my desire that the Lord will help me to love people even when they\u2019re behaving in ways that cause pain.  I want to personally set an example of how a sanctified Christian conducts himself, to help people who tend to gossip understand that there\u2019s an underlying spiritual issue, and to pray that the Lord will exhaust their supply of &#8220;wood&#8221; sooner and not later that the church might be united in love for Christ and one another.<br \/>\nTake Away: Some issues will simply die out and go away if we stop fanning the flames.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Running out of wood can be a good thing Proverbs 26: When you run out of wood, the fire goes out; when the gossip ends, the quarrel dies down. As a pastor I have a pretty strong influence on what happens at church. There is, I suppose, always the chance that someone will attempt to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1526,7],"tags":[147,516,590,668,691,1119],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5256"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14859,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions\/14859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}