Thursday, November 19, 2009

Interesting thoughts from Haggai

I was reading in Haggai the other day (yes, Haggai) and came across this interesting illustration that Haggai gave to the people from God:
" 'If a person carries consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, oil or other good, does it become consecrated?'
The priests answered, 'No.'
Then Haggai said, 'If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?'
'Yes,' the priests replied, 'it becomes defiled.' "

Here's what I found interesting about this. We can be good and do good and just radiate goodness, but it's not necessarily going to cause goodness in others. Sadly, the good just doesn't rub off quite like the bad does. It's very easy, however, for our sin to defile many and our bad attitudes and comments to effect a negative change in others. I wish it weren't so; I wish the good in us could just as easily stimulate good in others, but it just doesn't work that way. This, of course, does not mean we should not try to be filled with the Spirit and do God's Will, for it does, in some part, "rub off" on others. But that sin nature still dying inside us causes the good produced in us by the Holy Spirit (and only by the Holy Spirit) to be more readily faded than the bad that is naturally produced in us.

I don't know, it made sense in my head.

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