WITNESSING, INCONSISTENCY IN

Allowing the encumbrances and sins of the world to clog your life affects your witness in the world in the same way water in the kerosene affects a camping stove. The flame will flutter and sputter, or maybe go out completely. It is useless for light or heat.

Likewise, when our lives are fouled with impurities in our spiritual fuel tank, our light will sputter—until the fuel is again clean.1483

When visiting in a remote neighborhood, a pastor stopped at a house and asked the man who lived there to visit his church the next Sunday, mentioning at the same time that the man’s neighbor went to that church. On hearing this, the man said he would never go to that church because he wanted nothing to do with a religion that would have a man like his neighbor in it. In fact, he said, his neighbor was the worst neighbor he had ever had.

The pastor, seeing that the man had a piano, asked the man’s little girl to play a piece by Beethoven that was lying on the piano. The man said that Beethoven’s music was far too advanced for his daughter. But the pastor insisted, and the little girl gave it a try. Needless to say, she almost destroyed the piece.

After the little girl was finished, the pastor said, “Boy, that Beethoven sure wasn’t much of a composer, was he?” On hearing this, the man suddenly realized that he, too, had been judging the music of Christian living by the player rather than by the composer.

Let us all try to be good players, but let us not judge the composer by the player.1484