Being responsible.

     Let me begin by telling everyone reading this that I have failed to be responsible in most if not all of the areas of my life and with those whom I care for and don't care for.  I apologize and ask for your forgiveness.  God, I ask for your forgiveness as well, please help me to inspire people more than alienate them from you.
     That being out of the way let's look at what responsibility looks like from varying points of view.  A Christian pastor makes a plan to kill someone and almost succeeds when he is found out.  He is killed.  The man whom the pastor was going to kill?  Hitler.  Hmmm what is the right or wrong choice?  Hitler would be dead and the war would have been over.  Millions of lives would have been saved.  Was the pastor being responsible?  Civil disobedience has it's Christian debut with Peter and John.  When brought before the religious leaders of Israel and been order to not speak the name of Jesus, what was the responsible thing to do?  They said that they needed to obey God because of the higher law.  Hmmm  What is right and what is wrong.  The Bible clearly tells us to obey the laws under which we live.  Can one be responsible when one is being disobedient? 
     Thanks Steve, we were having a great morning until we read this! 
     I don't know who sang this song, but they had it right.  The main line of the song said, "Nobody wants to play rhythm guitar behind Jesus."  "Everybody wants to be the lead singer of the band."  How true on so many levels.  Responsibility is something we banter back and forth with each other and sometimes even with God.  Some would say the word "responsibility" falls into the grey area of life.  If there was a grey area I guess that might be true.  Jesus never talked about a grey area in life.  He brought to us the law of the Old Testament, put it in words that we couldn't dispute and said "Do these if you are my disciples."  What was he talking about?  The two greatest commandments.  "Love God with all your heart, soul and might and love everyone as you love yourself."  Black and white.  We are commanded to be responsible in black and white but never in grey.  Grey areas are where we have our falling down scene.
     In order for us to understand and be responsible we need to begin by putting everything back in perspective.  Eliminate the grey areas in our lives.  That could take me a lifetime!  Jesus said we should take the log out of our eye before we try to remove the speck from someone else's eye.  It's not that we are not allowed to be instruments of His will.  So many feel they aren't qualified for being his instrument in others lives.  Still others tell us we are not qualified.  Why?  Because of our own sin and belief that the sin in us prevents us from having value as Christians.  That isn't true.  At least to God and His Word it's not true.  God works in spite of who we are and in spite of our situation or for that matter our opinion.  He asks us to be responsible by letting Him work through our submitted life.  Hmmm what is right and what is wrong?
     In our hearts we know what is right and what is wrong.  You and I know that we have used the excuses of all the years to avoid being responsible.  It's come to the point where we are immobilized by the belief that the Christian faith should not be offensive.  That's not what Jesus said.  We've come to that place where our Christian faith should be politically correct.  Jesus didn't say that one either.  The Gospel is foolish only to those who are perishing.  That's what God says.  If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.  If you don't know Jesus you are unable to be responsible.  If you do know Jesus, you have no choice but to be responsible.