Totally Right, but Totally Wrong

How many of you know, you can be totally right, but be totally wrong? 

 Susan and I have a rule for our marriage.  We have agreed to this rule because we know it is a good rule and helps us to treat one another how we honestly desire to do so according to our marriage vows and the love we share and are committed to.  And it is how we want to be treated by each other.

The rule is this.  If we disagree about something, we do not have the right to raise our voice at one another to try to get our way.  In other words, if we are in a disagreement and the tension starts to rise (which never really happens, right), if one or the other of us starts to raise our voice or increase the tone of our voice as if to force our view on the other.  All the other person has to say to end the argument is, you don’t have the right to raise your voice at me.  This most commonly comes out as “why are you raising your voice, or you don’t have to raise your voice at me”

Once one of us says anything like this the argument is over and the other person automatically wins, unless you are able to compose yourself, calm down, and begin to talk in a tone and volume that shows love and respect for the person you are talking too. 

You can be totally right but be totally wrong.  This is actually an oxymoron because if you were totally right you would not be expressing yourself in a way that is totally wrong.  

When it comes to our faith, we often think or speak like we are totally right but yet we live our lives in a way that is totally wrong.

Right Belief is meant to guide our lives in the way of Right Practice.  And Right Practice cannot exist for long without Right Belief.  

Right Belief and Right Practice are not two separate things.  They are one in the same and when we start to think that they can be separated from each other, we may be totally right, but we are totally wrong.  And we are only fooling ourselves and need to repent of the false gospel that we have embraced.

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Where have you seen the lack of continuity between your Right Beliefs and Right Practice?

Where have you been totally right, but totally wrong?   There are far too many Christians who say they believe but their lives do not align with the Word of God.  There are far too many Christians who claim to be sharing God’s love but are doing so without a truth that would bring God’s grace which is what the sinner actually needs.  

What if the argument was to stop until you and I repented, until we calmed down, until we could begin to speak in a different tone and a different volume.  Until you and I come to a place of agreeing, a place of seeing that God’s Truth and God’s Grace need to meet together in their fullness for the Gospel of Jesus to be communicated.  

For the Gospel of Jesus to be shared in a way that the Holy Spirit changes the hearts of ruthless sinners into glorious saints as people experience their minds being transformed to a place where they no longer conform to the patterns of this world but begin to see the wisdom and will of God and align their lives Right Practice to Right Belief?   

Perhaps we need to hear the call of Isaiah to repent because we have believed a false gospel that says I can have Right Belief without Right Practice.  Maybe we need read, hear, mark, and inwardly digest God’s word, His Truth so we can understand and receive the fullness of God’s grace and that He has given to us in Jesus.

Maybe we need to ask God to show us what Right Belief and Right Practice would mean for the relationships we have, the life that we live, and the people we will bump shoulders with daily in our lives? 

 Maybe, if we ask we will hear the Holy Spirit working to align our Right Belief to Right Practice so that the World would see Jesus, through us His&nb