More to say

Maybe I'm just playing catch-up, but I decided to post some more rants & raves.
Pam (wife & love of my life) and I were talking like we always do. She said something that made me think.

She does that a lot.

She said, "You know what I'm starting to get bored with?"
I said, "Uh... no".
She said, "It's these words Christians use".
I said, "Oh".
(I was doing something else at the time)

My ears perked up when she said, "I get so tired of hearing people say, 'let's lift up so-and-so to God'"
I asked why.
She said it was because we use words like, "lift up" and "God's hand" like they're common.
I stopped doing what I was doing and looked right at her.
She continued to talk about how we toss around Christian-speak like everyone else understands what we're saying. If they don't understand, they immediately feel excluded.
She said, "why can't we just say, 'Pray for my friend'."

She's got a good point. We use such fancy words sometimes. It's as if when we use the fancy words, our prayers become more effective.

I'm just glad that we (Pam and I) have stopped using words like, "secular" and "worldly", "saved" and "un-saved" or "lost".
I guess it's now time to raise the bar so to speak.

Let's delve into something here.
James 5:16, paraphrased, says,
" the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous gets a lot done".

Fair enough.

However, in Romans 3:10, Paul directly quotes Psalms when he says, "there is none righteous... no, not one". As a matter of fact, Isaiah 64:6 says our righteousness is like filthy rags.

Well crap man... Since there is none righteous, how do our effectual fervent prayers avail much?
I think they don't.

Now stay with me here. Where does our "righteousness" come from?
Oh yeah... the righteousness of Christ.
Reading further in Romans, you see that Christ's righteousness (right standing) is placed upon us when we believe.
Okay... I'm good now.

Since it's not our right standing, but Christ's right standing, I think we can dispense with the fancy talk. It doesn't do us any good.

Let Jesus do the talking, you just do the walking. (Read Matthew 28:19, you'll get it)