Hypocrisy
Fake it with Sincerity
"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." --Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)
3 Kinds of Believers
There are 3 kinds of
believers in church:
1. Believers
2. Unbelievers
3. Make-believers
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Definition of a Hypocrite
"A hypocrite can be defined as someone who complains that there is too much sex and violence on his VCR." --Reader's Digest, October 1991
No Absolutes?
After a college professor
gave a long lecture, he concluded, "And so you can see that there are no
absolutes. Are there any questions?"
One student raised his
hand and ask, "Are you sure?"
"I am absolutely sure!"
the professor answered.
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Intolerant of Intolerant People
It's "politically
correct" to be "tolerant," which means to respect everyone's opinions, no matter
how bizarre they might be. If you should disagree, those preaching tolerance
will immediately despise you for being intolerant, which makes them
intolerant. They are intolerant of intolerant people. That's as hypocritical as
someone saying, "Your impatience is driving me crazy!"
Integrity
Will You Be Honest?
A storeowner interviewed a young man for a job. He asked, "If I hire you to work in my store, will you be honest and truthful?" The young man answered, "I will be honest and truthful whether you hire me or not." God still sees us, even when no one is watching. (Kent Crockett, Making Today Count for Eternity, Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2001, p. 155)
Warehouse vs Showroom
"Integrity means you have
more in the warehouse than is in the showroom." --Clark Whitten
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Practicing Your Bumper Sticker
"Actions speak louder
than bumper stickers." --unknown
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Even If Everyone is Doing It
"Wrong is wrong--even if
everyone is doing it. Right is right--even if no one is doing it." --unknown
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The #1 Qualification
"Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." -- Warren Buffett
Integrity & Knowledge
"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, but knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful." --Samuel Johnson
Building & Ruining a Reputation
"It takes 20 years to
build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll
do things differently." --Warren Buffett
Jesus
All God and All Man
Jesus
existed as God in heaven, then put on flesh and lived among us (John 1:1,14)
Imagine a
sponge represents the deity of Christ and a glass jar represents his humanity.
Jesus existed as the eternal Word in eternity past (the sponge). The Word
becoming flesh can be illustrated by putting the sponge into the glass jar. He
is both God (the sponge) and man (the jar). Jesus was only-begotten, meaning he
had a one-of-a-kind birth. He was all God, yet he was also all man. (Kent
Crockett, The 911 Handbook, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003, 219)
Christ in You & You in Christ
A pastor was walking with
his son along the beach. His son questioned his father's sermon from Sunday.
"Dad, I can't understand how Christ can live in us and we can live in him at the
same time." The father noticed an empty bottle laying on the beach with a cork
in it. He picked up the bottle, put some water in it, stuck the cork back in,
and threw it into the ocean.
As they watched the
bottle bob up and down in the ocean, he said, "Son, the sea is in the bottle and
the bottle is in the sea. That's a picture of Christ being in you, and you being
in Him."
Col. 1:27--"Christ in
you, the hope of glory." Col. 3:3--"For you have died and your life is
hidden with Christ in God."
Joy
Selling Your Joy
One day my
wife, Cindy, refueled our car at a filling station in a Texas town. Instead of
driving up to the self-service pump, she accidentally pulled up to full-service.
She didn’t realize the luxury service cost an extra fifty cents per gallon until
she paid for the gas. Later she told me how the station had hiked the prices on
full-service.
That extra
fifty cents per gallon surely has to be a violation of some federal law, I
thought. I quickly calculated that the extra seven dollars she spent on
full-service would have taken our vehicle 128.33 miles farther down the road if
she had bought self-service gas. The “full-service gas station robbery” had me
fuming for several hours.
As I was
mulling over this terrible injustice, God showed me what I had done. I had sold
my joy for seven dollars! I never realized how cheaply I would surrender
something so valuable. Just as Esau exchanged his birthright for a bowl of soup,
I exchanged my joy for seven dollars’ worth of gas.
At what
price are you willing to sell your joy?
(Kent
Crockett, I Once Was Blind But Now I Squint, Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers,
2004, 40-41)
Enjoy the Moment!
One day I
was driving my car on a rural highway in Kansas. I was between destinations,
with nothing to do but drive and watch the flat land and telephone poles pass
by. Then God spoke to my heart, Enjoy the moment.
Enjoy the
moment? What was there to enjoy?
I then
realized that joy is a decision that I make. I need to take pleasure in every
minute of life, not just the exciting times. God wants us to draw joy from every
moment, every circumstance.
Enjoy your
fellowship with others. Enjoy spending time with your family. Savor the moments.
If you don’t, the life that God wants you to enjoy will pass you by, just like
those telephone poles.
(Kent Crockett, Making Today Count for Eternity, Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2001, pp. 162-163)
Theology and Joy
"I don't trust the theology of any person who doesn't laugh." --Elton Trueblood
Dog Playing Cards
A man walked by a table
in a hotel and noticed three men and a dog playing cards. The dog appeared to be
winning.
"That must be a very
smart dog," the man commented.
"He ain't so smart," said
one of the players. "Every time he gets a good hand he wags his tail!"
When we have joy in our
hearts, it will be obvious to everyone! "A joyful heart makes a cheerful face"
(Prov. 15:13) --Kent Crockett
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Heart Shows Up on Your Face
"Countenance is a press conference that your face calls to give the state of union of your soul." --Dudley Hall
Judging
Easy to See Others Faults
Driving to the office
this morning, I noticed a woman driving 65 mph with her face up next to her rear
view mirror, putting on her eyeliner! I looked away and next thing you know she
was halfway in my lane, still putting on her makeup.
As a man, I don't scare easily. But she scared me so much, I dropped my electric shaver, which knocked the donut out of my other hand. In all the confusion of trying to straighten out the car using my knees against the steering wheel, it knocked my cell phone away from my ear which fell into the coffee between my legs, ruined the phone, soaked my trousers, and disconnected an important call. All because of that crazy woman driver!
Talking about others
Years ago
my wife and I recorded many of our family highlights using an 8mm home movie
camera. We collected years of precious memories on numerous spools of film,
which became antiquated after the invention of video cameras. Some friends
living in another state offered to combine all our films onto one videotape. We
gladly accepted their generous offer and sent them our films.
Our friends
placed an 8mm home movie camera in their living room to project our movies. They
also set up a VHS video camera pointed at the screen and recorded the films
while the other camera’s reels turned. They sent the completed videotape to us.
Cindy and I
were anxious to watch the tape of our old movies. We brought out the popcorn and
inserted the video into our VCR. But that’s where the fun stopped. As we beheld
our old home movie films on videotape, we also listened to our friends’ remarks.
They hadn’t realized that when they recorded our films, the video camera also
taped their critical comments about us!
When the
videotape began, they started making fun of us. As the film continued to roll,
their comments turned vicious. With every new scene came a cutting remark or
hurtful joke. Daggers entered my heart as I listened to what our friends
honestly thought about us. My wife was devastated.
Our friends
looked at us through judgmental glasses. Although they were cordial to our
faces, the video recorded the true thoughts of their hearts.
[Kent
Crockett, I Once Was Blind, But Now I Squint, Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers,
2004, 12-13]
Do Not Try to Explain Why It Happened
A church member called
his pastor and said, "A tornado just destroyed my house and barn."
"I'm not surprised," the
pastor replied. "Punishment for sin is inevitable."
"But it destroyed your
house too, pastor."
"It did?" said the
minister. "The ways of the Lord are beyond human understanding!"
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Judgment Day
Works Burned Up
After
spending months writing his book The French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle took his
manuscript to his friend John Stuart Mill for his comments. Mill passed the
manuscript on to a lady named Mrs. Chapman, who read it by the fireplace on the
evening of March 5, 1834. Before she went to bed that night she laid the
manuscript on the mantel.
Early the
next morning the servant girl came to clean the room and to start the fire in
the fireplace. Not knowing what the papers were, the servant used the manuscript
as fuel to kindle the fire. The work of months was burned up in a matter of
seconds.
Some Christians spend their entire lives on earth building with wood, hay, and straw. At the judgment seat of Christ, many people’s work will go up in flames. They will be admitted into heaven, but will be saved “as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15). (Kent Crockett, Making Today Count for Eternity, Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2001, p. 85)
Kindness
It is Nice to Be Important but . . .
"It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice." --parents of 2002 Olympic gold medal figure skater Sarah Hughes (what they told Sarah)
The Man Who Helped
A number of years ago a
black man was walking along Forty-second Street in New York, from the terminal
to the hotel, carrying a heavy suitcase and a heavier valise. Suddenly a hand
took hold of the valise and a pleasant voice said, "That's a heavy load,
brother. Why don't you let me help? I'm going your way."
The black man resisted,
but finally allowed the young white man to assist him carrying his burden. For
several blocks they chatted like old friends until they reached the hotel.
"And that," said Booker T. Washington years afterward, "was the first time I ever saw Theodore Roosevelt." (Edmund Fuller, ed. 2500 Anecdotes for All Occasions. New York: Wings Books, 1970, p. 44)
Kindness is a language
"Kindness is a language that deaf people can hear and that blind people can see." --Chuck Swindoll
One Reason to be Kind
An old professor said,
"Son, be kind to everyone, for everyone's having a hard time." --Baptist
Standard
Admiring kind people
"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." --Abraham Heschel
Knowledge
Ever-learning
"I'm learning more and more about less and less. Now I know everything about nothing." --author unknown
How Much We Do Not Know
"Until man duplicates a
blade of grass, Nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge . . . it
is obvious that we don't understand one millionth of one percent about
anything." --Thomas Edison
"We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything." --Thomas Edison, quoted in H. Jackson Brown, Jr., A Father's Book of Wisdom. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1988, p.76
I Taught You Everything I Know and . . .
A boss told his employee,
"I taught you everything you know--and you still don't know anything!"
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The Know-It-All
A.J. Jacobs
is a magazine editor who, in his mid-thirties, decided
to read every page of the Encyclopedia Britannica. That's 32 volumes,
33,000 pages, and 44 million words. For one year and fifty-five days he read 100
pages per day. His accomplishment led to an appearance on Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire.
Unfortunately, all of his studying didn't help. Jacobs missed the $32,000 question that called for a definition of erythrocyte. Even though he had read every word of the "E" volume, he couldn't remember it means red blood cell. He walked away with $1,000 and ended up writing a book about his experience called, The Know-It-All. --Reader's Digest, October 2004, as cited in In Other Words.
Know It All?
"What we know is a drop. What we don't know is an ocean." --Sir Isaac Newton