{"id":12167,"date":"2020-08-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/?p=12167"},"modified":"2023-06-08T11:56:59","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T01:56:59","slug":"the-stink-or-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/twft\/the-stink-or-the-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stink or the Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>\u2018Let my prayer be\u2026as incense\u2026\u2019 Psalm 141:2 NKJV<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Noah\u2019s ark is a picture of your church. It wasn\u2019t a luxury liner; can you imagine spending a year in that ark with all those animals, and just one window? But Noah had only two options\u2014the stink or the storm. So what\u2019s the relevance here? There are no perfect churches! The joke goes \u2018if you find the perfect church, don\u2019t join it, you\u2019ll ruin it!\u2019 We all love to talk about the power of the New Testament church, but what about its problems? They had hypocrites. Remember Ananias and Sapphira? They had financial scandals (Acts 5). They had doctrinal differences that almost split the church in two (Acts 15). And they had moral problems. They actually had a man in the Corinthian church who was sleeping with his stepmother (1 Corinthians 5). So what should you do when there\u2019s a big stink in your church? <i>First,<\/i> don\u2019t spread it. <i>\u2018And above all things have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins.\u2019<\/i> (1 Peter 4:8 NKJV) <i> Second,<\/i> work for reconciliation. <i>\u2018\u2026if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently\u2026\u2019<\/i> (Galatians 6:1 NIV) <i>Third,<\/i> pray. Don\u2019t be discouraged when \u2018flesh acts like flesh\u2019. And don\u2019t be part of the problem, instead show your maturity and be part of the solution. The Psalmist said, <i>\u2018Let my prayer be set before You as incense.\u2019<\/i> When problems arise in your church, you should pray, walk according to God\u2019s Word, and believe Him to bring good out of the situation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/soulfood\/todays-readings-11Aug2020\/\">SoulFood<\/a>: Deut 28\u201329, Luke 12:35\u201348, Ps 119:41\u201348, Pro 17:17<\/p>\n<p><em style=\"color: #41423d; font-family: arial, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 18px;\">The Word for Today<\/em><span style=\"color: #41423d; font-family: arial, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 18px;\"> is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright \u00a9<\/span><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Let my prayer be\u2026as incense\u2026\u2019 Psalm 141:2 NKJV Noah\u2019s ark is a picture of your church. It wasn\u2019t a luxury liner; can you imagine spending a year in that ark with all those animals, and just one window? But Noah had only two options\u2014the stink or the storm. So what\u2019s the relevance here? There are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ucbasiapacific.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}