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NASB | Ephesians 5:19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Ephesians 5:19 Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, [offering praise by] singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; |
Subject: Heb.13:15 This verse addresses our prais |
Bible Note: Dear gentle brother in Christ: 2 Samuel 22 - Well, twice upon the forum this day we meet! It being an incontrovertible truism that birds of a feather flock together, when I read in your user profile that you are a Southern Baptist, I gave you a gold star! When I read further and learned that you are but a year-old babe in Christ, yet already you are set for a mission trip in July, I added three gold stars to your credit all at once! And when I read a gentle, kind, yet firm and no-nonsense post such as the one I am hereto responding, I added another gold star! So you, my friend and brother, are a five star winner in my little accounting book! ..... Plaudits aside, let me position the remainder of this post more on topic and pass along a thought or two I gleaned years ago from reading the works of C.S.Lewis. This fine and distinguished Christian apologist, who did not sit heavy in any particular denominational pew, although he was a member of the Anglican [Church of England], made what I consider some of the shrewdest observations I've ever read on the subject of argumentation and debate over purely theological or doctrinal issues. The quotation that follows, extracted from C.S.Lewis' "Mere Christianity" is rather long, but it is well worth reading at least three times! Here it is: ........... "The reader should be warned that I offer no help to anyone who is hesitating between two Christian 'denominations.' You will not learn from me whether you ought to become an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Roman Catholic...I am a very ordinary layman of the Church of England, but I am not trying to convert anyone to my own position. Ever since I became a Christian I have thought that the best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my unbelieving neighbors was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times. The questions which divide Christians from one another often involve points of High Theology or even of ecclesiastical history which ought never to be treated except by real experts. I think we must admit that the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all to bring an outsider into the Christian fold. So long as we write and talk about them we are much more likely to deter him from entering any Christian communion than to draw him into our own. I get the impression that far more writers are engaged in controversial matters than in the defense of what Baxter calls 'mere' Christianity." --Hank |