Christians are both flexible and inflexible.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on the SoundCloud link.

“When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ.
Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.”
1 Corinthians 9:22 New Living Translation

Cats are contortionists. This is a picture of my cat, Cali (an original name for a calico, right?). Cali has been a part of our family for thirteen years, and in those thirteen years I’ve watched her do some amazing feats with her body.

• She can bend her spine backwards so that her front paws can touch her back paws. (Okay, she’s not that flexible, but that’s what it looks like.)
• Her tongue can clean every part of her body, which results in amazing hairballs in the summer.
• She can sleep in any position imaginable, as shown in this picture.

However, this amazing flexibility doesn’t mean that Cali resembles jello.

God calls us to be FLEXIBLE and INFLEXIBLE.

We are never to compromise the Word of God. We believe that the Bible is God’s revelation of himself to humanity. We believe that this revealed Word of God points us to our salvation in Jesus Christ. Both the difficult and the comforting words of the Bible are God’s Word that lead us to our salvation. This message cannot be compromised.

The problem for many of us who follow Jesus is that we apply this inflexibility to all of our Christian walk.

We might consider Paul an inflexible person, but he wanted to be what God wanted him to be for the truth of Jesus to be heard. I’ve been to Germany, Peru and Honduras, yet I only speak a little German and even less Spanish. If I expected people from these countries to speak English before I communicated the love of Jesus, I would be ineffective. We speak and live the gospel message in the “language” people speak.

By the way, there’s one skill that’s important to learn when becoming flexible. It’s the skill of listening.

Copyright Douglas P Brauner