Stepping Stone or Stumbling Block

"You have heard that it was said,
'You shall not commit adultery'
but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman
to lust after her has committed adultery with her already
in his heart. If your right eye
causes you to stumble, pluck it out
and throw it away from you.
For it is more profitable for you
that one of your members should perish,
than for your whole body
to be cast into Gehenna. MATT. 5:27-30

"It was also said,
'Whoever shall put away his wife,
let him give her a writing of divorce'
but I tell you that whoever puts away his wife,
except for the cause of sexual immorality,
makes her an adulteress;
and whoever marries her
when she is put away
commits adultery." MATT. 5:31-32


Are you a stepping stone or a stumbling block in your relationships? Are you enriching the lives of those around you or interfering with their journey to God? Your thoughts and actions reflect the condition of your heart. Jesus is most concerned about your soul and wants you to know the fullness of his love and saving power. Are you keeping God's covenant of love with each person in your life? If not, you aren't just harming your relationship with God, you may be preventing someone else from really knowing him as well.

Precious Father, let me be a stepping stone to your throne of grace especially with someone whose faith is weak. May I always treat each person you put in my path as precious, letting me see the Jesus in them. May I see my Holy Spirit ordained relationships through your eyes of love and with eternal perspective.

"Yet you say, 'Why?' Because Yahweh has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion, and the wife of your covenant. Did he not make you one, although he had the residue of the Spirit? Why one? He sought a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. 'For I hate divorce,' says Yahweh, the God of Israel, 'and him who covers his garment with violence!' says Yahweh of Armies. 'Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you don't deal treacherously.'" ~ "For though I was free from all, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became as weak, that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some." ~ "Abstain from every form of evil." ~ "Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."
Malachi 2:14-16; 1 Corinthians 9:19-22; 1 Thessalonians 5:22; 1 Peter 2:11