second hand smoke

it’s 4:45 in the morning and i am wide awake.  I woke up from a pretty good dream, but I was bothered by some things that happened the evening before.  I am troubled by how prevalent, in our society, opinions are exalted.  God doesn’t have opinions, He is always right.  We may have opinions about things, but we are often wrong.  As I have studied the Scriptures and the person of Jesus Christ, I have come to see that Jesus  non-political, He’s just always right.  The idea that was in my mind this morning about opinions, is the idea of second hand smoke.  When a person is smoking, they are breathing in the poison, they are harming only themselves.  but when they breathe out the “second hand smoke,”  they are harming everyone else around them.  People have developed lung cancer without ever taking a puff off of a cigarette.  I think that our own opinions can be harmful to others around us.  When we harbor ideas that are not based on truth, but opinion, we harm ourselves, but when we spout off those opinions to others, we may bring harm to them.  ‘I think God would rather us spend our time “speaking the truth in love”   or   “encouraging one other with psalms hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord.”   Politics can be so divisive.  Jesus didn’t have a favorite political party, He just loves us all with His whole heart.  God desire “for none to perish, but for all to come to have eternal life”  Are there some people that we would rather see in hell that see them in heaven.  I’m sorry, but that is just not the heart of God  We are not going to get along with everyone, but we can still love them in the Love of Christ.  I have been on both the “tail end” of opinion and the “tongue end” of opinion.  I have spouted off nonsense in the name of “my own personal opinion,”  and I have been the one who has been wounded by other people’s opinions.  Jesus tells us to love one another.  Now this is not to say that there is no “right or wrong.”  God is right about everything, and we are to yield to His truth in everything.  But let’s be careful not to mix our own ideas, or opinions into God’s truth, and attribute it to God.  I try to be merely a guidepost pointing to Christ, or a lamp-post, lighting the way to God’s Word.  Jesus says, “Let your yeas be yes and your no be no.”  Now that’s truth, that’s right, and we can trust whatever Jesus says.  He is the solid ground we stand on and rest in.  God’s Words will “never return void without accomplishing what God has sent them forth to do.”  But our own words can be completely void, completely meaningless and often harmful.  “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.”  So let’s be very careful how we use how we use our words and not go throwing our own personal opinions around so much.  Like second hand smoke, our opinions often do more harm and are better left unspoken.