Welcome to the blog of Pastor Alton Stone, from Simpsonville, SC. Pastor Stone is a retired Ordained Bishop of The Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee with over 45 years of pastoral ministry.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Dealing With Bad Attitudes-Chapter 4 (cont)-It's Mine And You Can't Have It

Jealousy is cruel as the grave in so many situations especially:
-When it involves family disagreements or childhood bitterness that was never dealt with or let go.
-When it involves positions in churches of leadership, presentation, or participation.
-When it involves personal demons that continually haunt and attack you over injustices done to you in the past.

Sibling rivalry can end in a very horrible fashion. I conducted a funeral one time and the Funeral Director came to me and said, "Pastor, we may have a problem." He went on to tell me about the arguments and disagreements that had already taken place when trying to plan the service between the brother and sister involved. In fact it almost came to blows in his office. I simply talked with parties involved and told them that any outburst during the service would not be tolerated and went so far as to tell them that the police escort would be on standby to intervene if there was. There were some evil looks and a few insults, but thankfully no one came to blows.

While that service was at the funeral home I had one that I conducted at the church where I was warned that a certain member of the family might try to take over the service because of hatred they had toward the deceased. I prayed that God would stop any such nonsense and had the Funeral Director and his staff on standby to stop anything that got out of order. Well, she tried a couple of times to disrupt, but God stopped her each time. Finally, she got up and left during the middle of the service.

Think about this-what good does it do to have a It's Mine And You Can't Have It attitude when somebody dies? Are you going to follow them to heaven or hell and continue to stew over your situation with them? Or will you let it go and just put it under the blood? You, and you alone have to make that choice.

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