"For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God."
— I Peter 4:17
Tell me, old friend, how many years did you say you’ve been sitting in that church pew? / How many years did you tell me you’ve been serving the Lord that first called you? / Is it new every morning, or has it got all dry and stale and phony? / Tell me, my friend, how many years has it been since you had a fresh testimony?
Now there, my young friend, I see you love the Lord; you want to serve Him and Him alone / But you’ve got so angry at that speck in your brother’s eye, you’ve got a log in your own / You’re moving in half a dozen spiritual gifts, and your knowledge is increasing fast / But if you haven’t got love in your heart, you’ve become like a sounding brass.
Is Jesus the Lord of all your business ethics; is He Lord of all your socializing? / Is He Lord of every minute of your life, or tell me, are you compromising? / I’m impressed by the way you’ve got just the right inflection when you call out “Hallelujah!” / But that won’t tell me if you’re serving the Lord or if He means the whole world to ya.
Oh, I hope Brother So-and-So is listening; I pray, Lord God, You’d just open his ear / ’Cause that song, that word, that prophecy, it’s exactly what he needed to hear.
But God is finally getting through to me: I must take everything I hear and see / Hold it up as a standard in my own life and let the Lord apply it to me.
For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. — I Corinthians 11:31-32, KJV
But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment. Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world. —NIV
