Remind them of these things, and charge them before God[b]not to quarrel about words,which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. 2 Timothy 2:14-17a
So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone,able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. 2 Timothy 2:22-26
Have you ever got in to an argument you knew was going nowhere the moment you entered it? When it was over (if it ever ended) did you feel like nothing was accomplished? Believe it or not, this existed before the internet! As you can see from Today's Verses, the useless arguments we get ourselves in to are really nothing new. There's times people just want to be contrary, and no matter what you say you're not going to make any headway; at times, someone's so rooted in their belief system, there's no way to penetrate the shell around their heard heart. Other times, we're so intent on being right, WE steamroll a person, and forget the reason we're here: to win souls for Christ.
I would say a majority of the time (of course, I could be wrong), we get in arguments to win. That is our nature. We like to assert our authority, and, in most cases, "win" the argument, at the expense of the ability to impress upon another how much God loves them. Don't get me wrong, We cannot stop or get in the way of God's plans, yet in this regard, we like to point a finger at others, but ignore our own faults in this. Yesterday, the world lost a good and gentle man in apologist and evangelist Ravi Zacharias, but Jesus welcomed home a faithful servant. Throughout his life in ministry, he made a defense of the faith but he loved even his greatest critics and opponents so much, that even some of these were won over to Christ by his LOVE as opposed to his arguments. In trying to reach people on their level, Ravi demonstrated the power of the Gospel by LOVE in the middle of facts and "arguments" for the faith. If we're honest with ourselves, we win less souls by arguing to be right, instead of making a defense of the Gospel rooted in the Royal Law of Love. Let us, then, seek to be gentle in nature, as Paul tells Timothy, with the hopes that they may be won in to repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. Let us pray that we can speak softly, and seek to value the souls of even our greatest critics and opponents, that they, too, may know and see Jesus as we do.
