Stumble

2 Corinthians 6:3
We live in such a way that no one will stumble because of us, and no one will find fault with our ministry. (NLT)

I remember when I was in High School. Many of my friends were trying alcohol by tapping into their parents supply. I did not have a parents supply because they did not drink. I managed to find some and left it in the car. Like my parents could not find what I left in their car. Hello! Yep, you guessed it. I got caught and there went the privileges to the car for a while. I just wanted to be like everyone else and was willing to stumble along with them.

When we volunteer to work at a soup kitchen or some other place where the homeless or less fortunate will be we dress down. It would not be good to get on our Sunday best to serve spaghetti and meatballs and would project the wrong image about how we saw them. They are equals in Christ to us.

More to the point is what we order when we go out to eat dinner with friends who have had a problem with alcohol in the past. They may be active in a 12 step program. This is not the time to order a beer with dinner. Our doing so may just give them the excuse that if we can, they can. We would be messing up their commitment to life with drinking. We could cause them to stumble.

Drinking is not the only thing. What comes out of our mouth could be even worse. How often would it be easy to gossip about someone else? How often could we get angry? How often could we curse someone when we are driving? Our sins could validate another's weakness and cause them to stumble.