I often see Christians more satisfied with proving a point than loving, not saddened at all when the point they have made has hurt or excluded somebody from feeling loved, accepted or valued. We need to aim to make companions, not points.
I have certainly been guilty of fighting for what my pride wants to prove over showing love. Showing the light of Jesus. I have certainly excluded others while trying to defend myself. The aim
should always be to include, unite, redeem and love, as Christ modelled. I don't write this to judge, I want to journey with others honestly, together seek truth. To be disciples of Jesus. If it's possible to do it 100% real! No attempting to earn righteousness through any way other than grace. But trying to walk in step with Jesus through the help of the Holy Spirit. What does it look like?
Sometimes hurt in our lives stops us from being truly able to face the world with out a defensive wall up all around us with moats and dragons and everything we have in our power to keep people from hurting us. This accounts for a majority of peoples attacks on others. Can we see it that way? Feel bad for those who hurt us because they are hurt! We need inner healing so we can view the world with clean lenses. Not tarnished by anger, resentment and pain.
It's not about how you look to the world, It's all about what path you are on. You can be on a path of love or a path of destruction. A path where we walk with others, speak life and healing to others, or the path of destruction where we get so caught up in swinging weapons, we end up taking many innocent people with us as we go.
Good news, regardless of the path, it won't change how much Jesus loves you, how much the church should love you. It just changes how many people you hurt and how often you have to carry a weapon.
We make choices every day that take us more down one path than the other but we can always choose to walk back onto the path of love. This journey isn't about whether we are failing or not. Failing is one of the only guaranties. It's about how we take the journey. How we deal with that failure from In ourselves and when others fail us. Does our value or their value change?
My thought is no. And I think Jesus would agree.
With that said If we as Christians are to represent Jesus, we should be a lot more slow to speak. Check your path position. Am I leading with love or destruction. Am I wielding a sword or stethoscope.
Once we decide to follow Jesus. We aren't speaking on our own anymore. We are speaking with Jesus. We have asked the Holy Spirit to journey with us. Some good advice from james:
James 1:19
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,
We as Christians can be just so darn defensive. Are we sometimes trying to defend Jesus like peter did to the guards who were going to take him away. Jesus had a mission and it was to show gods heart and love to the world. There are battles we must be willing to loose if it means the world sees love. And Jesus himself, knowing full well his innocence and intention to save man, shut his mouth to men while being accused. Why did he do this? It fulfilled prophecy yes, but Jesus didn't just do things to fulfill prophecy, he did things that he knew represented the father. He was so in step with the father.
Sometimes we can show love better by closing our mouths.
In fact I would argue most times we can. Because our tongue is often driven by the fire in our bellies and not the love in our hearts allowed to us by the Holy Spirit though grace and love.
James 3:8
But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
Turn the other cheek, love your enemies. How can we do this while condemning them?
Jesus was concerned about the individual. He wanted them to know who they were, once a person knows they are loved and saved through grace the desire to judge and harm others grows very dim and the fire that burns bright in us becomes that of sharing the beauty that is unconditional love.
The need to judge others becomes silent when you are filled with the confidence of unconditional love and the desire to share it!
And how can we even begin to take a stance of judgment with someone in the first place, this is so flawed.
Do we think we know their sin?
Sin is clearly not as cut and dry as the word of law or even the writings of Paul The Pharisees saw it as a sin to work on the sabbath and to uphold that law they would break the law of love. They felt they were in the right to constantly remind people of the law and the fact that they were breaking it. Jesus showed them the way. Even in the old testament God said I require mercy not sacrifice even while the people
Fought every day to uphold the law through sacrifice and ignored gods desire for mercy. But Jesus didn't say exclude the law. The law was there for "help" and Jesus to remind us of "the heart."
A law with out a heart is not a law of Gods.
Would we bind Jesus by the law? That's what the religious at the time did. Used their laws to kill him. He was spending time with the sinners. In fact saying the kingdom of heaven wouldn't be accessible to the self righteous.
I simply think it would so benefit the world to have more unconditional love not more people who fight to make a point at the expense of others. Cutting off ears needlessly. This is a journey. Do we fail? Undoubtedly. But we can find love between our failings.
I don't want to hand Jesus a bag of severed ears and expect him to be proud of me. I will just end up making more work for him as he has to then heal those who I have broken just like he did in the bible. I want to be a part of the healing. Let's try to take that journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment