(Scroll to the bottom of my page first and mute the music so you can hear the video)
My sister showed this video to me and what an impact it had on my heart. It has always broken my heart how we as “followers of Christ” all to often choose to hate instead of love. We are called to love like Jesus and treat those as He would treat them. It is not our job to fix anyone, we are lead them to Jesus place their hands in His and allow Him to do the rest. My mind drifts to the story of the Forgiven Woman in Romans 8:31(” But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin.")
But how often do we think we have the right to point fingers? To give them the impression that God hates them..what if that was true? What if God hated those that did something outside of His word? Then friend that means there would be no hope for mankind, none us would be able to come to the Lord, we all have done things that are wrong, God said so Himself in His word, Romans 3:23 (“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” ) Sin is the same no matter what kind it is, and there is only one sin that will separate us from God and that is not accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior, anything else in our lives that we are struggling or dealing with is not outside the grace of God.
Jesus came to die for the sinner, John 3:16 (" For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but recieve everlasting life") Jesus came to die for us all, so may we all see others through the eyes of Jesus and reach out with His heart and show others compassion and grace, so that God has the freedom to open the door to thier hearts to reveal who He truly is to them..
I have heard it said so many times, and I believe it is true, that we are the only army who kills its woonded (sorry for the mis-spelling).
ReplyDeleteI have really found this, in my years, to be true. There is so much rejection of others and critisum and cliqueing. You should look a certain way and have money and live in a house in this neighborhood and dress like this.
It is not right and we will be held accountable.
It is very easy to fall into the "acceptence" trap, the "inner circle", the pastors friends clique and forget about Jesus who is in the church who loved the poor and down trodden and forelorned. Poor people should not leave church with an empty stomach and no place to go.
I used to blog about this a couple of years ago, as we went through a change from UPCI to nondenominational. It was very hard and the rejection was horrible.
Ah well, sorry to be so long.
While I personally don't agree with being gay, I whole-heartedly agree with you here. Just because we don't agree with a lifestyle, doesn't mean we hate. It means we teach love, and show love. At least in the way that we can respect each other's differences.
ReplyDeleteGod DOES love all of us. If being gay is wrong, it's not our job to judge. God will do that when it's time. It's our job to show everyone, gay or not, that God loves all of us and wants all of us to be with Him in the end.