“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39-40
I read Don Miller’s, Blue Like Jazz. I found his remarks about witnessing quite challenging but encouraging. “I hoped that love would work like a magnet, pulling people from the mire and toward healing. I knew this was the way God loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson … I could treat everybody as though they were my best friend … I loved the fact that it wasn’t my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God’s, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.”
I would use the word acceptance rather than approval. Since Jesus didn’t always approve of people’s activities. He said to the woman caught in adultery, “Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11). Nevertheless, Don Miller’s point is valid. Jesus communicated love and acceptance. Tax collectors and prostitutes readily saw it. The crowds too but not the Pharisees. Jesus was wanting to draw the Pharisees towards love and healing too but they wouldn’t come to him. He reasoned with them, pleaded with them and shouted at them but it made no difference to most of them.
It never ceases to amaze me that God allows us so much freedom to choose. He allows people to reject his love and compassion even though it breaks his heart to do so.
Today our responsibility is to communicate love and acceptance and let God do the changing. People may not respond but that’s their choice and God allows them to make it.
what a difficult lesson to learn! for some reason, the message that got through my head was that i needed to communicate “love”, yes, but more importantly was my responsibility to get people to see the error of their ways! and to keep my heart guarded and hidden so as not to be infected by someone else’s impurity!
rubbish!!!!
only now, in the [ast year, am i learning how to truly love people. how to draw near them without fear and share all of my being with them, which is now christ who lives in me, and allow them to shar5e their whole being with me. whoever they are at this moment without trying to change them in order for me to be more comfortable with their presence.
simply to love. and offer whatever i can towards their healing and encouragement and growth. sharing with them what i have learned to be helpful in my own life. as a means of suggestion, not prerequisite.
tvqpot
what a difficult lesson to learn! for some reason, the message that got through my head was that i needed to communicate “love”, yes, but more importantly was my responsibility to get people to see the error of their ways! and to keep my heart guarded and hidden so as not to be infected by someone else’s impurity!
rubbish!!!!
only now, in the [ast year, am i learning how to truly love people. how to draw near them without fear and share all of my being with them, which is now christ who lives in me, and allow them to shar5e their whole being with me. whoever they are at this moment without trying to change them in order for me to be more comfortable with their presence.
simply to love. and offer whatever i can towards their healing and encouragement and growth. sharing with them what i have learned to be helpful in my own life. as a means of suggestion, not prerequisite.
tvqpot
Yes that is EXACTLY it 🙂
Matthew 11:27 the Message
Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. “The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I’m not keeping it to myself; I’m ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen.
28-30″Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Yes that is EXACTLY it 🙂
Matthew 11:27 the Message
Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. “The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I’m not keeping it to myself; I’m ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen.
28-30″Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
..this is my first visit to your blog & i’ve learned so much already just from this post=) its awesome to see each suggestion you make backed up with the piercing truth from the word.
this post on love reminds me of something my pastor says a lot; -hearing the word is good, but BEING the word is BEST.
,so BEING like Jesus, & truly loving others without judgment, selfish ambition or condition seems impossible, unless we allow His love to flow to us & through us. i pray that i am able to get to that place soon…how freeing would that be=)
..this is my first visit to your blog & i’ve learned so much already just from this post=) its awesome to see each suggestion you make backed up with the piercing truth from the word.
this post on love reminds me of something my pastor says a lot; -hearing the word is good, but BEING the word is BEST.
,so BEING like Jesus, & truly loving others without judgment, selfish ambition or condition seems impossible, unless we allow His love to flow to us & through us. i pray that i am able to get to that place soon…how freeing would that be=)
Thanks “runningfree” for dropping by. Hope you come again. I agree I think we need to allow His love to flow to us and through us. And maybe the problem is that we don’t always allow God’s love to flow in and then we try to whip up our own feelings of love for others. I know I’ve done that and it doesn’t work.
Yes Jon, it has taken me a long time to learn it too. Now I find it such a relief to know that I don’t have to change anyone.
I love the way the Message says, Learn the unforced rhythms of grace Thanks Wendy for sharing it.
Thanks “runningfree” for dropping by. Hope you come again. I agree I think we need to allow His love to flow to us and through us. And maybe the problem is that we don’t always allow God’s love to flow in and then we try to whip up our own feelings of love for others. I know I’ve done that and it doesn’t work.
Yes Jon, it has taken me a long time to learn it too. Now I find it such a relief to know that I don’t have to change anyone.
I love the way the Message says, Learn the unforced rhythms of grace Thanks Wendy for sharing it.