What do you do with challenging situations....and people? The correct response to that question is to want to do what God does. He has a gaze of belief. God sees people responding to His love and He initiates accordingly.
What was it God saw? A fallen world, when once He set His gaze, God believed would respond to the sacrificial Lamb hung out to dry for our very own remarkable sins.
What was it the abandoned and jilted father saw when his louse of a prodigal came sheepishly traipsing over the horizon? He saw a clean son ready for a hyper-lavish party.
What do we see of our blatant enemies and personal violators? We are to see them most likely responding to our awesome love. The catch is that we have to give the first signal of reconciliation. Isn't that what it means when the Word says we love BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED us?
Our human tendency is to reverse this action. We will forgive (maybe) once we receive an apology. Forgiveness works most effectively when we offer it so the guilty can easily step into it.
For this to happen, we must develop and eventually possess that gaze....that gaze of belief in sinners....not what they can become....but what they are....clean in our sight for we died on our cross for them....that they can make the same shift we did from enemy to partner. Could it be a problem we have is we waste our crosses by insisting our enemies pay for their own sins....I Peter 4:21-25 (corrected by an alert anonymous...I Peter 2:21-25)?
That gaze of belief in the tresspassers....how badly it is still needed. How badly we need to find it in the eyes of one another.
1 comment:
Very nice summary, even though I Peter 4:21-25 does not exist in my Bible.
It's all for the building up of the Church, instead of for the puffing up of the Church.
Post a Comment