Conviction Time

Please excuse my morning video...Yall. it was bad. God convicted me. The only way I wouldn't attempt an argument with God was if I posted it without re-watching it. >insert face palm emoji<

I love love love getting to know people. As terrible as I am at forming relationships, I’m not so good at letting people get to know me or love me, learning about other people is my absolute favorite. What makes them tick. What causes their reactions to be so coarse or their words to be so sharp. I love seeing peoples “why”. The problem I have, and I think a lot of us have, is that I lose a lot of opportunity to learn the why by focusing so much attention on the result of the why. Does that make sense? Let me explain what I mean.  

 I may completely ignore someone because of how they are expressing themselves. Whether they are expressing themselves through their clothes, hair, actions, words or body language, I have a tendency to lose an opportunity to walk life with that person by judging them…without knowing the why behind it. And y’all that is just plain ugly. Why is it so hard to love people where they are?

“This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”

John 15:12  

Jesus is like, look guys. I love you all past your mess so try and love others like I loved you. That is super hard, right? I have been praying for months now about seeing people past themselves, just to see peoples heart. I want to see their why before I react to them but Lord help my mouth because I am so quick to pop off whatever enters my mind and that isn’t pleasing to God. In Chapter 3, James ((brother to Jesus)) tells us that a salt spring cannot produce fresh water.

^"9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. ¹⁰ Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. ¹¹ Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? ¹² My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water."

James says something huge here that really caught my attention “in Gods likeness”. I have been told, read the verse a thousand times, and heard many sermons from Genesis 1:27....

^"27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

Side Note: I love when something is repeated in the New Testament. >Insert Praise Hands<.

We all know it by heart but hearing it out of the mouth of James spoke deep to me this morning. News Flash y’all…God created us all in HIS likeness. He said it twice. Its kinda like when your mama has to ask you to do something more than once...we all know what happens next. 

We are all doing our best in messy lives with ever changing circumstances. We all want acceptance and love from others so why do we make it so hard for others to receive it? We take one bad action, on difference in opinion, one bad day, and throw people in the returns bin. I am so guilty of letting my mind think “you are a defect, go back to where you came from” when someone crosses me wrong. What kind of world would we live in if we only saw the why in people? If we looked past the person to see their heart we would be broken over the circumstances that led them to where they are. 

My favorite thing about reading is getting to know the author. I read very little fiction, but if I do, I want to know about the author. What made this author choose this topic? Was it happenstance? Was it just creative thinking or did they have a circumstance or trial that they modeled their book after? Were the characters based on people in their lives or people they just dreamed up? That must be why I am drawn to nonfiction. I love to read books about how circumstance or challenges changed a person. Would we love this person just as much during the journey? Would we lovingly support them in the midst of their ugly mess and extend them grace? Sadly i think no. I think we love reading about the ending but fail to remember all the not so pretty moments during the journey. 

I know that during some of my darkest days I said some very insensitive things because of my circumstances. When we are in our darkest, no matter our intention, we don't always act in a Jesus like fashion. I am sure that at some point, someone has thrown me in to the defective bin and asked for me to be returned.

This isn’t Target y’all, we can’t just throw people away. As Moses, maybe Moses, says in Genesis and as James so eloquently confirms…we are all made in Gods likeness, HIS IMAGE.

I don’t know about you but I am so thankful that Jesus knows my why. If it weren’t for His infinite Grace we would all be in that return bin with a Red slash on us “Mark down, sold as is” and I hate to think that I would ever judge someone so harshly. Pray with me to have eyes that see past all the mess and extend grace like Jesus.