I love the body of Christ. All of our quirks, abnormalities, differences, I love them all! We are so different, and in that is amazing beauty! None of us are perfect! As much as we would like to think we are, we aren’t! And when you put a bunch of us together, you can truly see all those imperfections shine! But the flip side of that, the HAPPY side of that, is that all those fabulous, wonderful, Christ-qualities shine out as well! God’s glory starts to weave it’s way through all of us…His goodness and grace start seeping into relationships and moments of togetherness…and Jesus is suddenly evident like never before! It’s supernatural! And it is glorious!
But why do we run from those beauty-making moments? Why, when things start to get just a little sticky…when we begin to notice our brothers and sisters working out and working through their imperfections and struggles, do we tuck tail and run the other way! We had rather judge their faults and blast their wrongs instead of pray grace over their lives and encourage their weakness til strength is found! We are always growing. God is always weeding junk out of our lives…He is constantly molding us and pruning us…our relationship with Him is a DAILY walk. We haven’t “arrived” at some spiritual place of grandeur where we get to sit and critique everyone else’s walk with Christ. We are all in the same boat! We are all dirty rotten sinners saved by the gracious and loving hand of God the Father. There is nothing in us that is good! Nothing! Only by the shed blood of Jesus Christ can God look upon our hearts! We all have a common enemy…one who is prowling around looking for someone to devour! So shouldn’t we be a unified force, coming together with the soul purpose to show God’s glory? If only we would be patient with one another, and let prayer become our “crutch” instead of idle gossip disguised as “concern” in our Christian circles. If we would love each other long enough to watch God’s miraculous hand weave in and out of hearts, we would see the super-natural, awe-inspiring, miraculous sign of repentance that only God can bring about in people’s lives!
But we don’t want to wait around on THAT, now do we? We see the wrong in people’s lives, we are quick to judge and point out that wrong, and then when that person doesn’t “change” b/c of the pointing out we have done, we become impatient with them and turn our backs! Instead of continued prayer over that person, we “dust our feet of them” all too quickly and move on. How dare they not change! We forget that it takes the conviction of the HOLY SPIRIT to change lives! My “pointing out” may be a stepping stone, an eye-opener, but not a life-changer! Lives can only be changed through the Holy Spirit!
I think we miss out on many of God’s greatest blessings b/c we give up on people too fast! We get frustrated and walk away too soon! We quit praying, I mean REALLY, DOWN ON OUR KNEES, TEARS POURED OUT, kind of praying for others! And then, when God comes down from heaven and touches that soul, when that spirit is moved and sin is confessed and a life is changed, we aren’t there to witness it! We aren’t there to glory in God’s amazing grace b/c we have too quickly forgotten that His same grace is what changed our heart, convicted us of our sin, waited patiently on our stubborn will, and we have piously walked away.
My prayer is that I will wait on the LORD! That I won’t get ahead of His Spirit moving in our midst. I pray that I can love the body of Christ patiently and forgivingly. I pray that I can stand in the gap, down on my knees, humbly waiting and watching for Christ to move those mountains and and create “water-walkers” all around me! He is God! He is good! He is big! And He is doing big stuff in the people’s lives all around me! I want to see those blessings unfold!
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