Personal Challenge

After doing a study on the seeing and hearing attributes of God, I was personally challenged to consider the way I "see" and "hear" others when I am offended.  I wondered, "what happened to me?"  Then I remembered something that our pastor said, years ago: "Hurting people hurt people."   Understanding that simple truth was a work of grace that Christ did in me.  As a result, I was able to (for the most part) extend grace to others. ...

"What happened to me," though, was that, over time, I let my heart become hardened - by the people around me, personal wrongs suffered, and my own ugly flesh.  I chained to myself the corpse I had left years ago!  Ephesians 2:1-3 says, "...you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."  Ugh!  Galatians 5:23 says that "those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."  Crucifixion is a gruesome death.  And my flesh deserved to die that kind of death!  Why would I want to attach myself to that corpse?!

Alright... so, I'm sitting here at my kitchen table, looking out into my backyard, and I just noticed two huMonGOUS weeds on the hill.  I'm going to go yank them out right now.  And, as I do, I will pray that the Lord will remove from me any bitterness, selfishness and "human conformity" that is keeping me from seeing others the way that He does: as hurting people.  Hurting people need a Savior, just as much as I do.  Be willing to see them.  Be willing to hear them.  This, Lord, I pray.