Reading from a daily email I'm subscribed to, this jumped out at me and stopped me:
"This is our calling as Christian faithful: to recognize the Christ in everyone. And to reach out a hand of hope, to speak a word of love, to sing a song of happiness, to share a tear of joy or pain, to speak a word of praise, to murmur a prayer, to stand together against those forces that word divide us, isolate us, and block our flow toward home"
This is beautiful.
I'm baffled as to how some who identify as Christians have come to believe that their calling as a Christian faithful is practically the opposite of this?
To recognize evil in everyone, to reach out a hand of condemnation and judgment, to bring others tears of pain and to create and feed forces that would divide us, isolate us, block our flow toward home.
And to do all of this in the name of our beautiful savior Jesus? youch!
It is amazing to me that the lure towards being our own god is so strong that we would call ourselves Christ followers, yet instead of being filled with the spirit and producing the fruit of the spirit in our lives, we could see our calling as a need to judge others, condemn others, dividing and be the spiritual police of everyone.
I absolutely love the freedom that comes with this statement - "to reach out a hand of hope"...
Whatever that looks like!
Who needs hope? Everyone!
To speak a word of love.
Who needs love? Everyone!
To share a tear of joy or pain?!
Who needs that? Everyone!
We get the impossible privilege of being Jesus to the world. It's impossible because, without the spirit of God in me, I can't love others completely and selflessly.
I can't.
I want to reserve some for myself, I want to categorize and determine who is most deserving of my love.
I want to be judge.
I want to protect my heart from pain instead of allowing myself to enter into someones suffering.
I want to keep my own possessions instead of letting them go and sharing with those who don't have.
On my own, it's really hard to truly live out the "call"
But, if I surrender self and instead submit to the power of the Spirit of Christ, I get the supernatural power to love like Christ!
YES PLEASE!
Oh, how I want that power!
To love without keeping score...to enter into the suffering of others simply to help carry the weight...to give more that I receive...to see the beauty of Christ in everyone...to bridge divides, heal wounds, and reveal miraculous supernatural love to those who have never experienced it!
I want to be a part of that.
I want to live for that purpose.
I can't do that in my own strength and my own spirit. I need to be filled to overflow with the spirit of love, wisdom, mercy.
I need to jump into the flow of the trinitarian God...the flow of perfect love...where giving and receiving are constant and indecipherable from each other...giving love and receiving love is a constant state of being...
Because once I'm in that flow, nothing else looks as appealing.
Selfishness breaks the flow and I don't want to break it!
It's too good! It's perfect! It's union with my creator. It's life at a soul level. It's spiritual oxygen.
And when I'm breathing deeply of this pure spiritual oxygen, it's so crushing to see others who are gasping for air as they grasp and claw for control, power, or just survival.
Here I am, breathing deeply, and they're gasping for air.
To me, that is the good news and the reason I'm compelled to share it.
I want everyone to be free from the choking, gasping, struggling to breathe.
I want people to feel the flow of love, the freedom to let go.
The joy of denying self and submitting to a love so good that nothing else compares.
Once a person tastes of this love, I can trust the spirit to guide what they do.
I don't need to govern how they act.
Not my job. Thankfully!
Never was, never will be.
I'm not any one's god.
