Thursday

Love in

I spent time today with people. Not unlike most other days, but today I ended the day having the sense that we are ordinary people who are messy and sinful and we hurt one another knowingly and unknowingly. No new news there I guess, but what has been pressing into my soul of late is that we Christians need to be people who live joyfully with other people's sin. We should not set our expectations too high for one another.

In fact, we should expect people to let us down, to confuse us, to not love us well and to be a bit self centered. If we can set that as our paradigm, we can live in a state of grace and forgiveness. If we set our expectations high, we will be embittered and frustrated.

Now, I would say we need to be authentic and confront bad behavior, but I think the way to do it might be by talking about ourselves. The Holy Spirit can do the work in the other person. Conviction does not come through logic, but by the spirit. We can hope people change and sanctification is real, but for the most part people are messy and they are trying to do better as they walk in the spirit.

I want to learn to bless people, wash a few feet and have humility knowing that if Jesus was here He would see my sin and overlook it by love. I don't need to win, I just need to serve. Blessings