1 Corinthians 12:3 “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit." Today's episode talks about why it is important to love and accept people as they are. It is important to change the way we look at people. We are all beloved children of God. What if we started seeing people that way? Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
What If We Just Met People With Love And Acceptance?
1 Corinthians 12:3 “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit."
I think this is a great verse because I think sometimes we can get too caught up in things that don’t matter. We can get caught up in the religion of it all and forget about the person. We can see someone who is of a different Christian denomination, and we don’t want to talk to them. We are cautious and skeptical of being friends with them because they don’t believe the same things we believe. However, if they are Christian, then they believe in the same God, the same Jesus, and the same Holy Spirit.
When Jesus walked the world, He did not just hang out with those who were similar to Him. He hung out with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and anyone who wanted to hang out with Him. He came to save the lost, not the righteous. In Luke 5:31-32, “Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” We have to have a renewal of our minds if we want to be more Christ-like. We need to think more like He did and less like the world does.
The world tells us that we need to get our act together before we can go to Christ. We have to change our ways. We need to stop sinning. We need to be perfect, and then we can go to Christ. This is not the case. Christ wants us to come to Him now, just as we are. Yes, He wants us to repent, but we don’t have to do that before we come back to Him. Repentance is only possible through Him. Philippians 4:23 says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.” Jesus died on the cross for us while we were still sinners. He doesn’t need our perfection. He doesn’t need us to have it all figured out. He just wants us to come to Him with an open heart, and He will do the rest.
According to Matthew 22:37-40, the two greatest commandments are, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” I think we put all of our attention on the first one of these and forget about the second one. However, it says all the laws and the prophets depend on these two commandments, not just the first one. We need to figure out how to see people the way Jesus saw people. If we want to love our neighbors, we need to figure out how to accept people for who they are. Jesus did not put conditions on his friendships. He did not say you could come to dinner with me if you promised to change the way you were behaving. He invited them to dinner and treated them with love and respect. He showed them the love of the Father, and they couldn’t help but change after an encounter like that. The love of our heavenly Father is more powerful than anything else. If we can give people an encounter with His love, He will do all the work.
What people are desperate for right now, maybe always, is acceptance. Jesus offered that. He accepted all those He met, even if they didn’t believe as He did. He loved them and accepted them. I think sometimes we think it is our job to correct people when they are living in a way that we don’t believe in or that is contrary to the way Jesus taught us to live. Jesus laid down some pretty hard truths while he walked the earth. It wasn’t as if He was a pushover who said whatever the people wanted to hear. He said some things that were so hard for people to hear that a lot of His followers left after He gave certain teachings, yet He still gave them. However, when He was dealing with people one-on-one, He loved and accepted them as they were. This is what changed people the most. When you feel loved and accepted, you want more love. When you have a personal encounter with the love of the Father, you realize it is like nothing you have ever felt before, and you would do anything to feel it again. To have that love surrounding you.
What if we could do this? What if we could be friends with those who are not like us? What if we could see people as the Lord sees people, as Jesus saw people? What if we saw people for who they are and not what they do? What if we started to look at each person we see as a beloved child of God? Would that change the way we interacted with them? What if we took a moment to think about how much we love our children, our nieces and nephews, or our friend’s kids and then realized God loves this person even more than that?
We don’t just love our kids when they are perfect; we love them no matter what they have done or how awful they have been. They are our children, and we still love them. The same is true for God. He loves His children no matter what they have done. So, shouldn’t we do the same? I think a lot of people are turning away from the Catholic Church and other Christian Churches as well because we are leading with all the things they are doing instead of loving them for who they are and accepting them for who they are. Love and acceptance are what people are craving, and it is what Jesus was offering. We are human, we can’t offer them the love and acceptance that He did, but we can try. We can offer respect. We can offer our time. We can offer our friendship.
We had a speaker in class last night, and he said he is friends with a witch. When he tells people that, they usually freak out, they ask if he is worried she will do something to him. He is not afraid of that, though, because he is completely secure in his oneness with Jesus. He knows that there is nothing on the outside of him that is stronger than that which is inside of him. 1 John 4:4 says, “Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” We all have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We don't have to be afraid of anything in this world because the Holy Spirit living inside of us is stronger than anything in this world.
The witch did try to do certain things when she first met him. However, he did not judge, and he did not react harshly. He calmly acted in the authority that He has because of the Holy Spirit. She had never known someone who was so knowledgeable and also so accepting of who she was. When she told him she was a witch, he told her that was a label from a world he was not a part of, and that was not how he saw her. Because he could be friends with her and accept her for who she is, they have been friends for 8 years now. She has come a long way, and parts of her are in the kingdom of God, and parts of her are still stuck in the other world. It is a process, and he is just loving her on her journey. Imagine what the world would be like if we led with love. If we didn’t care so much about all the division and we looked for unity. What if we looked for what we had in common instead of how we are different? What if we were happy for our friends and family who have a relationship with God or with Jesus, even if it doesn’t look like ours? What if we stopped caring if they went to the same church as we did and were just happy that they knew the same God that we did? How would our life change? How would our relationships change? How would the world change?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to be more Christ-like. Please help us! We want to see others as you do; please open our eyes and allow us to see others as you do. Please help us to show your love and acceptance to all those we meet. Please place on our hearts where we might have good intentions and yet be getting it wrong. Please convict us, Lord, of how we can be more like you. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight’s topic for mentoring is God’s Forgiveness, and I hope you can join me! If you would like to try it out before joining, send me a message at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and I will send you a Zoom link to join in tonight. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word from the Lord is, “I know you in and out, but I love you just the same, my children. I love you, my children. I keep telling you that. It is because I do love you that I say it to you each and every day. Open your ears more fully, and you will hear me. You will hear my whispers. You will hear everything I wish for you to know. I speak to you with hope. I speak to you with tender love. I speak all that you need to know and that you need to learn. Just open more fully to me.”