He knows how to open our mouths.
Our Father’s Love is an infinite well that we will always be drawing from. What we can glimpse and experience for ourselves literally transforms us. I would say that receiving His Love carries a responsibility to share the same Love as a proper response.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we are meant to Love in the same way we receive Love from our Father. This goes for all other perfect gifts that come down from the Father of Lights too! We are to be like our Father.
So let’s continue onward into how we relate with one another.
What I want to say is that we can trust God. – We must grow in trusting God for our own process and for other’s processes. There is no pressure on anyone to be further along than they are. No one. This is kind of scary right? We love to judge ourselves and we love to judge others..
Why are we so trained by our earthly minds to do this?
Are we able to allow the Holy Spirit to teach us a new way?
I hope so.
Personally, the Lord showed me that unconditional Love is like treating everyone as if they are perfect. As if they were Jesus Himself. “As much as you have done to one of these, you have done to Me,” Jesus said. Love covers over a multitude of sin. The Bible says that ‘we do not judge anyone according to the flesh anymore’. What stands in the way of treating people this way? I’ll tell you, it’s our own fleshly minds.
The mind that sees others living in ways that might go against our personal convictions, speaking with words we wouldn’t, or getting tattoos we wouldn’t.. Our minds anchor us in a reality that fights against the Spirit’s ways of viewing and treating one another in Love. Our job is to die to our ways of thinking and accept the Way of Christ.
We want to operate by His Nature of Unconditional Love. *selah
I would even go as far as to say that as we follow the Lord into our spiritual healing and wholeness that was paid for on the Cross, we are being released into this exact nature! He is clearing the way of all the hinderances that blocked our vision and our ability to Love like He does.
Here is the tricky part.
What do we do when we see someone ‘in sin’? The temptation is to allow our minds to take control and judge them as ‘in sin’ and then convince ourselves that Love would tell them how God feels about their sin. Unfortunately, this is usually not received in the way we hope, and we may conclude that God will just have to convince them we were right later on.. (humor intended)
Can you see how our mind’s judgement sabotaged the whole situation?
I would rather have an operating system of Unconditional Love, trusting that God’s love is what creates an environment conducive for transformation. If God wants me to say anything, there will be an open door to share my perspective, and that I don’t need to force a conversation. I don’t need to force a conversation, because Dad’s faithfulness is already at work in the situation and my mind’s assumptions only confuse things.
Could it be that God knows how to reach people better than we do?
I have a testimony:
I was young in my faith and full of zeal. I had a part time job on a farm and the owner of the farm was old and going blind. He was a good man and I felt the Lord’s heart for him. I desperately wanted to talk with him about the Lord, but every time he came into the little shed where I was, there was never an opportunity. I started kicking myself every time he left like I had failed God for not forcing a conversation. I was taking it pretty hard on myself.
Out of the blue, the owner’s son came in; a man at least double my age. He walked up to me and we started talking. He asked me about my tattoos and I didn’t hesitate one second to start talking about the Lord and all the ways He rescued me from the darkness. We walked out of the shed into the rainy overcast field, deep in conversation. I remember I hadn’t used the name ‘Jesus’ outrightly but I got to the point of my story where I say “Jesus Is King, You represent Me now” and right when I did, the clouds parted and a beam of light slapped us both on the face with bright warm light. The man looks over at me and says, “I’ve been mad at the Lord for a very long time, ignoring Him. Then something like this happens and I know He still loves me and is reaching out to me.”
I went back into my little shed praising the Lord, amazed at His confirmation of my testimony and then the Lord spoke clearly to me. He said, “Son, I know how to make you speak.” He wiped away all the guilt my mind had gathered for not talking to the old man, and taught me that He would use me when He wanted to. I learned that the pressure to perform was something I put on myself, it didn’t come from Him.
It’s about trusting God to open our mouths. It’s about trusting God to create opportunities. Our responsibility is to LOVE like the Father, and when it’s time to speak or correct, God will open that door and it will be the right moment.
I’m not saying that there is no right time to correct, admonish and warn.. I’m just saying that we should strive to have an operating system of the Father’s Love and then trust that when those other programs need to be used, it wont be our minds that turn them on.. it’ll be the Holy Spirit in step with God’s sovereign timing.
Walk with Unconditional Love
Trusting God’s Plan for All
Bold with Truth when it’s Time
JIK