Words
and Actions
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
–
1 John 3:18
We know
exactly what to say. We’ve got the answers memorized so completely that others
just know our hearts are true. But what happens when things don’t go
according to our plan? How do we react when we don’t get our own way?
I look
around and it breaks my heart. We hurt God so deeply with our hardness. We
judge others harshly and call ourselves justified. We condemn their actions
while putting ourselves on a pedestal of light. Hypocrites. We are hypocrites.
Neither
political party is either all right or all wrong. How quickly we side with one
or the other, pulling out verses to support our cause while ignoring the whole
truth. We simply don’t want to love and do good to people unless they are like
us, believe as we believe, and agree with everything we say. How sad.
If you are
condemning abortion and condemning the poor, then this applies to you. Both are
wrong. Is that just my opinion? No. It’s in the Bible if we look at it’s
entirely.
The same is
true of many other issues. We condemn homosexuality but we have no issues with
divorced people remarrying. We don’t label them as adulterers because they are
like us. We understand and extend grace. We refuse to even contemplate that God
created the homosexual just as He created the divorcee.
We insist
one is a choice and the other a mistake. How do you know? You don’t. But it
forms a convenient excuse for not loving the very people God has called you to love.
What would
happen if we actually starting seeing people as they are? We are all created in
God’s image and He desperately wants us all to accept Jesus’ sacrifice and be
saved. Honestly, we’d rather some people not join us in heaven one day and that
truth speaks volumes about the condition of our hearts.
Your mouth may
preach the loudest sermon anyone has ever heard, but if your actions don’t live
that truth then your words are empty of the Spirit and, therefore, useless.
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