Purpose and Repentance

"If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convincethem to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts ofservice and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus ismost vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who arethe "un" and "non", they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbo, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and weare all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of Godin everyone. As the book of James says, "God shows no favoritism." Sowe don't either."- Rob Bell

I feel as if I am to blame. I am going to be really hard on myself, because I am often the one at the front of this.

I want to make a public statement right now. I want to say sorry. Sorry to every single person I have chided or wronged. Please, over these next few days, I will pray for forgiveness. I am sorry to every person that is a homosexual that I have ever made the brunt of my jokes. I am sorry to every woman I have ever looked at poorly, called a slut or any other derogatory name. I am sorry to every guy who I called an idiot or thought was shallow ornever gave the time of day to. I am sorry to every person who has been hurt bymy words. I am sorry to every person that has felt coldness from me. I am sorry to every person who I have judged before I have even met them. Most importantly, I am sorry to every person that I looked at as saved or unsaved, and did not just simply ascribe worth.

I am just sorry. I do ask for forgiveness. You see, I chose to see what I wanted to seeout of a person. I looked at them in a way that gave me permission to judge them, but made me work hard to Love them. It is hard to change this. It is not going to be easy, but I can't live like this anymore. If one more person I know or meet goes a minute without Love, or with loneliness or intense anger or resentment, I may lose it. I can't handle it. PLEASE Forgive me, because I know NOW what I have done.

You see Living the Gospel is what we are called to. I just want to say this, if we tell the world that God does not need us to advance His kingdom, then why do we bother to stick up for Jesus? Why do we bother spreading the Gospel if we don't have purpose or value?

I guess in a way you are right. God does not need us. God does not have to work through us. But God has chosen to. God wants us. For some messed up, incomprehensible reason, God wants us. Maybe that is enough.

I have spent SO MUCH time attempting to define sin, but maybe God is not calling me to that, but instead to be out there, Loving EVERY single person that I come across. The more time I spend attempting to defineand judge sin, the more I forget about the fact that my neighbor is crying out to be accepted just by ONE person. The more I try to figure out sin, thefurther away I feel from God, because typically my Love for God's creation is empty and cold. How quickly do we forget the two greatest commandments- Love the Lord your God and Love your neighbor as yourself. When did we add to this? What about this verse?

Luke 6:42- "How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,'when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye"

I must change. I have spent SO much time attempting to judge sin, but I forget that the Holy Spirit is leading me and attempting to remove the plank from my eye that I so desperately hold onto.

I have heard it saidrecently that to Love is to hate sin. Maybe that is not Love. Have you ever noticed that Love is never described this way, in fact we are only told to hate evil? Evil and sin are different, because of evil we have sin, because we commit evil acts, we sin, evil can exist without sin, but sin cannot exist without evil. Evil is the over arching enemy, sin is the viewpoint of it all.We commit acts of evil out of the way we view life- sin. We ridicule the poor,out of our viewpoint of sin, thus meaning we are committing acts of evil.

In fact God is recklessly in Love with us, but yet, we still sin. It is mind boggling, but stick with me. When you Love someone, it has nothing to do with correcting their life, right? I mean, you don't go around saying I am going to Love that person because they need help to change who they are, do you?

This is a simple thought, but what if we did just Love. What if we woke up, and instead of thinking SO MUCH about how to earn our identity, or how people must earn compassion, we realize that our identity is in God who has set us free and we recognize that freedom is not earned but freely given and that people don't earn our compassion they deserve it.

What would it look like if every person who was different than us we embraced with warmth? What would it look like if we outlawed condemnation in our hearts? What if instead of trying to convince, convert and change people, we simple took them as they were? What if the next time someone opened up to us we just listened? What if we chose our friends by allowing anyone into our life?

Mike Yaconelli says it best-" Apparently God doesn't care who He loves. He is not very careful about the people He calls His friends or the people He calls Hischurch."

It is just so interesting to me, that when I read scripture,I read that Jesus tells the religious leaders that the Prostitutes and Tax Collectors will enter the Kingdom of God before they will... Or the fact that acriminal being hung on the cross is shown grace and Love. It is interesting because I thought that I have to live a righteous blameless life trying to sinless.

People say that preaching the Gospel is the most important thing. But what about living the Gospel? What about Loving people?

The problem is, when we just preach the Gospel, we forgetone key thing, living it. Apparently there are a lot of Christians in this world. What if we exchanged our worded version of the Gospel with a life long journey with God's creation, listening and Loving them, not to change them orconvince them, but to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to imitate the characterof Christ by serving them?

What if we realized that Love, being as important as it is, begins to set people free? You see, there is a lesson in the book of James thatreminds us not to choose people based off appearance or status- 1My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. 2Suppose a mancomes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man inshabby clothes also comes in. 3If you show special attention to theman wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," butsay to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor bymy feet," 4have you not discriminated among yourselves andbecome judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:1-4)

Interesting isn't it? Who are we passing by in life?

What if we could make a difference? People keep telling methat we are just judgmental people, that is just how we are. For some reason though, I refuse to accept that as an answer.

Not everyone is going to be like you, like the people in your church, like the people in your community, like your friends or family, BUT We must remember that God takes all the people I reject and have rejected to build the Kingdom of God on.

People are in pain right now, massive amounts of pain. Loveis not telling them what they have to do, Love is a journey through life with those we Love.