Most of you know that I have had a golden retriever for the past year. My roommate and I were training him to become a service dog. He was the best dog. Maybe not the best service dog, but the best dog. Sadly, we had to give him up yesterday to be adopted by another family. It was hard. Really hard. The hardest part is not knowing how he is going to be treated with his other family, and we don’t want him to think we don’t want him. Through the tears, my roommate made a really good point- that even though Bronn didn’t listen well and shed all the time and got us dirty all the time, we still loved him so much. We saw through all his flaws and loved him. Just as God loves us. He doesn’t see our mistakes. He just sees us. And it grieves His heart when we aren’t with him. When we make the decision to not live with him forever. Thanks Bronn. Your life in our lives for a year gave us a glimpse of how our Father loves us unconditionally.
I was reminded a couple weeks ago that God is not behavior-oriented as we are. God’s goal is not to change us. His goal is to love us. I pray that our goal is to love others in the same way and not be so focused on their mistakes and shortcomings but we see them how Jesus sees them. And we see ourselves how Jesus sees us. Michelle Seidler, a prophetic speaker, came to our church last weekend and shared a vision she had a couple years ago with us. She had a vision of the bride of Christ as Jesus was returning. We were beautiful as one and completely ready for Jesus’ return. Then, God showed her a vision of the church today. He told her that we were letting Satan divide us from the inside out. Satan is the accuser of the brethren, so naturally his goal is to get us to bite and devour one another. Why are we agreeing with him on a daily basis to accuse our own brothers and sisters?
In John 8, when a woman caught in the very act of adultery is brought before Jesus by the Pharisees, he says, “he who is without sin, let him be the one to throw the first stone.” No one threw a stone. Instead of calling out sin or wrongdoing in our brother and sisters lives’, we should prophesy over them and speak into who they are and the plans God has for them. He is proud of you. He loves you. Sometimes that’s all anyone ever needs to hear to walk into their God-given destiny. Tell them who they are, not what they have done. Create a culture of honor. This world has lost sight of what honor truly means. It’s up to us to not forget. The accuser is legalistic and points out our failure and when we broke the rules. We can rebuke those lies and fight FOR one another instead of AGAINST one another. We used to sing a song at our church called, “We will break dividing walls.” Are we living that out? Or are we choosing to grieve his heart and gossip about His family? Our pastor yesterday morning told us a story of some miners. About how they would dig so much dirt away that sometimes it was discouraging. But whenever they would find the gold, even if it was just a speck of gold, that’s the only thing they would talk about. They wouldn’t say a single word about all the dirt, just the gold. I challenge us all to find the gold. There’s gold in every person. Keep digging until you find it. It’s there. I promise. It makes me excited to go on the World Race and find the gold in every single person I meet, and it also makes me excited to stay here for the 6 months until then and find the gold in my family here.
