The greatest desire of my heart is to love people as God loves them. He has shown me through prayer and scripture that what I call a lack of boldness on my part is actually a lack of love. So my biggest prayer for myself has been that I would see people through His eyes, and love them with His love, without hesitation.
This morning, after reading in Is God to Blame?, by Greg Boyd, I settled into that prayer yet again, and began also to think about how I have historically related to people. I am quite uncomfortable imposing my will on others, insisting that they behave a certain way or believe a certain way or think a certain way. And God gently nudged me with a quiet, "Me too." Thank you for that reminder, Lord, that I'm not so far away from expressing your love... that I do have your DNA, that you created me as I am for a purpose and can use my unique personality to love others "your" way.
Often we think of God as being demanding. But if he were demanding, we would not walk around in our own little worlds, sin would not be prevalent, the world would not exist as it does. We would be robots and would not experience love at all. God loves us into existence and calls us into communion with him, but never insists upon that relationship. Whenever we see his anger in scripture, it seems to me that it is more of a frustration than anger. (To Adam: "What have you done?!") He is frustrated that the people he groomed to be His people decide to do things a different way, when his way makes the most sense, and when just listening to him and doing his will is the most logical course of action. But we don't do that because we often think we know better, and, being finite, we are too impatient to take the time to listen to him and learn his ways.
Perhaps God's lesson for me today is about overcoming my hesitance to invoke my will on other people—if my will is HIS will. I cannot invoke my will, of course, but I can love people into considering His will. If God were to fold his arms and say, "I know you'll never listen to me, so I'm not going to talk to you," we would be in a world of hurt.
My own attitude is similar to that—I make a presumption that people don't want to hear what I have to say, and so I do not try to step out and communicate with them. Sure, I risk rejection when I do that...not rejection of me, but rejection of my belief. Just as God told Moses—"they aren't rejecting you; they're rejecting Me." But God kept providing for the Israelites and even rescuing them, didn't he? He never gave up, no matter how far they veered off track, or how much they ignored him and went against him.
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