Compassion Creates Credibility

In Christianity, it’s common to unite Christian morals and the American dream and call it “Following Christ,” but when we look at the life of Paul and the early church, we see something completely different. No one, including Paul, would have planned out the kind of life that Paul lived; but it’s because of Christ’s power through Paul that the church exists today.  Nowadays, we would say that Paul’s life was obviously successful and significant, but at the time, Paul’s life looked anything but successful. In fact, to the rest of the world, Paul’s life went from successful to a total disaster. He went from being a respected and wealthy religious man to a social outcast who often got himself beaten and sent to prison. He left behind every worldly luxury for the sake of spreading the Gospel. Paul had no idea of the significance of the work he was doing at the time. He didn’t know that the letters he was writing would become books of the Bible that we read today. He didn’t know that the early churches he started would take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. He just chose to trust God’s plan even when it didn’t look successful all of the time. When we choose God’s plan, we will likely be misunderstood and mistreated. We are signing up to be forgotten, looked over, and unnoticed. We won’t get the praise or recognition we crave. God may say “no” to the very things we have been pouring our lives into so that we can say “yes” to his greater plan. But when we say “yes” to God’s plan for our lives, we can trust that we are joining God in work that impacts peoples’ eternities. Reflection/Discussion Question: Is there anything in your life that God may be saying “no” to so that you can say “yes” to his plan?

Hopelessness, pessimism, and criticism have a way of spreading like wild fire. When the twelve spies returned from the Promised Land, ten of them immediately spread negativity that infected everyone. The group took on the perspective of those ten spies and collectively forgot all that God had done for them to fulfill his promises and get them to this point. With this perspective, they were angry with God and distrusted his word. They put down the weapons of God, picked up the weapons of the world, and found that their strength won’t be enough. Satan would like us to believe that this kind of negative perspective is “realistic” so that we take our eyes off of God and onto our circumstances. Satan wants us to look at our circumstances, our strength, our resources, and ask, “Did God really say?” If he can get us to distrust God, he can get us to do anything. But Joshua and Caleb keep a perspective that sees their situation through the truth of God. While the ten spies returned with reasons to be afraid, Joshua and Caleb returned with assurance of victory. All twelve spies saw the same thing, but only two saw it from God’s perspective. It’s easy to roll our eyes at the ten and side with the two, until we realize that we are more like the ten in our own lives. We look at our circumstances, our time, our resources, our situation and forget God completely. But God looks at our circumstances, our time, our resources, our situation and he sees something different. He sees his promise to never leave us, to finish his work in us, to give us grace in our time of need, to give us hope and a future. We don’t have to fall victim to the hopelessness that is spreading like a disease in our world. We can cling to God, knowing that he will give us his perspective in all circumstances. Reflection/Discussion Question: When do you find yourself most often falling into a hopeless, pessimistic, or critical perspective?