love over judgment

Matthew 7:3-4

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye?”

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My hope and prayer for everyday is that I can be a light in someone’s life. I sit and type these blogs, not because I want to “brag” or “boast” but to hopefully speak to someone who needs to hear it. I pray for God's guidance while I speak his words in hopes of reaching someone who struggles just like I do. I want everyone to know that none of us are perfect, and something I have learned is that everyone goes through something. Encouragement is what I want to give someone who may be having a rough day, the Lord knows we all do.

One thing I have learned just in the past year is how to interact and talk to people who don’t believe the way I do. As Christians, or at least for me, I battled with judgment and acceptance. I was quick to close myself off and boil with anger if I came across anything that didn’t represent the word of God. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to some degree, but I was letting it control me, rather than just praying for the situation. Instead of asking God to let me interact with his love, I would let it completely ruin my day. It’s almost like I developed such a judgmental attitude along with the anger and just to be honest an “I’m better than you attitude”. Then, I looked in the mirror, I evaluated myself and how I would mess up. No one is perfect and for me to think I was only held me back from the relationship that I strive to have with God. So to be honest I realized that:

1. I needed to show the love of God to everyone.

2. Having that mindset would only make things harder for me. 

3. Reality is, I can’t stay huddled up in a shell for the rest of my life because this world is awful.

 So it was something I had to get through. I knew I live in a world of evil and cruelty and I would have to encounter people that I didn’t always agree with. Don’t get the wrong idea here, I do mess up, like all the time, we all do, we are human. That is why God showed me that I was in no place to judge. I began to ask God for peace and patience in times where I would encounter things that went against his word. I asked him to help me show the love of Jesus to everyone! This has been a process but I have found myself not getting so angry when I see or hear things, but instead praying. So as christains, let's not be influenced by worldly things, but let's be the influencers. So things began to get easier, I listened to people in class sate their opinions and my heart wasn’t heavy anymore, I could pray for them and talk to them without getting angry. Then as things began to get better God definitely sent me a sign. In class this week, we were told to get in partners. Me and another guy happened to be the only ones without a partner so we just paired together. We had to do an activity where I talked to him about a topic and he talked to me and we had to listen to each other. We had no clue what to talk about, it was kind of awkward, so he asked what I liked to do and I said, sing at my church. He proceeds to say, “oh! Tell me about church I have never been.” I kind of locked up for a moment, sadly because I had ever met anyone in my life that hadn’t heard about Jesus and also because my time was here to tell someone about God and what was I going to say? I just began to talk to God in my head, “Jesus, thank you for this opportunity, guide my mouth with your words.” So he asked me about what we do and why we have church on Sundays. It was a simple conversation but yet so powerful. He began telling me about his beliefs and the protests he leads around Alabama. It was an amazing feeling because I smiled and showed him the love of Jesus, even though I didn’t believe like he did. When I left I doubted myself, and thought of all the things I should have said, but I remembered what Blake, my youth pastor, always taught me. He said, “I have all these people I know that don’t believe in God, but they know I do and when they go through something they always come to me for prayer and that is my ministering moment.” So I realized that by me showing the love of God to this guy that I had never met in my life, I had overcome everything I prayed for God to help me with. Instead of pushing God onto him and slamming it in his face, I showed him love. Because if that was his only interaction with a Christian and I had been mad or angry, he would probably have developed a hatred towards christains. The moral of the story is that I want to always show love to people I meet because like Blake taught me, they will remember you, know your beliefs, trust you, and come to you when things get hard. A year later after working on the judgment and heaviness in my heart, I sat down and had a 30 minute conversation between (what he told me he was) a socialist democrat and me, a republican conservative. It was purely love and I reminded myself instead of dwelling on the things I should have said I left proud to have shared the love of God to someone who was from a totally different world than me.