Most of us are willing to
have one mind with others, as long as it is our mind. President
Abraham Lincoln once stated, “Sir,
my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest
concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
The one mind that we are asked to seek is the mind of Christ. The body of
Christ in worldwide Believers is incredibly diverse. No one member of the body
sees the picture fully. We all grasp a little different aspect of it, so when
we seek the mind of Christ together, we see this beautiful picture emerge of
unity in the midst of diversity. We need each other. We all serve a different
purpose, but together we make a truly wonderful picture and make an amazing impact.
We need to love those who think differently, recognizing that we need each
other without prejudice or judgment.
Unfortunately, many times we
do exactly the opposite. Instead of listening, we are planning our rebuttal.
Instead of understanding where the other person’s reasoning is coming from, we
think up multiple reasons why they are wrong on a given issue. They may be
wrong, but none of us are always right. In Romans 3:23, the Apostle Paul tells us, “for all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God.” The implication is that we’ve all failed in the past
and all continue to do so in the present, no matter how many years you’ve been
walking with the Lord. Jeremiah 17:9 explains that, “The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” This side
of glory, none of us are fully right. If we want to see better days, we need to
seek unity.
The next thing that we need
to see better days is to keep a soft heart. Do you know what it means to keep a
soft heart? It means perpetually peeling the calluses that build up in order to
avoid pain. Keeping our hearts soft means opening ourselves up to feeling pain
again, and that is hard. Calluses are a natural process of adding layers of
skin to heavily used and worn areas of the hands and feet for protection, but
left unchecked can get too thick and crack, which is painful. The point is that
to keep a soft heart requires callus management. We need just enough of a
callus around our heart that we don’t let the insults of the world get in. That
it is just tough enough to endure the hardships of life without becoming
hardened by them. We need a certain amount of grit that says, “I don’t quit”,
no matter how hard it gets. But, we need a softness also that say, “okay, I’ll
let that go”. Heart callus management is hard work.
A continued callus around
the heart numbs us to pain. When we ask the Holy Spirit to peel the calluses
off our heart, we will start feeling some painful things, ugly realities and
shameful thought patterns that we don’t want to feel. One of the big things
that we see on both sides of what is going on in society is hardened hearts.
People are so callused by the social views and the media headlines that they
are not even hearing the hurting people. And the hurting people cannot see past
their pain in many circumstances. Before better days can come, we need to seek
unity and keep our hearts soft. The one thing about God is that He promises to
be right there with us, right in the middle of the pain.
Let’s continue Pastor Kyle’s
message on “looking better days” in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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