Loving People Just the Way They Are

One of the keys to successful ministry is the ability to love people just as they are, all the while holding out hope for a better life. We don't hold that hope because we are somehow better but because we have begun to taste what it might be and want others to share in it as well.

We can only do that as we begin seeing people through God's eyes and depending on God's strength to treat people the same way He does. Sometimes it becomes all to easy to see other people's faults and become discouraged with them for being people with faults. At the same time we have this wonderful ability to be quite oblivious to our own faults.

Thankfully that is not how God sees people, particularily Christians. Isaiah 66:18 says, "I know their works and their thoughts." O my, does that thought scare you? He knows all that I think and do. Yet he still loves me.

Listen to the words of James Montgomery Boice as he describes how God sees us:

“We get discouraged in the Christian Life, and with good cause. We take a step forward and fall a half step back. We succeed once, but then we fail twice. We overcome temptation, but we also fall in temptation, sometimes over and over again. We say, “Oh, I’m not making progress at all. I’m doing worse this year than last year. God must be discouraged with me.” But God is not discouraged with us. That is the point. God knows everything. So while it is true that he is fully aware of our failures and victories, few as the victories may be, he is also aware of far more than that. He is aware of what we will one day be when by his grace we are fully conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. It is a sure thing. So we should take confidence in that, even though the discouragements are many and real. We have a great destiny; in its light all the vaunted achievements of our age and our personal achievements fade into virtual insignificance." (Foundations of the Christian Faith, page 140)

Now listen to what God says in Romans 8:29-30 says: "For from the very beginning God decided that those who came to him (and all along he knew who would) should become like his Son, so that his Son would be the First, with many brothers. And having chosen us, he called us to come to him; and when we came, he declared us "not guilty," filled us with Christ's goodness, gave us right standing with himself, and promised us his glory." The Living Bible

Are you glad today that God knows you completely? Faults and all?

For further thought: Why do we try and hide from the God who knows all about us? Are we critical of others because of our own disappointment with ourselves? Maybe we need to first see ourselves as God sees us before we can see others the way God sees them. Read Romans 8.