Watch it Begin Again

Sometimes it's useful to go back to who you were before "everything happened".

Remember what you believed, what you valued, what you talked about and how you lived to expressed it all. 

there's a quote in Mean Girls that has recently continued to pop into my mind: 

"When you get bit by a snake, you have to suck out all the poison, that's what I had to do, suck all the poison out of my life."

Church recently has been about forgiving others, and coming to others in repentance. 

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34, 36).

As followers of Jesus, we can't think, justify or rationalise our actions in the way the world does. That's living unto the flesh. 

We are not of the world, and we do not live according to our flesh. We live according to the Spirit of God who lives in us and we are of the Kingdom of God.  

When people hurt us, we forgive. Yes, there is a time and place for communicating that hurt has taken place, but then we are to forgive. 

If they aren't willing to accept our forgiveness, we forgive anyway. 

When we hurt people, we must be brave enough to look in the mirror held up to us and take responsibility for our actions. Yes we may have been justified acting that way according to what our flesh and the world says, but we are not of this world. 

We are not of the flesh. We take responsibility to be humbled over our sin (because it IS sin.) and we repent to God and to others. 

We are thankful. Because they are helping us to be more like Christ. 

We repent because we Love them. we love with the love from the Father.  We have been loved and forgiven by our Father God. And so we are now to choose love and repentance over self defence and self pity. 

God imputed this ability to love and repent when we died with Jesus and he rose us mercifully and graciously in our new life with Him. Friends we are not of this world, let us not act like it. 

Love like this is radical. Love like this makes the world take notice of Jesus.

May we love with a love that covers all sins. May we love with a love that brings peace and unity amongst the brothers and which glorifies our Lord. 

It's helpful to remember who you were before "it all" began. What was it God was preparing you for and asking you to do? What was your purpose? 

Because sometimes when you go here, you remember exactly what God spoke to you about, back before "it all" began. Before you started work. Before you met the boy. Before your family temporarily fell apart. And you can pinpoint the exact moment the enemy chose to attack that which God commissioned you with. And when God allowed it to be sifted and refined. 

And you can, with the authority of Jesus Christ, claim back that commission. That promise. That calling.  

And you can sing along with Aaron Keys in "Sovereign Over Us" - "What the enemy intended for evil, The Lord will bring together for good." Yes and Amen!!

And then. Slowly, but surely, you can begin again. 

Isaiah 54 friends. 

He has us. He leads us on. 

With Love and With Grace!!