Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
God does not want us to be strong. God wants to be our Strength.
We often want to be strong in a way that reflects well on us. God wants us to be strong in a way that reflects well on Him.
Christ says:I know you through and through – I know everything about you. The very hairs of your head I have numbered. Nothing in your life is unimportant to me, I have followed you through the years, and I have always loved you – even in your wanderings. I know every one of your problems. I know your need and your worries. And yes, I know all your sins. But I tell you again that I love you – not for what you have or haven’t done – I love you for you, for the beauty and dignity my Father gave you by creating you in his own image.
If my mind is the size of a soda can and God is the size of all the oceans, it would be stupid for me to say He is only the small amount of water I can scoop into my little can. God is so much bigger, so far beyond our time-encased, air/food/sleep-dependent lives.
One of the keys to being fulfilled and content is to be others-centered. When you live a poured-out life, you realize you aren’t the only one struggling or going through a hard time or waiting on the promises of God to be fulfilled in your life. It is hard for me to think about myself when there is a family living in a mud hut that has no food to eat and no bed to sleep in. It’s hard for me to think about my dreams when I am comforting a child who has just lost her mother to AIDS. It is hard for me to think about my desires when I live with 75 orphans who know the pain of rejection and abandonment.
So many times we get lost in our struggles instead of getting lost in God. There will always be a new struggle. Circumstances will always change. People may come and go. But God is constant, consistent, always with you and never failing. He created you with the choice to choose Him no matter what it looks like around you. Living a peaceful life doesn’t mean living an easy life, it just means you know who’s in control. Trust God.
Anything that makes me desperate for God is a blessing.
…God has promised to supply our needs. What we don’t have now we don’t need now.
I think it’s important to admit the fact that we don’t always want to choose God. We walk through seasons when God is the last thing we want to choose. Seasons where our minds are muddled and our inspiration cracking and our faith sometimes feels paper thin. We are not perfect. We hurt and we are slow to trust and we put our all into people and let our worlds shatter when they leave. We’re human. It’s a catastrophic mess but this is where we meet God. So yes, there are times when we don’t want to choose Him, but we choose Him still because there is not a single moment when He doesn’t choose us.
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