Overcoming Weakness. Encouraging Others

 We all have difficulties in life. 
‘Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.’ Ian Maclaren, 1897

I am someone who likes to help. I am happy when I can support someone.
But I am not always a model of selfless love. 

I am someone who likes to read, think and talk about my ideas. That is my gift from God. That is why I am a blogger.

But my strength is often also my weakness. 

My daughter once wanted to talk to me, but I didn't hear her. I was lost in my own thoughts.

She said, ‘Dad is visiting the moon.’

I can also be impatient in conversations because I want to say something. What does the Bible say about this?

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 
for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Jas 1:19–20 NRSV

My tendency is to make my voice heard. That can be good, but it can also be selfish. Some people are reserved when they should speak. I am not like that.

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 
No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.  Mt 5:14–16 NRSV

We must let God's light shine in our lives, but we often have to overcome our weak human nature so that Jesus can be seen in our lives.

Today I must listen to my wife with compassion. Today I must listen patiently and compassionately.

He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. Rev 21:7 NKJV

Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. Rev 21:7 NRSV

If you want to follow Jesus, you must use your gifts from God every day and overcome your own human weaknesses.

Jesus promises to reward you and me eternally if we overcome with His grace.

What difficulty can you overcome today? Jesus wants to help you.

How can you help someone today? How can you be an encourager today?

Love Your Neighbour. No discrimination.

 Honour your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’” Mt 19:19 NIV

Love your neighbour as yourself.
In practice, this involves much more than acts of kindness by one person to another.

If you are a man, every man and every woman is your neighbour. 

If you love yourself with a healthy God given self-respect, you will recognise your gifts and talents and make the most of them to realise your potential.

If you love your neighbour as yourself, you will love women in the same way as you love men, and I am not talking about romantic or sexual love.

Just as you make the most of your own gifts and talents, you will seek to give everyone of both genders the maximum opportunity to realise their potential.

I love classical music. The most celebrated classical composers are all men, but there have been amazingly gifted female composers who have not been allowed to reach their full potential.
Felix Mendelssohn wrote the most popular wedding music of all time. 

He was one of the greats, but his sister Fanny was equally talented. Why could she not devote herself fully to becoming one of the celebrated great composers? Because she was a woman. She was expected to marry and devote herself to serving her husband.

My grandmother was an amazingly talented woman. Her father was an engineer and a university lecturer with a personal library of wonderful books. She learned to read at home and taught her sisters to read. 

She only attended school for one year, but she became an art teacher and a lecturer at a training college for kindergarten teachers. She was an excellent artist herself and she wrote a textbook for teaching art to small children. She also raised four sons. One became a farmer, another became a professor of law and my father became a psychiatrist.

How terrible it would have been if she had been forced into a traditional role as housewife with no outlets for her talents.

War on Empathy

 There is a war on empathy. Incredibly rich businessmen and politicians are building empires as democracy trembles. In ancient Rome, constitutional government was trampled by a succession of ruthless emperors. In our time, we are seeing self-centred despots attempting to replicate this process.

In the 1960s and 70s we saw rapid advances in racial and gender equality, but it appears that the old ruling classes and would be emperors have had enough. The empire is striking back.
Of course no empire can endure long without a religion.

Vladimir Putin understands this well. He has abandoned communist atheism and embraced the flagship of the old Czarist Empire, the Russian Orthodox Church.

Capitalist predators in the US and elsewhere have joined forces with conservative authoritarian Church leaders. Imperial rulers must have economic and military power but they also need priests.

Hard line conservatives have always resisted racial integration and gender equality, but the tide of history was against them.

But when the human rights activists shifted their focus to gay rights, same sex marriage and unrestricted abortion, the old conservatives saw their chance to seize the moral high ground and turn back the clock 100 years.

Civil rights, racial desegregation, gender equality, fair wages, and universal health care became the targets for the new rulers. Social justice was supposedly not real justice, if justice mattered at all. Mercy and empathy were redefined as weakness.

A great nation with a strong economy became the only thing that mattered. Even the working classes voted for this. Who wants high inflation and mass unemployment?

If the wealthy become even wealthier, they will naturally create a wealthy country which would be good for everyone. So we are told. It is called trickle down economics, except that the trickle is often a very meagre trickle.

Then Christian preachers come to the aid of the rulers.

Jesus said we must love our neighbour as ourselves, but some preachers tell us Christian love is only a personal matter, and nothing to do with politics or governments.

If we only narrowly focus on the New Testament, we can reach this wrong conclusion. However, Jesus was a Jew in Israel. The Old Testament has a great deal to say about legal justice and the responsibility of government to care for the needy.

Then we are told that God’s laws for the Old Testament theocracy do not apply to modern secular governments. It is true that Christians are not subject to the laws of Moses, but the Old Testament laws express God’s principles of law and justice.

Of course we should not execute adulterers, but the Old Testament prophets strongly condemned financial greed and the neglect of the poor. If we isolate politics entirely from God’s clearly expressed ethical principles, we are not applying Christianity to every part of life.

So should the churches try to take control of governments? The historical examples of this have often been horrible. Think of the worldly hypocrisy in Rome after the Emperor Constantine became nominally Christian. Think of the Spanish Inquisition.

The new rulers are telling us that empathy is weakness. Very prominent church leaders are teaching this as a supposedly Christian doctrine.

Of course empathy can have bad consequences. A prostitute comes to a church looking for help. A naive Christian couple take her into their home and the young woman steals the husband’s affections and he leaves his wife.

A woman in a strong missionary organisation studies prostitution for her PhD. Then she becomes a prostitute herself.

These stories are not made up.

Jesus was known as a friend of sinners, but he did not sin. Not everyone can share the gospel in a bar or a brothel, but some Christians can and do so without sinning themselves.

Love Your Neighbour

 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Gal 5:14 NIV

I must love my neighbour, says Jesus.
Who is my neighbour?

• My neighbour is my workmate or my boss.

• My neighbour is the pimp who kidnaps my daughter.

• My neighbour is the homosexual who wants to seduce my son.

• My neighbour is the terrorist who threatens me.

• My neighbour is the prostitute down the street.

A Christian woman had a daughter who went astray. She had a bad boyfriend who led her away from God's ways.

Then the unthinkable happened. The mother heard that the bad boyfriend had murdered her daughter. She was devastated.

On the way home, the Holy Spirit spoke to her heart. She must forgive the murderer. But not only that, she must visit him in prison. Then the challenge became really extreme. She had to accept him into her heart as her own son.

She couldn't do it all. She prayed fervently for the help of the Holy Spirit and received the grace to do the impossible.

As she continued to visit the man in prison and pray for him with God's love, his heart softened and he turned to Jesus.

After many years, he was released from prison. Now the mother and adopted son are a team. They go around sharing their testimony.

Should we pray for our enemies? According to Jesus, yes. But should we seek close friendship with every prostitute and drug dealer? Of course not.

If your husband rapes you, throws you against the wall and brutally hurts you over and over again, should you stay with him? Of course not.

It's about placing your heart in the hands of Jesus so that God can cleanse your soul of resentment.

God is love. You can ask God to help you see difficult people through the eyes of God's love.

Empathy Softens Hard Hearts

 A senior councillor in a Canadian city was a women's rights activist. She was pro-choice and wanted to legalise prostitution. Pastors in her town visited her to explain her Christian views, but she wouldn't listen.

When the pastors came in, she said almost aggressively, 'You must know that
I am a feminist. A positive exchange was impossible.

As we were leaving, the senior pastor said, 'We want to pray for you. How can we pray?

The atmosphere changed dramatically and immediately. The councillor was really touched.

Pray that I will do a good job as a public servant.

The pastors prayed in exactly the same way. Gradually the councillor's attitude changed. She recognised the negative consequences of legalised prostitution, and her attitude to abortion also changed somewhat.

Here we see a principle that can be seen in the earthly ministry of Jesus.

Two blind men sat by the roadside and asked Jesus for help. How did Jesus respond? He did not preach repentance. He asked a question.

Jesus stood still and called them, saying, “What do you want me to do for you?”
They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.”

Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they regained their sight and followed him. Mt 20:32–34 NRSV

When we take the longings and needs of our fellow human beings seriously and pray for them in this way, they understand that we respect and love them, and often they begin to become aware of God's reality and love.

There are people who don't want to hear a sermon or a testimony, but they have problems at work or in their family. Maybe they have a headache. If we take their problems seriously and pray for them, we will often see wonderful results.