Loving Words are Powerful

 We are all called and destined to serve Jesus. A servant is one who serves. God is love. Anyone who receives God's love and passes it on with practical love is a follower of Jesus and a servant of God.

Practical help without respect and compassion is not love. There is a poisonous compassion without respect and genuine love by looking down on miserable people. Jesus never treated his fellow human beings like this.

No ordained ministry position enables you to serve Jesus and your fellow human beings. Only the love of God can enable you to help people and please God.

Anyone who follows Jesus with love and wants to help people must cultivate loving thoughts in their soul and always speak encouraging words. Words can kill or give life.

Between 1982 and 2000 there was a great revival in Argentina. Christians organised a Jesus march in a large city.

Homosexual activists also came to protest against the Christians.

The leaders of the Jesus March prayed for wisdom from God. Then something amazing happened. The Christians approached the homosexuals and asked for forgiveness for the cruel treatment of homosexuals by many Christians.

The homosexuals felt the true love of God and some converted to Jesus.

I know Christian women in Germany who visited brothels to help prostitutes. Their motivation was compassion and kindness. One prostitute went to the cinema with one of the Christian women. In the middle of a very secular film, the prostitute shouted out loud.

‘Now I believe in Jesus.’

She had heard the kind words of the Christian women that came from the heart and she felt the love of God.

So should we throw away the Bible? By no means, but we must learn to apply the Bible as the words of a loving and merciful God.

If you understand the Bible as a strict law book, you must ask the Holy Spirit to read the Bible with new eyes.

We find truth in the Bible. Greed, sexual debauchery, lies and hatred are forbidden, but in the Bible we see how Jesus loved the thieves and prostitutes and wanted to help them with deep compassion.

A woman had her baby aborted. Then she received a letter from a religious Christian woman. She read that she would end up in hell because of the murder of her baby. This letter did not come from God's heart.

A missionary, preaching with God's love, told the women that they would see their deceased babies again in God's heaven if they believed in Jesus. That was the truth, but not the truth that kills, but the truth that leads to life.

The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences. Pr 18:21 NLT

The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. Lk 6:45 NRSV

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Ps 139:23–24 NIV

Jesus, our Compassionate Friend

 I know some Christian women who regularly visit brothels, not to preach, but to offer friendship and help to the prostitutes. They have rescued some from human trafficking and others have come to faith in Jesus.

Some Christians disapprove of visiting sinful places, but Jesus himself mixed with the outcasts of society

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’;

the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” Mt 11:18–19 NRSV

Some Christians look at the lives of unbelievers, and focus on their sins. Jesus wanted to save sinners from their sins, but he did not just look upon them as sinners, but as people who were struggling with the challenges and disappointments of life.

Jesus really was a friend to sinners. What does true friendship mean? A true friend empathises and tries to understand how you feel.

When Jesus saw severely sick people, he was moved with compassion and healed them.

But he did not only feel compassion for physical suffering, but also the mental and emotional suffering of people living in darkness.

Life is full of struggles and disappointments, for Christians as well as unbelievers. If you put your trust in Jesus, you have eternal life, but that does not make you immune to grief and heartache.

Jesus himself knew what sorrow and grief meant.

He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. Is 53:3–4 NRSV

This translation correctly shows how Jesus, as our healer, bore our physical pains and sicknesses on the cross.

Some other translations emphasise the mental grief and sorrow, that Jesus endured, and how he identified himself with our emotional struggles.

Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. Is 53:4 NKJV

God looks at your sins, and he wants to forgive you, but he does not just look upon you as a judge, but as one who loves you and identifies with your emotional struggles.

After Jesus returned to heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit to be our comforter. The Holy Spirit in NT Greek is the PARAKLETOS. One who is called alongside.

God is closer than breathing. He feels your heartaches, and he wants to touch you with his compassionate love.