Accept

I am talking about accepting people as they are without any conditions on Saturday night for UNITED. As I looked through the Bible to prep for this I realized that there are some seriously jacked up people, and that is just in the first 30 chapters of Genesis.

Genesis 4-Cain kills his brother Abel
Genesis 9-Noah gets drunk and naked
Genesis 16-Abraham has sex with his wife’s servant and gets her pregnant
Genesis 19-Lot gives offers his daughters up to the city of Sodom in place of the angels visiting him
Genesis 29-Jacob marries 2 women, has sex with 4 and has 13 children between the four.

Why would God put all those stories in the Bible? To show us that people are messed up but regardless He died for them just like He did for us. Accepting others I believe is a form of worship and brings honor and glory to God. The key is accepting them before they change not waiting for them to make the change.

There is a line from Transformers 2 that says, “Fate rarely calls upon us in the moment of our choosing”. I feel God rarely calls upon us in the moment of our choosing. Because we naturally we don’t choose to love the unlovable like Jesus did with the Lepers in Luke 11, but that is exactly what He has called us to do.

I wonder what it would look like for us if we put ourselves in other people’s shoes and see life through their eyes for just a moment? I wonder how much more accepting we would be? Who has God put in our life that needs to see the accepting love of Jesus through us this week?