Recent days have revealed
the worst in people on social media. My
Facebook feed that was once filled with cute babies and fun vacations pictures
has become a venue for crude debate and accusation. I have found myself amazed
at the comments from people I admire and people I know in a different setting
to be level-headed and kind as they share their views about the political
changes in America. If an alien were
reporting back to his planet about what how people with different opinions
treated one another, he would have an unfavorable report to make for sure.
The culture of
the United States has moved far away from the instructions God gives us in His
word about how to live. Even our
churches are yielding to the culture and slipping from the orthodox teaching of
the Bible handed down to us from the Apostles.
Rather than calling Christians out of a former way of life and live a
life transformed by the Holy Spirit inside of you, the church is ignoring the
reality of God’s call to total transformation, even here on earth. An alien could not report back to his planet
that church is a place where people are united by a desire to follow God’s will.
It's hard not to
feel ashamed of us, as a people, and how divided we are from each other though
we are each created in the image of God.
Though I may feel
I am living in a corrupt time, I know that there have been more corrupt seasons
throughout the history of man. No one
has seen what God saw on earth before the days of the flood. Our evilness has not reached that level of
corruption again.
My own experience
of being ashamed to be a human before a Holy God has moved me to be more in awe
of Him. I cannot imagine how He
tolerates our moral decay and continuously holds out hope to us. He serves us the truth that there is a better
way to live. Rather than throw in the
towel and leave us to our inclinations to evil all the time, He finds joy in
us. This joy is expressed in John’s
letter to the Christians living in an evil culture: I have
no greater joy than to hear that
my children are walking in the truth (3 John 1:4).
His capacity
for joy is dumbfounding, especially since He sees far more evil than I do. He even knows the evil that is covered. He knows the evil that is in our hearts. This reality of evil existing in human beings
does not take away His joy in any one of His creatures who are standing strong
in His truth and are living it out in a fallen world.
God’s joy in us
gives me great hope. I want to be like
Him. I want to stop mulling over the
poor representations of human potential.
I want to focus on the humans who are moving in the direction of truth
even though their culture keeps distracting them from God.
When I consider
the joy God has in us, I stop reading social media, or I read it in a different
light. I stop watching the news,
constantly looking for something to celebrate, and instead look to my fellow
brothers and sisters in Christ who are bringing joy to God. It does indeed bring joy to me to see the
good work that people are doing in God’s name to push back the results of the
fall.
We are a fallen
people. We have leaders who represent
our fallenness. We have a God who takes
great joy in us when we live up to the potential He gave to us through His Son,
the Holy Spirit and His Word. Thank you
God for showing me how to have joy in us too!
Copyright © 2017. Deborah
R. Newman teatimeforyoursoul.com All Rights Reserved.
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