How Community affects your life
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Part # 3: Accept others by
Rated 5 by 3
2000-08-12
If we are in a community and bound together by the Holy Spirit, adopted as children of God then that annoying person who bugs you all through Church is your brother in Christ. In fact, when you see him, what you are seeing is a person who has the same God you have inside him. This person is loved by God so much that God died for him. Indeed, they are a work in progress and we certainly encourage them to grow in Christ and to live by that Spirit who now dwells within them. But there is little chance he will do that unless you love and accept him. Over time (and sometimes a long time) God will transform them from the inside out (which does a whole lot more good then the change we try to bring from the outside in).
Now to you who enjoy annoying others let me share what I have had to come to grips with myself. When you pick on them you are doing it to Christ, the one you love more than anything in the world. When you hurt them, you hurt Christ. When you insult them, you insult Christ because it is Christ who thinks the person you think is useless is so important that He died for them. And He is the one doing a mighty work to make that person into something greater. When you stomp on them, you stomp on the work of Christ. And if you are the cause of them to fall away from God, you have not honored Christ.
The point: Since the Holy Spirit dwells believers we should look at each other as Christ.