I have a confession to make, I severely hate malls. It isn't a general dislike, but a deep burning hatred for them. A closed in, overcrowded place where walking in a straight line is virtually impossible unless you are prepared to wipe out the old lady with her walker. A place where everything is overpriced, hard to find, and for me impossible to enjoy. One thing about malls though is that as I look around I can't help but see humanity in a bigger picture. Here we have thousands of people teeming in one place, and every time I go I can't help but see that each one of these people is not really looking for a product, but rather meaning in life.
I believe every one of us should take some time to think about the people around us. Constantly moving, always busy looking for the next great event or item to make their lives better. All of our friends and acquaintances who are looking for something to fill the void. It's easy for us to let their lives melt away in our conscious as we live our own lives. Many of us have trained ourselves not to see their need to restore their relationships with God. It's too hard to think about, and most of all it gets in the way of us living our lives the way we want to. We become blind to our mission in purpose because we don't want to see anymore.
My challenge to you today is to take some serious time and look at your friends and people at school or work today and ask yourself a question, "What do they need to be restored with God?" For each person you know it will be different because we all have faced different struggles. Write this question down on a notecard or sheet of paper and keep it in front of you all day. Begin to write down what you think the people around you need to be restored with God. Be purposeful and train yourself to see with new eyes all the people who are hurting and broken around you. Break your mind out of its comfort zone and see the world for what it truly is, not how you wish it to be. See through God's eyes for a moment.
Here's your group question:
Why do you think we don't want to look at our friends and the people around us as needing to be restored to God? What do you think would happen if we started to see through God's eyes all of our friends?
I think if we started looking at everything as if it were through gods eyes we would feel unfortable because as humans we want love so badly and we want everyone to like us. But not everyone liked Jesus and some of us are willing to give that up and I think that if we can give that up we will all start to truly live as an example for Christ. I once heard I would rather be an out cast now than cast out later and I think that that means alot.
ReplyDeletewow that was an awesome post Ryan and so true man!
ReplyDeleteI feel like if we looked at our friends the way God looks at them, we would see who they really are and what their intentions for our lives are. We wouldn't have any friends, i guess, because we'd see them for them, who they are on the inside, instead of what we see on the outside or what they say they're like.
ReplyDeleteWe want to know them for what we have prior knowledge to.
In regards to the first question, i think we don't want to acknowledge people's need for God because we don't want to see them differently. I guess since we like our friends the way they are, we try soo hard to keep it that way. And we don't want to seem pushy about anything, in fear that they wouldn't want to be our friends anymore.
I agree with Ryan's post. We aren't comfortable being uncomfortable with the needs of others. Truly, it is too much for us to bear that is why we have to surrender the needs of others to God through prayer.
ReplyDeleteI think we when start to see through God's eyes our hearts will be moved to do more for others. I was dealing with a tough issue in my personal life a few years ago. I spoke with a strong Christian woman at my church in Hawaii who encouraged me to pray over it. I specifically prayed for God to allow me see someone through His eyes. After I prayed, I opened my eyes and looked at the person and truly saw a different person than what I had been seeing because I wasn't looking through my own human (and very biased) eyes but the Father's eyes. It was one of the most amazing moments in my life!
Great posts guys! Cassidy I agree, often times we let fear get in the way, fear of losing our friends, fear of them becoming different. These different fears can paralyze us, but don't you think we have to find a way to get beyond those fears.
ReplyDeleteOn my way home from studying tonight I heard a portion of a message (on 95.1) where the speaker said, "sin impairs our relationships. It impairs our relationships with one another and with God." Paul wrote about this in 2 Thessalonians 2, particularly about the power of lawlessness (sin).
ReplyDeleteThis made me think about why we may not want to see the need of others being restored to God. I thought, perhaps, its because in seeing this need in others we sense the need in our own lives because we all have some sort of sin that separates us from relationship with God and with real relationship with others. Our own "work in progress" status may hinder us from believing we could rightly identify the need of restoration in someone else. As a result, we may tend to opt for spiritual blindness vice spiritual and actual action.