When we grow up being told we're "dramatic" or "attention seeking," we're gonna feel the urge to overexplain ourselves-- especially when it comes to anything that we worry MIGHT inconvenience someone else.
Resist that urge. Your needs are important. Treat 'em as such.
The church keeps feasting at the tables of power and privilege ... when Jesus is asking us to flip them.
The tables that oppress the poor
The tables that deny the outcast
The tables that discard the sick
FLIP.
“Protect that good thing entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who lives within us.” If you’re Christ’s, you’re remarkably gifted. You have a calling. Immense capacity for fruitfulness. Potential to bring God much glory. Stewardship comes to this: what’ll we do with what we’ve got?
When someone is hurting, let's remember we don't need to ask for all of the details. We can love and help and pray without knowing the full story.
We can simply pray for what we know. The details don’t make our prayers for that person any more effective. God knows.
The world around us may tear to pieces and choose 1 person’s value over another but we are not people of the world. We are the people of Jesus. We need in these critical days to look up & down, not left or right. We look UP to the throne of grace & DOWN to the pages of Scripture.
People cannot do for you what only God can do for you.
People cannot give you what only God can give you.
People cannot love you in the way that only God loves you.
People cannot know you as God alone knows you.
Don’t try to get from people what you can only get from God.
How we treat other Christians who disagree with our political views may be the true John 13 test of our day. Every disciple disagreed with Jesus politics, (kingdom, Romans, now) yet he died for them, and empowered them to seek his kingdom first anyway.