March 3: WE CAN'T TELL PEOPLE TO COME AS THEY ARE BUT INSIST THEY CHANGE BEFORE THEY ARRIVE.

Affirmation: I am gentle with myself and my mistakes. I treat myself with love and respect. 

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Ponder:  Focus on memorizing this verse, today. Jot it on a sticky note and put it on your bathroom mirror, fridge or computer. Read it out loud 5x’s. Ponder the message.

Psalm 18:2

 The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 

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Reading for Today

Walk in Grace. Live in Love. by Bob Goff

March 3

WE CAN'T TELL PEOPLE TO COME AS THEY ARE BUT INSIST THEY CHANGE BEFORE THEY ARRIVE. PEOPLE GROW WHERE THEY'RE LOVED. 

God does not show favoritism. 

ROMANS 2:11 

I think there is a universal experience for people who go to church. At some point in the service a baby will start to cry. It's not the baby's fault; it's what babies do. But for everyone else, it starts a multistep process that generally goes like this: feel compassion for the child; realize it's just a child and try not to get annoyed; try to stay focused on the sermon; wonder why the child is still crying; wonder why the parent isn't taking the child away; think about how to make the parent cry; repent from being so annoyed that a baby is disrupting the service. Perhaps we need to chill out a little. After all, it was a baby who brought us together in the first place, two thousand years ago. 

We need to give some thought to any number of reactions we have to the distractions. Perhaps it's how someone looks or the way they live their life or express their love that unbalances us. We would never tell a baby to figure out the whole "crying thing" before coming to church. But we tend to have higher expectations for adults. We have a habit of telling people to "come as they are," but seeing how we treat people who are still waiting for their growth spurt, I wonder if we really mean it. We want to include everyone, but we want to include them on our terms. We tell people to come as they are, but we insist they change before they arrive. If this is you, I've got two words for you to take to heart: stop it. 

That's not who you are, it's not who we are, and it's definitely not who Jesus is. If Jesus were on the stage, He'd probably point us to the baby and encourage us to become more like him. He'd tell us to get that real with our feelings and that safe with Him and each other that we could express what's going on inside of us. Not only do we miss the spirit of Jesus when we insist people change in order to belong, but we miss out on the ride of getting to love people right where they are, with no qualifications. We're meeting people at the starting line, not the finish line. Let them know they're not just invited; they're welcome. 

What would change about how you treat others if you accepted more about who they were, messes and all?