July 2020 – Jemtree's Heart

Scripture tells us, several times, to love one another. Forgive one another. Be gracious and kind to one another.

In this current American political climate, that seems to be farthest from anyone’s mind.

But, this blog isn’t about politics. It’s not about America.

It’s about our heart conditions.

Are we allowing an environment for our hearts to even want to one-another one another?

What does that look like?

Does Scripture give us any idea of how to accomplish this mountain of a task?

I think it does.

It seems like maybe the very first step is to set ourselves apart from whatever keeps us from one-anothering.

Then maybe the second step is to forgive-one another.

Maybe as we do these things, we are loving one-another. Just like Jesus told us to do.

I started writing this with a different direction and purpose in mind.

Seems like, just maybe, all fingers point back at me to do these things.

I try to. Sometimes I fail to.

Sometimes I fail to try to.

Sometimes, while I am struggling with my own stuff, God calls upon me to demonstrate to someone else what I am needing.

Often times, I don’t get what I’ve tried to be faithful and obedient to give.

And— sometimes ministering to someone else with a need, ends up ministering to myself.

God always provides.

Even when I feel a lack from others. Even when I don’t see who I can possibly turn to, to talk with or understand, or give me a helping hand.

God makes sure that I have exactly what I need, when I need it.

I want to feel pity for myself that in my toughest times I’ve been alone.

But— when The Creator takes such wonderful and loving care— how can I complain?

While I am trying to one-another someone else, He is one-anothering me.

I was often told I was “in the way” by people who’s opinion mattered deeply to me, for a significant portion of my life. I had no reason to not believe them. So, I did all I could to move out of the way, whether physically or otherwise.

I assumed everyone thought this about me. I have lived most of my life trying to not be in anyone’s way.

My foundational understanding of myself has been flawed by believing that I’m just always in the way.

I was once told by one of my pastor’s that I was in God’s way and I needed to move out of it. You have no idea how that affected how I saw God at that point.

I still don’t trust anyone to “pastor” me.

Over the years I’ve thought about this phrase, and with God’s help, I’ve begun to turn it around into a positive.

The Way is what Believers in the past have called their group. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus lives in me. I am in the way. But– I am not in the way, as being an obstacle.

The pastor who said that to me did not see me in my time alone with God, often prone before God, surrendering my life and my choices to Him.

That pastor was wrong.

In all those years before I accepted that he was wrong, I saw everything that I did or said as being in God’s way. I had no idea how to get out of God’s way, or what that even looked like.

I never felt like I could fit in anywhere, because no matter what I was blind to somehow being in the way.

I reacted by just removing myself. I can’t be in the way if I’m not there, right?

I was then told by that same pastor that I was in sin because I wasn’t at church everytime the doors were open– I was forsaking the gathering together of the saints…

How does one ever please someone who just sees what they think you are doing wrong?

God moved me out of that pastor’s way, relocating me to another area. But that criticism stuck.

How can I possibly ever get out of God’s way when He is everywhere?

Over the years, God has revealed that He does not see that about me. He has shown me that I have, in fact, been in His way. Going out of my way to obey His word, to demonstrate grace and forgiveness, to show compassion and love– I’m trying to do things in His way.

It’s amazing how much healing and reatoration can be released when God corrects wrong thinking.

Now I know– I am exactly where I need to be– in His way.

2 COR 10:5 “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”