Happy Thursday! It is October 26, 2023. Have you ever had run-ins with others? And I don’t mean with non-Christians. I mean, with believers! Have you ever met churchgoers with malicious intent or Christians with spiteful actions? But what if that person were … YOU? Could you even see it? Or are we always right, and they are not? What would the outcome be? Read on …
Today's Reading:
Job 17; Acts 24,25,26
Scripture
“The chief priests and Jewish leaders … requested of Festus, as a favor to them, to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem, for they were preparing an ambush to kill him along the way.” (Acts 25:2-3)
Observation
They planned to murder Paul! But who were the culprits of this plot? Terrorists? Militant CIA operatives? Neither. They were believers! They knew the sixth commandment in the Decalogue: “Thou shall not murder.” Yet they were blinded. They couldn’t see their own disease. They were controlled by fear, threatened by the fact that Paul could reveal them for who they were … men who would rather engage in treachery than face the truth. Jesus spoke about that in John 3:20 – “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”
Application
Can we fall into the same crevasse? Can this blindness inflict us as well? Absolutely! If it can affect the high priest, then no Christian is immune. However, this spiritual virus is often undetectable to the carrier. An angry spirit hides well behind alibis and justifications.
Clarity comes when I have the courage to begin with myself— when I can scrub my own heart and recognize my fears and reluctance to self-reflect. Perhaps my blindness originated from:
- Pride
- Waiting till issues became infected before I dealt with them
- Using anger as a motivator for conversations rather than love
Prayer
Father, I am realizing that life’s greatest treasures sometimes come wrapped in struggle paper. I wish it would arrive in neatly wrapped packages, but it doesn’t. Please help me not to discard the treasure for the wrapping. And when my heart feels threatened, help me to see Your hand at work in my life rather than succumb to my misplaced fears. And instead of scrapping with people, help me to start by scrubbing my heart.
My beginning point has to be my heart … not their head!
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