Deciding to Break Barrieres and to Touch Hearts
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veryday of our lives, we are filled with countless decision-making opportunities that make or break relationships we have around us. Relationships which are ways for influencing others to godliness and righteousness need nurture and nourishment by the grace and with the love of Christ. Apparently, what we decide on our hearts, we declare with our lips. Some decisions are temporal while others are eternal. Sadly, we are people that are far too often unable to make decisions between good and bad. Our relationship failures are often an outflow of a knowledge of the Scriptures which is not applied extensively in practical living. Our Christianity can become a form; then a formality; and finally, a formalism. Formalism breeds detachment and thus, it is void of brotherly love. We become enamored with superficiality forgetting that the Christ of Calvary spent time nurturing relationships through decision and correction. Let us value relationships. The Scripture exhorts us to endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. It is a willful effort to keep precious relationships. Though it is a burden to keep the unity in the bond of peace among such flawed individuals like us, it is a burden we must bear. To do this appropriately, we must lay aside the weight of pride and dissimulation and highmindedness as what the Apostle Paul had done. The Scriptural passage in the Book of James 3:17, "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy" plainly implies that as believers, our hearts must not be the melting pot of bitterness, strifes and envying. Rather, our hearts must allow the love of Christ to transcend and cover a multitude of sins, not for compromise but for the unity of the Spirit. Too often, we underestimate the power of a gentle touch, a thoughtful smile, a listening ear, a kind word, a small amount of caring, or an honest compliment, all of which could be used by God to turn a life around. In the grand scheme of things, we should see people, both believers and the lost, the way the Lord Jesus Christ sees them...not as means to an end but as precious living and loving souls whose life also can be touched by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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