Motives and Truth

Its funny how we are so quick to judge or even completely dismiss in Christian circles depending on what we believe the source of something is.  Let me share a few examples...

Lets use the phrase "Jesus Loves You Unconditionally".  If a close and trusted friend posted that on Facebook in your news feed, you would take it at face value as a reminder from your friend about this wonderful and timeless truth. But let's say that Joseph Prince posted that same phrase, "Jesus Loves You Unconditionally". Many in the body today would assign an impure motive to the post because they believe Joseph Prince is a "hyper grace" teacher.

Lets take another example, lets say Mike Murdock posted the same "Jesus Loves You Unconditionally" post. Many would assume Mike must be setting people up to ask them to give his ministry money. Or what if Robb Bell posted the same "Jesus Loves You Unconditionally"? many would dismiss it as a cover for Robb's emergent theology of their being no real Hell and such. What if you knew of a person in willful, unrepentant sin; say they robbed a bank and killed a few folks in the process but had no remorse at all for their actions and they suddenly posted the same "Jesus Loves You Unconditionally" to the world, what would you think about that?  What motives would you assign to the respective posters?

My point in bringing this stuff forward is that we all tend to see things thru our own set of preconceived glasses. Almost everyone I have ever met says they love it when people are just straightforward and honest with them, yet so very few can even start to process that kind of talk because they will try to assign motives to the person talking based on the opinion of the person bringing the words forward.

Another example: when a 400 pound woman looks at a 120 pound woman and tries to tell the 120 pound woman that she is eating too much. Someone who honestly relishes truth above all else would honestly look at what the 120 pound woman was eating to see if there were any merits to what the 400 pound woman had said but as we all know, most people would be appalled at the nerve of the 400 pound woman to dare address an overeating issue in someone else. They would not weigh what she said on the merits, they would be too lost in seeing the hypocrisy of the 400 pound woman's comments. 

Christian maturity is a funny thing sometimes. One thing you will eventually need to learn is that Grace makes our perception of life completely unfair.  God often hides His deep, timeless and incredible truths in the most flawed and imperfect vessels.  

Consider Mary, the mother of Jesus. Everyone around her saw her as a complete moral failure, the modern equivalent of what we would call a slut, unable to control her hormones. In reality she carried the very divine seed of God Himself within her and was indeed virgin pure the entire time.  

Consider Paul who went from town to town dipping his sword of death into body after body of Christ followers slaughtering masses. The incredible revelation that he ended up with was so great beyond all of his contemporaries that God allowed a thorn in his flesh to help offset the pride that otherwise would have been too much for him.  

Of course there is Matthew, the tax collector who the small group of new disciples all had disdain for as he sat collecting monies for Rome. They made the easy and common mistake of judging Matthew on the basis of what their human eyes saw but the prophetic heart of Jesus saw into the heart of a man who truly loved God despite His current public and very unpopular vocation. 

Don't get me wrong, there are certainly false teachers out there and there are certainly times to mark others that are involved in blatant sinful deeds and such... but most of those verses only come out these days to hide what are really personal offences or things we do not understand about others.  For example, when a minister gets up and suggests that people pray for God to show them a given amount to "sow into their ministry", many in the body completely shut down and assign that minister to a perpetrator of the "prosperity gospel" instead of honestly praying about how much they should give in that moment.

Todays summery:  We are in a season right now where God is shifting old mindsets so we can see that just about everything we need is already in place around us. As believers bombard Heaven with prayers of things they want to see changed in their lives, God is trying to peel back the layers of personal opinion to reveal the very things many are praying for are indeed already in place around them.  Get past your personal hang ups and opinions about sources of information and instead look at the content of what is being shared... after all, "Jesus Loves You Unconditionally".  


More soon,


Mark

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