Focus on that person's potential to follow Jesus.
| posted 1/30/2009
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If Jesus prods you to befriend someone you don't click with, it's not unusual to buck it. That's okay. The important thing is to move past your initial reaction and take deliberate action, such as smiling when you encounter that person, or initiating a conversation. While it feels forced at first, it will become natural with time and prayer.
During this process, give yourself a break. Rather than beat yourself up emotionally because it's hard to befriend someone, recognize that it's normal to not get along with everyone. But you serve a supernatural God; you serve Jesus, who crossed barriers to see the real person. Jesus befriended tax collectors who cheated those they taxed. He ate dinner with people who'd done obvious wrong. And in the process, people who'd made bad choices started to make good ones.
You can't transform a person like Jesus did. But you can offer the friendship that opens that person to God's love. Action by deliberate action, choose the care that overcomes barriers. (See also Ezekiel 2:1-7; Zechariah 4:1-10; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1.)
Good Words to Remember:
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Mark 2:17
Today's Challenge:
Instead of trying to transform others, show them God's kind of love.
Copyright 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian Bible Studies.
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