I wrote this 2 part message late Friday night/early Saturday morning, and then I heard Joyce Meyer preach Saturday night and Sunday morning. I feel that her messages strongly confirm this one. Feel free to read my notes on Facebook or at my Blog.
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I think it's all too easy for us to categorize people: rich or poor, attractive or ugly, good or bad. Well people are complicated, and we all have good and bad characteristics. At any given moment you can take a snapshot of someone's life and see them doing something wonderful and in another moment catch them doing something very unbecoming. We have to remember that people go through things we don't know about or understand, and there's a reason why they act the way they do. We have to avoid making judgments and we have to extend the same mercy to others that we'd want someone to show us.
Sometimes at church I think people that don't know me probably look at my offering and think, "There's someone who's spiritually immature. That person doesn't even tithe; giving so little, what a shame." Well the reality is what I give is way more than a tithe. The story behind my offering they don't know is that I gave up my job and home to follow God's call, and for over 5 years I have consistently given more than I've received. No it's not a tithe, I'm beating God giving (temporarily - it ain't over J). Friend we must not judge others, or assume we know their story.
Likewise we shouldn't be quick to judge people in the Bible. It's tempting to read the Bible like a novel consisting of good and bad characters; but it's real stories about real people and those people are complicated too. I think about Michal, David's first wife and how she is known for looking down on him when he danced undignified before the Lord. I agree that she was definitely wrong for that, and in no way condone that behavior, but Michal had a story too. If we dig deeper we see the story is more complicated, and perhaps we will have more mercy and compassion for her when we understand her better. Here's an excerpt from my journal about her story:
To be continued tomorrow...
