Acceptance

Were you popular in high school or college? Were you a "favorite" of someone when you were growing up? Or, were you the "black sheep", the outsider, the last to be picked for the sport? Sadly, to often these are the glasses of the world, the lens that they use to see someone.

Isn't it wonderful to know that as a child of God, when He looks at you today, this very moment, He is not looking at your performance, your outward appearance, what you know or what you are good at...He is only interested in your heart:

1Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart."

Are we doing the same? Are we as Christians, looking on others with judgment with how they act, what they wear or who they know? Or, are we looking at the heart of each person we meet? Are we looking with the lens of Christ at our co-workers, family, friends and other Christians? Too often within the Church itself we find judgment and the formation of "cliques." We must not allow this to happen, there cannot be cliques within the Church - it is to be a place of inclusion and acceptance and not of exclusion and rejection. We get that from the world. Christ's desire is that we demonstrate His 'agape' love to all.

The next time you see someone who doesn't look like you, doesn't act like you, doesn't know what you know, put away the lens of the world and pick up your Jesus Glasses and see them as the work of art that the Lord has made them to be. Provide to them what is lacking out in the world, acceptance. And remember, we are ALL made in God's image: Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.