Wisdom, Patience and Grace

There's a final comment that I want to make following my last post. You see, because I am hoping to be an inspiration, there is always the challenge of how to respond when someone stubbornly refuses to be inspired. The easy thing to do is to believe that the problem is with them rather than me. That's a natural response pretty much every time anything goes wrong in a relationship with someone. Of course, the opposite defect is to believe that the problem is always with myself. Neither of these are the truth 100% of the time, and to think so goes against the Biblical injunction to think of ourselves with 'sober judgement'.

The reality is that often people will not be inspired by me, and sometimes it will be my fault and sometimes it will be theirs. The challenge is to be wise enough to tell the difference, and to have patience and grace with myself and - primarily, in my case - with others.

I've been helped by something that Neil Anderson mentions in the Freedom in Christ material. He points out that when Isaiah is called by God to be a prophet, his reponse is "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips who lives among a people of unclean lips". Likewise, when Peter is confronted by Christ, his reponse is "Get away from me, for I am a sinful man". The point that is made that when we draw close to God, we cannot ever be conscious of another's sin without also being aware of our own. If we are more aware of the failings of another than we are of our own, then perhaps we are actually pushing away from God rather than being drawn closer to Him.