The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
Luke 19:10
I am reading John Piper’s Advent devotional, Dawning of Indestructible Joy, and was challenged in my understanding of Luke 19.10. Piper reminds us that God “is a searching and saving God, that he is a God on a mission, that he is not aloof or passive or indecisive. He is never in the maintenance mode, coasting or drifting. He is sending, pursuing, searching, saving.”[1]
God is active and he pursues us with an active love. He’s not inactive, disinterested, resentful, bitter, or any number of other responses He could have to those who don’t know Him, choose to reject Him or do things that grieve Him. This challenges me. If I, as a believer in Jesus Christ, am to grow and mature to be like Jesus, how do I respond to those who reject me? What about those who have done things that grieve me or have simply acted from a place of not knowing me? How do I actively pursue relationship with people who have disappointed and rejected me, as God does?
Here are four ways I’ve discovered to more accurately reflect the active, pursing, saving God I strive to reflect
Let go of grudges
It’s easy to hold onto small offenses, often times without the offending party even knowing. When we hold onto offenses, we allow a small barrier to begin to form between us and the other person. Further offenses, when not dealt with, can add to the barrier until months or years later, the barrier has become a wall that we can’t explain because we have long forgotten the offenses, but held on to the grudges.
Instead of holding onto grudges, we need to let them go. Sometimes the best way to do this is to pray for and trust God with the other person. God’s judgment is righteous and He can be trusted to do what is right in any given situation. He will treat the other person with the same justice He treats us with.
Release bitterness
We can become bitter when we think other people have received what we deserve. It is tempting to compare our worst to another person’s best and allow bitterness to settle in the resulting discrepancy. We forget that there is far more to the other person’s life than the one item we are looking at. Often, when we step back and see the full picture, we would not want to trade places with the other person. We also forget how much God has already blessed us. In our desire for the thing we think we should have, we become blinded to what we do have.
Instead of becoming mired in bitterness, we can focus on what God has given us. We can recognize how He is working in us and the ways He is calling us to share His light with those who need the hope of Truth.
Be fully engaged
We have a tendency to distance ourselves from people who disappoint us. In many respects it is a natural reaction to being hurt. We want to avoid being hurt again so we are guarded in our interactions with those who have hurt us in the past.
It helps to remember that no one is perfect; no one will be able to always respond to us in just the way we need at just the time we need. If we expect disappointment to occasionally be part of our interactions with other people, as counterintuitive as it seems, the disappointment will not affect us as much. It’s similar to expecting snow in the Midwest in the middle of winter. If we expect snow, we will more prepared for it and better able to deal with it when it comes. If we live in the hope that there will be no snow, we are likely to be far more disappointed and less able to cope when it comes.
It also helps to remember that we cannot avoid disappointing and hurting other people. Very often when our tongues get the better of us or we react without thinking. The thing we want most is to be forgiven and to continue in the relationship as if the incident had not occurred. It is only right that we give to others what we hope for from them.
Appreciate that no one can ever offend me as much as I have already offended God
As creator and ruler of the universe, God is holy and deserving of our reverence, obedience and worship. Not one of us has or is capable of living a perfectly holy life apart from Him. We have sinned against God and deserve the death He said was the consequence of our sin. It is only God’s mercy that prevents us from suffering spiritual death in this life and eternal death in the next.
When we remember this, it is far easier to extend forgiveness because we have already experienced it from God. We are not doing something new or being more generous than God has been. God is the model and we can find strength in him to do what may seem impossible to us.
Each one of us was an enemy of God when He began to pursue us. Since we’ve become friends of God by placing our trust in Christ, we have not lived perfect lives and have done things that have disappointed and grieved God. Yet, He continues to relentlessly pursue us with active love that does not stop. Can we do the same with those around us?
[1] John Piper, Dawning of Indestructible Joy (Wheaton: Crossway, 2014), 15-16