It's a Test

In visiting with a young man in a correctional facility, he came to a point where he began to pull back the veil on some of the awful things he had done in the past. I shared that it didn’t matter to me what he had done in the past. I didn’t see him according to what he had done or who he had been, but rather I saw him for what he could be . . . what God desired for him to be. He responded with way too much wisdom for a 16-year-old, “Sometimes people like me want to tell you what we have done. It’s a test, in some ways, to see if you will still like us.” 

Ouch. How many had failed the test in the past? How many people, Christians included, had written him off once they found out the things he had done? Labeled him as delinquent, troubled, dangerous, cruel . . . evil—and left him for “the system” to take care of? The walls he would have had to put up to protect his heart from that hurt had to be tall and wide. 

Will we love with the love of Christ? A love that sees beyond the behaviors to the hurt beneath and the heart within? Only love can tear those walls down and God alone can heal those wounds. Yet we are the hands and feet! "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Romans 10:15) May we come to love like Christ as we walk with the hurting and the broken, looking past what has been—even what is—to what could be. May we enter every encounter believing that they will be redeemed and transformed. Sometimes we have to believe for them, before they can believe it for themselves.

 “Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast,

it is not proud.  It does not dishonor

others, it is not self-seeking,

it is not easily angered,

it keeps no record of wrongs.”

1 Corinthians 13:4-5 NIV

“But God demonstrates his own love

for us in this: While we were still

sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:8 NIV

“We love because he first loved us.”

1 John 4:19 NIV