A DIRTY JOB, PART II

Admit it, you've missed me, haven't you. Sorry for tomorrow turning into three days later.

Continuing Monday's post.............

I shared about an experience I had cleaning my friend Paul's dog lot. You can catch up here.

We can laugh at the silliness of the analogy. I mean, comparing Church work to scooping up junk in a dog lot is absurd..... or is it?

In the various conversations I have with people of all different types and stripes, I hear repeatedly how condemning and hateful "Christian's" can be.

Imagine if I had treated those dogs like non-Christians get treated at Church.

Yelling at those dogs would have done no good. Griping about the fact that they had done what they did would have been useless. It would have been a funny picture to see my small framed self wagging my finger and yelling at these 2 big, black, bear looking dogs!

And it is just as useless and silly for Christians to yell, and fuss, and wag a condemning finger at non-Christians.

Just like it requires patience to clean up after dogs, we, the CHURCH, need to regain a patient heart in our dealings with people.

2 Peter 3:9 says it this way:

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

What would our ministries, our businesses, our conversations, etc look like if we began treating people with this kind of compassion.

We need come to the realization that those who don't know Christ have every right to live how they are because they don't know better. That's why we MUST tell them, in love, and allow our actions to back up our words.

Let's be like Jesus in our dealings with people. Let's be patient. Let's see folks cross over from death to life, turning to Jesus in repentance.

Get your scoops ready. Working for Jesus is messy work. It's a dirty job, someone has to do it. It might as well be you & me!