Several years ago I was going through one of the most trying times of my life. My sister-in-law had just passed away from cancer, and I returned to the public school I was teaching at the time. My 'duty' was to watch the Suspension Room during first period. I sat there and the kids were being absolute idiots. They came in stoned, hung-over, and their language was grotesquely immoral. Useless. Yet beautiful, loving, caring Jan - a person who was so needed by others - was gone.
So I asked God for some help, because I just didn't understand. This is what I wrote:
"So help me to understand. Please. How do you see these kids. Are they the sheep of Isaiah 53 that You died for? Give me Your view of them - Your love for them. Because right now I just don't see them that way. I only see a person who should be here gone, and kids with no respect of others and no love for You just going on and on and on and on. So help me, God. I just don't get it."
I still reflect on that day. Often. Because the same feeling still comes in waves when I see people mocking God and just going on and on without any thought.
We have to stop looking through our own eyes and look through His, to see them the way that He sees them. We need to remember that the lost are not our enemies. The sin nature, the world system, Satan - these are our enemies. The lost are our mission field. It's hard - I know it is. But we have to see them that way.
So - how does He see them? He loves them. He longs for them.
Mattthew 6:34 "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd."
Matthew 23:37 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."
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