For all that we are, and however we might see the world and those around us, we represent those in the world who have face one of the most significant inconvenient truths in our lives — that we need God’s grace.  It’s a strange irony that God calls us — challenges us to continue the work of Christ by being a neighbor to people who are half-dead when we too are still in spiritual rehab.  But therein is our glory.  That we know and depend on God’s faithfulness to heal us from whatever condition we happen to be in is a testament to our need to continually face inconvenient truths about ourselves whenever we are willing to examine them.  Our responsibility is to give witness to the lifesaving, life-healing properties we’ve found in God’s grace and offer it freely and willingly to others who are half-dead along life’s journey.  It’s not an easy task.  Many are like we once were — willing to justify ourselves and our actions as appropriate, no matter how they hurt.  At times our actions were painful even to us, but we were delirious — drunk off the wine of worldly acceptance.  But Christ showed us the truth — a truth which we could not deny or refute.  It’s the same love and grace by which we were healed and the same love and grace by which we are to love those who are in need today.  We all need to face the inconvenient truth that offers the healing balm of God’s mercy.  We need God’s grace — the grace that calls us to God’s eternal glory in Jesus Christ — the grace which saved us, took us to rehab, and will come back and pay any debts charged against our account.  He has healed us and restored us and will remain steadfast and faithful to the end.

• What are some ways that you can work to help others to confess the inconvenient truth that would restore life in them?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Merciful God, awaken in me a sense of Your Holy Spirit present with me so that I may courageously be a neighbor to others as I face the other inconvenient truths in my life.

         Healing and wellness is frequently an outcome of someone having mercy on us.  In Saul’s case, he had been persecuting Christ by his actions.  He had found people who had been spiritually healed by the mercy of Christ who had given them life only to have Saul snuff that life out because of their faith.  In Saul’s life, the law of justice was an eye for an eye, and murder was strictly prohibited.  And yet, Christ had mercy on Saul, a murderer.  He realized that Saul was just another person laying half-dead, yet half-alive on the road from his ignorance about who Christ really was.  He saw Saul as someone whose half‑alive body simply needed the wine of understanding to clean his spiritual wound and the healing oil of forgiveness to heal his broken spirit.  It was mercy and grace through which Christ showed himself to be a neighbor to Saul.

         God has always been in the healing and restoration business — taking people from one half‑dead condition to a renewed state of wholeness of life.  That’s the nature of restoration.  Saul had to face the inconvenient truth of who Christ was to find the healing that saved his life.  It doesn’t put us back where we were as much as it gives us a new perspective and way of looking at the world and our relationship to God.  And we all need it in some ways.  Ananias needed it to go to Saul and Saul needed it to begin his ministry in the name of Christ with a new name, Paul.  Facing our inconvenient truth energizes us, and when it’s done for others, they, too, feel more energy to live.

• Have you ever known anyone who, after facing the inconvenient truth of who they really were in a relationship with God, was restored to a new life by accepting Christ?
• What ways might we work to facilitate restoring life to others who are half-dead?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Loving God, empower me by my confession that I’ve confronted inconvenient truths in my life. Open my heart that I might be a neighbor to others restoring life and offering them Your love and grace after facing the inconvenient truths in their life.

         We are a people obsessed with reasons why we find someone else acceptable.  We easily point to what’s wrong with them.  But when we look in our own mirror, we quite easily justify why we are the way we are.  And it’s as much that we justify ourselves as it is that we so easily see what’s wrong with someone else.  If and when we reach the point that we find what’s wrong with them, different about them, annoying about them, resentful about them, it becomes easier for us to become indifferent to them.  At that point we don’t care if hurt or safe.  At that point we don’t dare if they alive or dead.  And yet for Jesus, the issue is more about the state of their existence as it is the quality of their care.  If people are half-dead, then to Jesus, there’s still life in them — life enough worth saving.  And making judgments about others without first evaluating where we fall short is a recipe for ensuring that no one is alive.  We die by our indifference to another, and they die because we choose not to care for them.  We choose to ignore their life by our inaccurate assessments of who they are and what’s wrong with them, causing an inconvenient truth about who we are to go unnoticed and unaddressed.  That’s how people continue to end up on the road half-dead from journeying along life’s road.  It’s really a matter of refusing to live without facing the inconvenient truth about who we are — seeing the speck of sawdust in our own eyes that so easily contributes to causing someone else to die because our vision of who they really are is corrupted by our self-justification and our judgment of who they are.

• Have you ever avoided someone because you were placing too much emphasis on the sawdust in their eye?
• What are the dangers and benefits of finding the inconvenient truth of sawdust in our own eyes as we look at and give value to another person?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
God of love and life, enable me to find the courage to remove the sawdust of the inconvenient truth from my eyes. Guide me into accepting people for who they are without judging them by my bias.