APPRECIATION FOR OTHERS
I Thess. 1:2-3 We always
thank God for all of you and pray for you constantly. As we talk to our God and Father about you,
we think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and your continual
anticipation of the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. NLT
Wouldn’t you like to
have a pastor like Paul, one who you knew appreciated you and was constantly
praying over you? I can only imagine
what the church would be like to have spiritual leaders like that, people who
genuinely cared about the souls of the church.
Paul did not focus on
the negative things within the church.
Instead, he thought about their faithful work, their loving deeds, and
their focus on the Lord’s coming. It is
so easy to magnify the flaws of others in our minds and prayers. It is easy to point out flaws in others to
the Lord and ask Him to fix them. But,
Paul wasn’t like that. He chose to focus
on the positives instead of the negatives.
It would be wonderful if a church was so good that there would not be
room for the negatives to crop up, but unfortunately that generally is not the
case.
What do we think about
when we pray for one another? Think
about it for a moment. Do you thank the
Lord for what is going on right with a person and pray that it continues? Or, do you focus on the negatives and ask the
Lord to change them? One of the reasons
why we are prone to dwell on the negatives is that in our minds it makes us
look better than they do. And when we see
ourselves in a positive light, we are not prone to see our own flaws and failures
and repent.
Also, when we see
other believers negatively it’s because we are proud of our own understanding
of spiritual truths. Deep down we see
ourselves as better than they are.
Appreciation for
others is lacking in most churches today because there is a lack of
appreciation in the heart of those sitting in the pew. It is a deficiency that needs to acknowledged
and addressed if we are going to reach the lost for the Lord.
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