Bible Bedrock
“The Lord seeth not as man seeth: man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” – Samuel 16:7 (King James Version)
I must not keep my believing, as I have done for so long, on outward appearances. I must not lump together all the people involved in some combined action I disapprove of (and my disapproval of the action may be largely because I don’t understand) as just a crowd of prejudiced, self-seeking people: but I must see them as individuals, in each of whose hearts God is working as He is in mine.
Equally I must not look with a jaundiced eye on individual outward behaviour or appearance of which I don’t approve. I must practice this same principle of transferred believing, transferred to who each person really is–-a created and loved human in the being of God, really therefore a form of God, a human expression of God, gone wrong, –that he may be made right: and God in His Spirit of love is as busy working in him, disturbing his false beliefs, as He has been on me through the years.
Then I love my neighbour as myself. Just as I always find tolerance for myself, so I can for my neighbour. In fact, I must get this habit, of which my African friends always spoke, of realizing that when I point one finger at my neighbour, the other three fingers are pointing back at me! Follow them first!
And I must be sensitized to my real sin, which is believing flesh rather than spirit, believing in what I outwardly dislike in my neighbour instead of believing and seeing him as one in God’s own being, in whose inner centre God is continually working in mercy. And I shall build my neighbour by faith and love, instead of destroying him by believing evil.
–Who Am I ?
