Judging part 2

Seeing People the Way God Does

Matthew 7:5 is what showed me the second step in the process of showing others their sin. One phrase in particular stands out: Then you will see clearly.

When we keep our own junk in our lives, and remain unrepentant, we make it hard to see clearly. From the age of around 12, until in the last year, I've had a bad problem with porn. I had years of my life where it felt like this chronic sin completely destroyed my ability to be in communion with God. All I was getting was static. This brought about fruitless ministry, fake quiet times and a lot of aggression towards people I love on top of bringing tons of problems to an already struggling relationship. This was all my fault. That's years of my life where I could have been getting closer to my savior that I lost. Years of my life completely wasted. God had even given me amazing opportunities to minister to others. But I felt that my sin was more important and having a crappy relationship with God was a better price to pay than having to fess up to my problem and face my pride head on. There's no one to blame but myself for that loss.

It took years and a lot of hurt to get that log out of my eye. God took me through some really rough and lonely time. But now my relationship with God is better than I ever knew it could be. It's funny because I've actually been having pretty crappy quiet times lately. But I still know that even in this downtime I'm still closer to God than I was in those dark times in my life. So even at my worst now, I'm better than my best in the past.

Now that that log is gone, I'm able to see more clearly in that area of my life. I'm not desensitized to that sin anymore. I'm able to see even the inklings of it in the lives of people in my life. And I'm not looking at them in judgment. I'm looking at them with love. I'm able to see them as Christ does. And I think that Christ views people in sin as slaves that He desires to rescue, not bad children He longs to punish. When I see them as Christ does, I'm able to know how to approach them in love, not in judgment. And I'm able to approach them with a mindset of rescue, not reproach.

And on a side note this is my second draft of this post. I really vagued up my past sin the first time but I just felt convicted to go all in for some reason. So if any of you who read this are struggling with porn, I'd love to talk to you about what you're going through. You can contact me anyway you already have access to me or just e-mail me at dwfishe@gmail.com. I'd love to pray for you and share with you some of the tools I've used to help me get through this stuff.