So much power

I do not envy the spiritual leaders who follow the call of God on their lives and obey to the best of their ability to serve the body of Christ as Pastors, teachers, evangelist, missionaries, and counselors. When they submit to God and go to teach what they understand, correct, instruct, comfort and counsel where they can, and have a handful of 'fans' who criticize their every move. "The sermon could have been better; the scripture reading should have been a different text; the joke was inappropriate; I should be a lay-leader already, so why can't they see my anointing? ; They skwelched the spirit, and on and on. Folks, leaders are people too. They do make mistakes. Most of them are not mind readers, or able to discern that criticisms comes as 'tough love'- instead of kindness. 

I can think about real tight situations on the mission field where I've misjudge a co-missionary or even misunderstood a leader in the field. I consider the weight and responsibility that comes over a minister or a famous preacher or teacher, and I am humbled. 

I think, “Whoa, I better pray for them and forgive them instead of judging what they just said or did and holding a grudge.” What if my perspective isn't the big picture? What would happen if Heidi spent all of her time listening to 'well meaning criticism' instead of taking another abandoned vulnerable child off of the streets and into the Iris family? What would happen if Bill Johnson spent his time focused on refuting arguments against revelation instead of teaching, preaching and 'doing' as Holy Spirit leads him? Would anyone's time be better spent listening to negative feedback?  I don't think so. It's far better for us to recognize internal offense and give it to Jesus. Pray for leaders. Trust God to gently correct whomever needs correcting. They're not our children, we can correct and discipline the children he'said put in our care because we see their big picture better than they do. He sees his children and knows the big picture better than we do. Let things go. Lay down offense. Forgive. 

Why?
When I forgive, I'm trusting God to guide someone who I feel has done me wrong by lovingly correcting them. I know that he will lead his children to repentance through loving-kindness. I don't have to try to correct people who aren't my children or students. Why attempt to parent someone who is not my responsibility? What if I am the one who needs to repent and change? This is always a possibility, it's just to hard to see clearly with junk in our eyes.

  

When I want to hold someone accountable for their mistakes or failures, or cruelty towards me, I am choosing to take God’s place in their lives. I don't want to try to do God's job. God is so kind that he doesn’t overstep our free will if we want to try. He's pretty chill and permissive. When we want to judge and condemn, we can. It's stupid to do that, but that is one of the realities of free will. We can make choices, even if they aren't the best choices.

Isn’t that wonderful? We can choose to let go of the responsibility to administer discipline to everyone in our life, and trust God to correct a rebellious or ignorant person through whatever means he knows is necessary and best. 

That seems kinda scary to control freaks who want to help God along in his plan. I mean it isn’t practical to think that the all – knowing intelligent creator is waiting on his creation to give him advice, and help him along. As impractical as it is – lots of us think we know what we would do if we had that kind of power.

No really, creative power, power outside of time, power to convict the hearts of men, power to create, power to love, power to truly be unconditional love – to love creation without manipulating the will of his creation.