A REMINDER
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are the fruit of the Spirit. These qualities exist only in a person who draws upon them from God.
They can be directed toward you only if the other person is rightly related to God.
If someone is nursing hatred or wrath in his heart and then discovers that he has been deceived, he will shower that wrath on whoever deceived him just as surely as the nation showered its wrath on the Watergate people.
You err when your sense of self-respect is based on the spiritual condition of another person. You build your own self-respect when your words, behavior, emotions, and mental activity line up with God’s commandments.
OUR JUDGMENT OF PEOPLE IS LIMITED
The Bible says:
As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects man (Proverbs 27:19).
The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share its joy (Proverbs 14:10).
Only you know what goes on underneath your skin. Whether bitterness or joy floods your soul is known only to you. I have spent a lifetime studying people, and am fully convinced that I cannot accurately decide what goes on in someone else’s heart and mind. A person may look miserable but can be radiant on the inside. Another may look happy but can be miserable on the inside.
“I’LL THROW YOU INTO THE FURNACE!”
A janitor walked in on a nursery school at his church. The children were working on cutouts; paper scraps littered the floor. Gruffly, he ordered:
“You kids clean up this paper, or I’ll throw you into the furnace!”
The teacher, a newcomer in the church, gasped. But the children ran gleefully into his outstretched arms. They knew that all he meant was:
“Hello, kids, I’m glad to see you!”
From what the janitor said, the teacher got a totally wrong impression of his attitude toward children. I am impressed by the wisdom given to us by the apostle Paul:
But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the LORD, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. Therefore, let us not judge one another any more, but rather determine this—not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way (Romans 14:10-13).
You can hear what I say and observe what I do, but you can’t judge the accuracy of what I say, nor can you judge my motives or my sincerity.
What you can do is judge the accuracy of what you say and your own motives and sincerity. You and I must stand or fall before God alone, when it comes to your mental activity. How, then, can we know each other? Only as we choose to open our minds and hearts to one another.