Deep in love with Jesus

Sitting at Your feet is where I wanna be

I'm home when I am here with You

Ruined by Your grace, enamored by Your gaze

I can't resist the tenderness in You

I'm deep in love with You, Abba Father

I'm deep in love with You, Lord

My heart it beats for You, precious Jesus

I'm deep in love with You, Lord

These words from a song by Michael W Smith touch something deep within me. So often the love of God is very theoretical – we know it to be true but we don’t feel it. Yet love is an emotion and should be felt. It’s not a piece of information.

For years this was my situation. I knew in my head that God loved me. I could pray with great conviction God’s love for another but I just never felt it. I kept talking to God about this. I knew that if only I could feel God’s love, so much else would fall away; feelings of inadequacy, guilt, shame and condemnation. These just would not be able to exist in the warmth of God’s loving gaze.

At this point I just need to say that feelings are not a reliable indicator of truth. Feelings follow truth not the other way around. What do I mean by this?

 ‘Feelings are just feelings. Nothing else,’ my boss used to tell me. He is a Godly man but this saying drove me mad. My feelings were very important to me and I felt that they were a very accurate gauge of reality.  Over the years I discovered by painful circumstances that he was quite right. 

What he meant of course is that feelings are in fact a very poor indicator of both reality and truth. Feelings can make us slaves to lies and whilst I am not for a second suggesting we ignore feelings, they need to be used as what they are – a pointer to our emotional or physical condition at that moment. They can be a signpost to blessings or problems but they are not necessarily an indicator of truth.

‘I feel so alone and rejected’ shows our emotional state. The truth is that Jesus said He would never leave us or forsake us.  We are not alone or rejected. 

So feeling God’s love is vital because the truth is that God loves us so passionately, deeply and dearly that we will never fathom it. We ought to feel his love but so often our feelings condemn us. It is at that moment that declaring the truth is vital.

The truth is that God loves us. The truth is that we are his dearly beloved children. The truth is that we are the apple of his eye. The truth is that there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The truth is that we are saved by grace; there is nothing we can do to earn or keep God’s love. The truth is that as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

It was at this point I got my breakthrough. God had forgiven me but I had not forgiven myself. I still condemned myself for my many mistakes but if God had forgiven me, who was I to hold myself in the bondage of unforgiveness? As I released myself, the feelings followed the truth and I knew God loved me and I could feel it.  It was a wonderful moment.

Now, like Michael W Smith, I love to sit and enjoy God’s adoring gaze, to reflect on his great tenderness and acceptance of me; to know I never need to do anything to earn this love but I can just sit and bathe in it.  What a blessing to know that God will never reject me, abandon me or get cross with me. I am his precious child. Hallelujah!

Home

But our citizenship is in heaven Philippians 3: 20

Set your mind on things above not earthly things Colossians 3: 2

We were on our way home after a long journey round South Africa. We stopped for petrol just before the last leg of the journey – and the car broke down. Several hours later we were towed back the way we had come to a garage that could fix our car.

I cannot tell you how upset I felt about going away from home. I had been greatly anticipating getting back to our house, our things, the place where I feel most comfortable and at ease. Now not only were we not going home, we were driving in the completely opposite direction.

All of us are destined for our real home – heaven and if we are confident that is where we are going we too should look forward to it with great anticipation.  However the reality is that many Christians secretly believe that heaven will be boring; sitting around all day singing worship songs, maybe twanging a harp and hoping they can summon up enough enthusiasm to ‘worship the Lamb’.

Of course nothing could be further from the truth. As James Garlow says:

Take your deepest longings. Think of what you crave, what fills you with delight, joy you've never experienced but yearn for just the same. Remember your longing for home, for a lover of your soul, for the contented wholeness that leads you to the place you've never been yet can’t forget – the place where your every desire is satisfied more abundantly than you've ever dreamed. Heaven is that home.

That is the reality. The most wonderful thing is that we will be loved unconditionally, affirmed, appreciated and greatly valued just for who we are. Imagine that. No ulterior motives, no control, no manipulation, no rejection. Just pure love.

We will  be reunited with all the people we love starting with Jesus but including all our family and friends who have given themselves to serving the Lord. We will have eternity to get to know one another better but most of all to get to know Jesus and our loving heavenly Father and surely that will take eternity.

Out of that will flow the most awesome worship from hearts poured out in adoration to their Saviour and God.  Thousands upon thousands of voices raised in unity to honour and worship the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Nothing dull or boring about that.

There will be certainly be no opportunity to become bored in any other way. Mankind was created to look after the earth in all its amazing diversity and beauty and the new heavens and the new earth will be perfect just as God created them to be not tarnished in any way by sin. There will be wonderful ways to serve and work in a deeply satisfying, fulfilling and stress free manner.  Think of all the things you would love to do and then imagine all the endless possibilities to explore with the kiss of heavenly perfection on them. That is just the start of the wonders of heaven which are far beyond my imagination either to think of let alone write about.

Best of all will be the deep sense of being home with the ones we love and who love us. We are but pilgrims in this present earth; our destination is heaven where all will be well because the Creator of all things dwells  in great glory with his Creation – which includes you and me - his loved ones. 

Father and child

Too often in the midst of life’s difficulties, it is very easy to lose sight of who we are. Our view of God can become that He is the answer to our prayers and of course that he is what he is.  I need work, finance, healing, breakthrough, help with exams, healing of relationships, a spouse, security, protection, all sorts of things and God graciously answers our requests.

However I believe that instead of seeing God merely as our heavenly provider, what is so much more important is to see that God is our loving heavenly Father and we are his precious, chosen children.

Small children look at their parents and see them as the source of all they need, which they are.  They provide food, clothes, money, warmth, comfort, protection and so on but as they grow older children begin to value the relationship with their parents. Unfortunately the relationship may break down at some point due to the weakness and failure of one or both parties and too often we do not really come to appreciate our parents either till we and they are old or worse still when they've gone.

If we imagine the best possible dad, we don’t want to spend all our time asking him for things.  It would be embarrassing to have a relationship based on our wants and his provision. What we really want is to spend time with Him especially when things are tough.   Only he can provide the comfort and affirmation we need.

It is so much more wonderful is to have a relationship based not on provision but on love and confirmation of our identity as God’s chosen child. We can face a lot when we know who we are and who is always with us.

At this moment I am in the midst of a storm.  I have no idea why or how I got here.  All I know is that life is very bumpy at the moment.  I could spend all my time begging God to get me out or even to tell me how I got here or I can relax and remember who I am and who is in the boat with me.

The ride may be bumpy but I am being held by the strongest pair of arms in the universe. I may feel fearful and alone but I am not.  I am God’s child and he is not going to let me go or let me drown. I am safe with him.

I do not need provision, I need fathering. I need the reassurance that I am his child and he loves me more than I can ever know. 

A sense of belonging

There is a Hillsong song that says, ‘Jesus I believe in you, Jesus I belong to you. You’re the reason that I live, the reason that I sing with all I am.  A sense of belonging is essential to each one of us for our identity, security and general well being. We get this sense of belonging from the people and places around us. 

As Christians our sense of belonging should come from our identity as children of God. This is strengthened by our Christian family of friends and church. The family is God’s plan for people, both naturally and spiritually. It is in our natural family where we initially forge our greatest sense of belonging. The same is true in God’s family but it is when the family breaks down, either in the natural one or in the church that some big problems can occur.

It is when we feel let down, hurt and rejected by parents, brothers and sisters or in the church by our Christian friends or leaders that our sense of belonging to these invaluable institutions begins to unravel..  We may then exchange our family or Christian sense of belonging by finding  people and communities who have not hurt us. This situation is always made worse in churches by the feeling that Christians shouldn't behave like this; that they should know better.

I am sure we can all think of people who have left the church or even backslidden because of what a Christian or a church has said or done.  It is heart breaking when this happens. These people have found greater love and acceptance from the world than from Christians and the church.

However, when the church loves, honours and works together in unity and always tries to deal with difficulties it becomes a very powerful family and individuals have a strong sense of belonging and identity. When churches then try and work together across denominations or even nations, the sense of belonging it engenders can help people feel they are working together for something much bigger than themselves or even the locality.  As Psalm 133 says, ‘How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! … For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life for evermore.’ God blesses unity.

The church is at it most effective in outreach when we show love to the world based on love within the local church and even more love across churches. Jesus said, ^‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’(John 13: 35). 

When the world looks at a church full of saints who have such a strong sense of belonging both to God and one another that instead of complaining and criticising one another they love and honour others, then that becomes extremely attractive to unbelievers.

A sense of belonging is so important to each one of us. If you don’t feel you belong either to God or the local church, ask him today to help you understand why, to forgive any who have hurt you and to forge the strong bonds of love and unity with others that will help you feel the love and acceptance that a child of God should have. 

Accepting ourselves and others on the journey

Continue to work out your salavtion with fear and trembling  Philippians 2: 12

I watched a video on You Tube recently from a Stoneleigh Bible Week in 1998. It stirred up happy memories of these times but also made me realise how much I have changed since then. God has been doing a wonderful work of healing and restoration and things that I struggled with then are no longer an issue.

However it also made me realise that I would not like the person I was then very much and it made me realise afresh what wonderful grace God has for each one of us. He is not fazed by where we are, as he can see where we are going.  All he wants is our cooperation through joyful obedience to let him work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

I think too often we can be afraid of what God wants to do or what may be required of us. However the God who loves us more than we will ever really understand does not want us bound by the hurts of the past but liberated to walk in freedom with him.

As ever, it comes down to trusting God that he knows best and will never hurt us.  His plans are always for our good and if he is asking us to walk through something that he knows we find hard, he is with us every step of the way. He will give us the strength to come through it.

God is always telling me not to be so hard on myself and to accept myself as he accepts me. This should also of course be applied to other people.  As we realise that we are all on a journey and that God loves and accepts us as we are, where we are, he will also give us the grace to accept others where they are as well.

No one has arrived and no one is perfect but as God unravels the hurts, pains, disappointments and failures of the past it brings us into greater freedom and ability to love others.  We are all works in progress and I love seeing the wonderful things that God has done in people’s lives.

The Apostle Paul was only too aware of his past and of how God had rescued him from a religious, legalistic, persecuting past and turned those things which the devil had used for harm into the very things that are a great blessing to us today. We have the testimony of Paul to encourage us and the teachings of Paul to instruct us. Paul’s mind bound up in religion and legalism when liberated by God became a well spring for much of the Christian theology and church practise that we use and understand today.  Paul’s letters have become the foundation for the Church.

It is truly wonderful what God does in the believer’s heart and life as we trust and obey him. So do not be discouraged if you do not feel you are making progress, but accept the journey that you are on.  In the same way accept others who are also on their journeys and give grace to both them and yourselves.

Love your neighbour as yourself

Love your neighbour as yourself Leviticus 19: 18

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19: 26

Joyce Meyer says she found it impossible to love other people when she didn’t love or like herself.  I can agree with that!  I was at my most prickly, awkward and downright difficult when I didn’t love, let alone like myself.  I constantly compared myself to others and came up short every time. In order to try and make myself feel better, I would criticise others. I covered it all over with a veneer of jollity but there was a harsh, unkind edge to it. There was not a lot I could do about it because I needed a God who loves me more than I will never understand to come and set me free from all that criticism and unkindness.

This is the greatest miracle of all; that God, who created the universe with his word, would come down to earth to love and die for me.  He took a hurt, bitter, rejected and under it all dissatisfied person, cross with herself and everyone else, and with love draw her to himself. He took all my sin, shame and guilt and nailed it to the cross and then loved me till all that angry bitterness was soaked away in his love.

I am not perfect but I am forgiven and when I do sin, God in love points it out, not to make me feel bad but to set me free. It truly is incredible – beyond belief but that is the amazing God who loves us. He made each of us to be unique, completely different to everyone else so comparisons are useless. There is no way we can compare ourselves other than we are all humans and some are saved and some are not. God’s command to us is to love them; the saved and the unsaved, the lovely and the unlovely, the disagreeable and agreeable, the friend or enemy.

I used never to be able to say anything nice about anyone including myself but other Christians by being kind to me showed me the way of kindness; others being gracious to me to showed me grace. I marvel now at the longsuffering patience of people and when I get irritated with other people’s lack of grace or kindness, I remember how I used to be.

Underneath every angry, prickly, difficult person is a hurt, rejected human being who needs the love of God shown to them by those who have already received his love, mercy and grace.  I am so thankful to those people who put up with me long enough to show me the Father’s love and tell me about his forgiveness freely given to everyone who asks. That was the start of the Great Adventure.  It is a process that will continue to the day I die but as I receive more and more of the Father’s love, I am able to love myself and therefore to love other people.

 

Living in the joy of God's truth

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. Ephesians 1: 3 – 6

There are times when words are just not enough to explain the wonder of the things that God has done for us.  These amazing verses which Paul wrote to the Ephesians just cannot really do justice to the enormity of God’s incredible love for us. We need the wonderful revelation from God’s Holy Spirit to bring these words of God’s love to life.

Too often we get through life believing all sorts of things about God and ourselves that are just not true and these lies consistently rob us of the joy that God wants us to live in. Too often when things go wrong or God does not seem as close as he did on another occasion, our first thought can be that we have done something wrong and God is cross with us or something else that is just not true.  We then spend far too much time apologising, repenting and feeling sorry for ourselves but instead II Corinthians 10: 5 tells us to ‘take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ’. We must capture these lies and force them into obedience to Christ. God wants us to live in the joy of the truth and not in the doubt and insecurity of lies and ungodly beliefs.

The truth is that God loves us so much that before the creation of the world he chose us. Yes he chose you – stop and consider that truth for a minute. Why did he choose us? Well it certainly wasn’t because of the wonderful people we were or anything we had or could do but because he loves us. He knows all about us and yet he loves us. Even if we get things wrong he still isn’t cross with us as we may be with our children. He doesn’t deal with us that way. Instead he takes us gently by the hand and asks us to look in the mirror and see the sin. All we have to do is repent and ask God’s forgiveness and the wonderful relationship between us and God that he chose us for is restored. Do not believe the lies; he disciplines those he loves (Proverbs 3: 12) in order to renew and strengthen our close personal relationship with him.

My prayer is that God will increasingly reveal to each one of us just how much God loves us and that these words of life will become so real to us that the truth will shine like a beacon of hope completely eclipsing the lies of the enemy that he has sown in our hearts. May the truth cause the lies to wither and die and be a source of increasing encouragement and joy on the path of life.

God delights in us

The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing. Zephaniah 3: 17

This has to be one of my favourite verses in the Bible. If ever we want an insight into the Father heart of God's love for us, this verse has to one of the best.

God is with us. At this moment God is with you wherever you are and it is not a passive God is just in the room but God is there, active on our behalf, involved and interested even in the minutiae of our lives. He is mighty to save. There is no situation or circumstance that God cannot save you from even if it is something that has arisen from a mistake or foolishness on your part. God is ready to intervene and save you right now.

God takes delight in us. This is a truth that so many Christians struggle with. How can God love me with my life in such a mess? Or how can the Creator of the universe love little old insignificant me? However, he delights in you – this does not mean just that you please him but that he takes great pleasure in you. He smiles when he looks at you. He laughs with you just as a proud parent laughs and takes great pleasure in their child so God takes great delight in you.

He quiets us with his love. Just as an agitated and upset child needs soothing, so God soothes and quiets us with his unconditional (absolutely no conditions) love. He is singing over us right now, rejoicing in us. We are so pleasing to God.

Last year my husband and I were in New York having lunch in the very crowded Grand Central Station Food Court. There were only two spaces to sit at a table with two men who were already having a deep discussion. As we ate our meal I listened to the conversation and it was obviously a pastoral meeting and one of the two men’s lives seemed to be in a bit of a mess. As I continued to listen I asked if I could say something which the pastor graciously agreed to. I just started to share with this big black American how much God loved him and had such a wonderful plan for his life so much better than the things he was planning or doing (all of which seemed to be not much help). As we shared the love of God and his desire to draw this man back into his arms, tears fell down his face.  He was deeply touched.  We left promising to pray for him and reminding him that if he doubted God’s love, he must remember that God sent two British people to sit next to him in Grand Central Station to tell him how much he loved him.

God delights in us. We please him greatly. There are no circumstances that exclude you from his love and pleasure. None.  If circumstances have overtaken you recently and you feel like God is far off or even if you are struggling to grasp how much you please God; just declare over yourself right now ‘God delights in me. He is rejoicing over me with singing. I am pleasing to God.’

The joy of the Lord

For the joy of the Lord is your strength Nehemiah 8:10

Joy is a fruit of the Spirit which should, like all fruit, grow.  Joy of the Lord which I think means joy being one of God’s children and doing his will should also grow as we get to know him better.

However unfortunately, so many Christians are anything but joyful. Too many seem dour as if serving God is more akin to slavery than sonship. You remember the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son who said to the Father,  ‘All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders’ Luke 15: 29. He had no joy in anything and especially in the return of the younger brother.  He was bitter and resentful. 

Many are talking about the Father heart of God at this time because this is a great truth that needs to be restored to the church. None of us has any idea of how much our Father really loves us but as we start to get a revelation of his amazing, unconditional love, something starts to melt inside us. That desire to perform, to strive, to please God by our own efforts gives way to relaxing in the arms of a loving Father who wants to bathe us in his love and acceptance. Doing gives way to being – being a son or daughter of the living God.
When Paul and Silas were in prison in Philippi having been wrongly accused and beaten, they didn’t lie there feeling sorry for themselves. They were praying and singing hymns and everyone in the prison was listening to them. There was an earthquake and all the prison doors came open but instead of escaping, Paul led the jailer and his family to the Lord. The joy of the Lord, praising God in adverse circumstances led to salvation.

No matter what our circumstances, God is always worthy of praise. Praise and thanksgiving take us into God’s courts and presence and joy in the midst of our circumstances washes over us. The world is desperate to know some joy and to know the love of God shown through the lives of believers who despite their circumstances have the joy of the Lord. This is not a phoney superficial joy that is masking the reality of our lives but a joy that comes from knowing a Father God who loves us and is strengthening us in our circumstances.

Non believers need a testimony that is real and is not about what good Christians we are, or what a good church we go to but what an amazing loving God we have, who knows and loves them as well. It is the love of God that draws and wins people and it is the joy of the Lord in our hearts that strengthens and encourages us.  It is a powerful witness to those searching for something that the world cannot give. When you start to show and tell people that God loves them born from your own experience, something inside of them starts to melt as well.  They see a joy and a love that is compelling.

If you are feeling miserable, unworthy, unloved then start praising God and thanking him for who he is. His love and acceptance is healing and his joy will come and strengthen you in the midst of your circumstances.

No comparisons

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Psalm 139: 14

We all know we are unique; that there is and never has been anyone just like us. Everything about everybody is different even with identical twins. Even their fingerprints and DNA vary. There may be similarities between people but no two people are identical in any way. In itself that is truly amazing that of the approximately 7 billion people on the planet no two people are alike. We are unique yet unfortunately people rarely celebrate the differences between people but spend far more time comparing themselves to others. 

This leads us to wanting to be other than how God made us. We are fearfully and wonderfully made so wishing we looked like others or had other’s attributes is a bit of a rejection of God’s design. God made us and God loves us even though we are works in progress and far from perfect.

Comparisons are odious because they either puff up our pride if we feel the comparison is favourable to us or feed our rejection and unhappiness if others are perceived as better than us in some way. We are who we are. God loves and accepts us as we are so we must do the same.

If only we celebrated our differences we might come to an understanding that together using our different talents and abilities we can achieve so much more than we can alone. The body of Christ as Paul talks about it in I Corinthians 12 is all about recognising and using our differences.

When you are tempted to compare yourself to another whether favourably or not, stop, recognise and thank God for the differences between you. Infinite variety is God’s way and it should become our way too.

Be free to be yourself and accept yourself with all your good and not so good points. God does, so why not join him instead of making comparisons that he never wanted us to make.

Zacchaeus

Luke 19: 1 – 10

We are all familiar with the story of Zacchaeus which we probably learned in Sunday School. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector and as such would have been hated by the people firstly because he worked for the Romans, the occupiers of their land and then he took more money from the people than was necessary by cheating and extortion. Tax collectors and sinners were always mentioned in the same breath. When Zacchaeus heard Jesus was in town, he wanted to see this man that everyone was talking about but being short, he couldn’t see over the heads of the crowd so he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree for a good view.

Now if Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector he was not a young man and it must have been a bit undignified to have climbed up and joined the local youths up a tree! I suspect though something in his spirit was drawing him to a divine appointment for when Jesus passed, he stopped, looked up and called Zacchaeus by name. Jesus invited himself to his house. I think this may have been the nicest thing anyone had done for Zacchaeus in a long time. Tax collectors were very unpopular and cheating ones even more so. Now here the celebrity preacher, teacher and healer wanted to come to his house and Zacchaeus did not pass up on the opportunity.  He received and welcomed him joyfully the Amplified Bible says. Kindness opens the hardest of hearts –condemnation keeps them firmly closed.

Of course the crowd were not as happy and could not understand why Jesus would want to go to his house. There were plenty of worthy local dignitaries who would have been delighted to host Jesus and show off to their friends their exalted visitor. Jesus though had salvation on his mind not hospitality. Salvation came to Zacchaeus’ house and to his household and he made generous restitution for all his past sins and extortion. What a wonderful outcome from one act of kindness to a ‘sinner’.

The crowd’s reaction though is one that dwells in all our hearts. Who is worthy to be honoured? It is the elder brother syndrome from the parable of the prodigal son. Every one of us has a tendency towards deciding whether a person is worthy or not of honour.  However, when we can learn to genuinely rejoice over the honouring and prominence given to others, especially those considered unworthy because of faults or sin, something of self righteousness will have been broken in our lives.

A pastor I know tells the story of a prostitute who got saved in his church and everyone was delighted until she started dating one of the elder’s sons. All the joy then turned to condemnation. Let us examine our hearts and root out those self righteous tendencies to judge others and decide whether we think they are worthy of honour or not and let us rejoice with the Father over every sinner saved and every unworthy person exalted by him – including ourselves!

I am a child of God

These words too often conjure up trite or twee images of Jesus with a crowd of multi-ethnic children clustered  around his long robes or of a little lamb on Jesus' shoulders.

The truth though of these words is profound once grasped and completely life changing.

Too many of us grew up in the faith as spiritual orphans with no spiritual fathers and mothers to love, guide and watch over us.  Spiritual mums and dads help us find our identity in our spiritual family. We have many spiritual brothers and sisters and together we have made it up as we went along, helping each other but lacking anyone of spiritual maturity to help us discover our identity as children of God.  This can cause us to have great difficulty connecting with our heavenly Father.  So many Christians are spiritual orphans struggling to know how much the Father loves and approves of them. Too many are still trying to clean themselves up or get their act together so that Father will love them.  The truth is he already loves us unconditionally and approves of us completely.  The prodigal son was accepted back into the family by his adoring father, stinking of the pig pen and with nothing other to offer than a heartfelt apology and yet the father, barely listened to the apology but drew him into his arms and put on a feast.

This story alone illustrates God's heart towards us. But should we need further convincing, Jesus' continual acceptance of the down and outs of society and gracious patience with the shortcomings of the disciples is evidence enough that how God feels about us is nothing like anyone else's love or affection. 

Once we get hold of the corner of this truth and start pulling on it, our lives are changed forever.  Not only is God our loving, adoring, accepting Father but that means we are his children.  The closest analogy I can come up with is that this means we are part of the Royal Family with access to the king at all times, all the privileges of this position and all the resources of the Kingdom available to us at all times. 

There is no need to feel worthless, useless, insecure, undervalued, condemned and inadequate.  Indeed to do so is to fly in the face of all that Jesus has done on the cross to give us this privileged position.  We are indeed children of God and as this revelation grows in our hearts so will our love for the lost, the poor, the needy and  the undervalued of society.  Sharing God's love with others is the greatest privilege.

Knowing we are a child of God changes everything both for us and for all those we come into contact with.