Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. — Galatians 6:1
I like chocolate. It has become a joke among those who know me well. I contend that chocolate is a great weight loss food because if you’re hungry for chocolate and you eat something else, you’ll eat and eat and eat and never get full.
If I’m hungry for chocolate, I’ll sometimes dip pretty low. I’ll even eat generic kids snack chocolate that tastes more like plastic than the real thing. But give me a choice, and I’ll walk away from kids chocolate, milk chocolate, coffee-flavored chocolate, white chocolate — I’ll leave it far behind for what I truly like: dark, semisweet chocolate – like what you’d find in a Mounds bar or in a Hershey’s Special Dark.
You can’t simply get rid of sin. But you can trade it in for something better. The reason we can restore our brothers and sisters gently is this: We have the same vacuum inside — the same cravings that only Jesus can deeply satisfy.
If we want to restore people, let’s find out what need they are trying to meet with their sin. At the core, we have the same needs. Now let’s find a way for Jesus to meet that need.
Many Christians just want to get people converted and scratch their heads when that doesn’t settle everything. But Jesus wants to find His way deep into our hearts so that He fills all the vacuums left when we give our sins to Him.
Be encouraged!
Dwight
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