Today we hit a great question.   How do you sincerely love and pray for people who are well…   Just really hard to like, love, respect etc.  Those who we see so little good in we might even think there is nothing redeeming about them…  Even those we might think are “evil personified” ????

The key is to separate, discern that when we are looking at a person, we are really seeing more than just the person.       If you go to Genesis, you will see that God created Adam and Eve and looked at His Creation and said it was very good.     Adam and Eve were actually very good at the beginning.   Pure, holy and blameless..

Picture a ball of white playdough.   This representing us at our core.  Every thing God created us to be before sin and the world have touched us.

Picture a ball of black playdough (of varying sizes) representing sin.

Conception:  Enter in the black playdough.  Now start mushing it all together.   Even the womb is not a spiritually neutral place.   That child goes through and experiences everything that their mama does.     Scripture tells us that the generational sin of our parents (going back 4 generations officially but far longer when you consider the cumulative effect) enters at conception into a child.   What you do in your lifetime will have impact on 4 generations to come.   That certainly motivates me to cut off as much sin from my life in Christ as I possibly can.      Remember, the amount of white playdough never changes, but with every sin, more black playdough is added.

Life continues to happen:   And with every year, more sin, more black playdough.  Just imagine what this ball of playdough is looking like by the age of 10, by the age of 30 by the age of 80 if we are only adding black and unable to be separate the two.    Thank God the answer is still Jesus Christ.  The Lord never loses track of what is black playdough and what is white.   He also is the only one in all of creation that can separate the two.     God can truly love us, as He can truly see what we are.  All we see is varying shades of grey.    He sees you are pure white playdough waiting to be set free and restored to His original plan.

It is almost like every single one of us was born in a trash heap of generational sin.  Some were relatively lucky and had a relatively good start.  Others were born in the very heart of the heap and with impossible amounts of trash and sin to break free from.    We are all in the same boat truly, but some also do start from a much more difficult and challenging point.   Our compassion and mercy and love can flow freely when we begin to see this reality.

Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned.”

Exodus 34:7 King James Version (KJV)7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

So basically, we are made up of two parts.  (Thank God, three once we are saved and filled with the Holy Spirit).  The original white playdough (God’s perfect and good creation) and black playdough (the after market addition of sin that is passed to a child from parents at conception through this generational curse).     If you want to know why you are double minded, this would be an excellent explanation.  As the real you longs to be free to be good, pure and holy and the sin that wants to totally rule and dominate.   The tendency in the world is for most to get blacker and blacker and ratio to increasingly favour the sin nature.

None of us are really truly free, we are either a slave to sin or a servant to God and righteousness.  So we are caught in a tug of war until one side wins.     While many remain in this tug of war position, some have their conscience seared and give themselves entirely over to lasvishness, others are radically renewed and redeemed in Christ and are freed utterly from the sin nature and do awesome things for the Kingdom..   But most remain some place in the middle.   Thank God the answer is Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:3-6 English Standard Version (ESV) 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,[a] he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

Galatians 5:14-17 English Standard Version (ESV) 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.  16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

 

Romans 6:19 English Standard Version (ESV) 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

Scripture says we are not fighting against flesh and blood.    If you look at scripture, at the core of every person is this white playdough engaged/consumed by this life and death struggle with sin and death.      Some are in deep captivity and are more like puppets to evil and sin.   Can a puppet be evil at it’s core?   Or only the puppet master pulling the puppet’s strings?   When in deep captivity, there is very little they are capable of doing as they are very much like prisoners of war, trapped behind enemy lines in their own thinking and bodies.   For these, we pray for salvation, freedom from sin and for blindness and deafness to be healed, and for hardness of heart to be healed and fall away.     We can look on in compassion knowing that they are not the author of their actions but are literally compelled by the sin in them and so weakened or so seared in their conscience that they cannot/will not resist and fight for righteousness.   We are not shocked by their shortfall or stunned when they can’t see due to their blindness.   We can direct all of our hate, our warring, our negative emotions at the sin and darkness and yet cry out fervently for the prisoner of war to be released.

Ephesians 6:12 King James Version (KJV)  12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

1 Timothy 2:24-26 “A servant of the Lord must not quarrel but must be kind to everyone, be able to teach, and be patient with difficult people. Gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people’s hearts, and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil’s trap. For they have been held captive by him to do whatever he wants.”

John 8:34” 34Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

Our hope is that Christ the morning start will burst into their lives and they will be released to be the new creation, the original person that God created them to be.  We cry out for God to transform us so utterly and for his love and kindness and protection and provision to abound so heartily in us that we become a blessing and a city on a hill, a beacon of light for that original creation to see and be encouraged by.   We cry out for mercy as we know that God will pour out vengeance for any and every act any man makes against His beloved.   There is a horrible wrath coming against those who hurt God’s beloved.   If we can separate and recognize that all the parts we hate, are not even part of the person in captivity, then our heart and mind respond differently to what they do.    We are truly free to love and pray for God’s creation and to have a godly hate for the sin and demonic enemies that our loved ones are fighting with and held captive by.

2 Peter 1:19 English Standard Version (ESV)  19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,”

Romans 2:3-5 English Standard Version (ESV)  3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

1 Corinthians 5:17 So from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Although we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:”