Fear No Fear

“He who despises his neighbor sins, but he who has mercy on the poor, happy is he” (Proverbs 14:21, MEV). God really knows how to set us up for success, doesn’t He? He knew the selfish and self-centred inclination of the flesh. Our broken thinking and our broken ways. He knew we would have a tendency to claim we are better than other people. Because He IS LOVE, He attached blessing and success to compassion. Personal satisfaction, that simple feeling of happiness, was rooted in our ability to treat others well. Isn’t that great? Even animals can be trained into types of behaviour with rewards. God knew that even the ungodly and evil people of the world would naturally gravitate toward compassion because of the reward attached to it. You might think that isn’t true, but look at the Mafia. These are hardened individuals. They can do terrible things to people. But they treat their families like GOLD. As imperfectly as broken people walk in it, we tend toward compassion one to another because it makes us happy. Yes, our motivations outside God are selfish (we want to feel happy), but there is still within us that which calls to God’s nature. EVERYONE has SOMETHING inside them that calls to God’s way of doing things. It makes it SO MUCH EASIER to encounter Him and get TRUE compassion and TRUE love and TRUE selflessness. It makes it so much easier to realise that there is something more than what we see going on. It’s a GREAT plan to get our values pointed in the way that will meet Him. He doesn’t want ANYONE to perish (2 Peter 3:9), and there is SO MUCH built into who we are as human beings that points toward Himself. What wonderful planning. What a merciful God!