Hi Everyone,
So today a small part of a verse really landed deep. 2 Cor 3:3 -"You are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God."
As I sat and pondered, I realized all Believers are a letter. The letter might be hundreds of pages or just a few, depending on the walk at the time. But more importantly I saw how easy it is to pick up the pen and attempt to either fill in the perceived gaps of another’s letter to try to make sense of it all; or try to erase what is there to mitigate pain or Gods work in their life, or add chapters of what it should look like, or worse just close the book entirely because we see no worth! Yet, if in this thinking I continue reading to vs. 6, it speaks how the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. I guess it just underscores that our words of addition, subtraction, or fill-in - KILL. Verse 3 feels to me like such gentle handling of God's writing on another person's heart- a deep trust that He will never stop writing- and an even deeper trust that His writing will be complete all on its own.
In the book of Job, his friends attempted such to no good end. But what God did transformed Job! Sometimes I fail to see the impact of careless words or literal thinking. Religion in many cases is not ‘incorrect’ per se... but it is penmanship that composes dangerous letters that discourage and destroy because the author is NOT GOD! And worse, I can erode God's ability to write on a heart because somehow I just ‘filled up the space’ in that person's life where they can no longer distinguish the writing. The result- intimacy with God is replaced by religious knowledge with zero change, AND worse- a counterfeit author perceived as true by the victim.
This is quite a daunting warning for me, and I hope I remember it mightily in the minute by minute choices of how I actually care for His letters.
Much love,
Cari