Saints Or Ain'ts?

"Counting other people's sins does not make you a saint"

Welcome back to the blog and to a new article. This one might come as a little bit of a shocker but I'll try to be as cool and soft as I can but there is no guarantee it's going to work...

Church is supposed to be the place where you can find comfort, people to trust and to help you get back on your feet when you happen to fall. But more often than not, what we tend to see is that those who are supposed to be a support become the ones condemning the people who came to them for help in the first place. I have found that we (I say we because I am a christian too) look down on people who have been guilty of not so pretty things forgetting that we have once been there and/or that we might end up being in that other person's shoes/ position some day. For being in positions, and places that are left to desire, I have been more than careful about judging people who came to me with issues/ things they were struggling with. And it came from the understanding that as human nobody is exempt from sinning. Moreover, I understood that people should not be judged because they sin in ways that we think we wouldn't; And honestly, what so we know about our positions? how do we know that those people who come to us with questions and have the ability to confess / understand their position are not better off than us, pretending to be saints when in reality we are just ain'ts?

Some people just genuinely struggle with things that they haven't found the strength to let go of and some other people just chose blatantly to go wrong. I have been in both groups. And one thing that I can tell you is that judgment never made it better. Judgement never made me question my position or some of the things that I did. If anything, it made me keep going. Why? Well: a) because I hadn't have a real encounter with Jesus and b) because the way people talked to me felt more like condemnation rather than trying to point to me what I did wrong from a place of love because conviction without love is condamnation.

Being a christian doesn't make anybody immune to sin. Being a christian and following God by developing a true, profound, sincere and intentional relationship with Him, leads someone to seeking God more and little by little turning away from sin. And the more time you spend in God's presence the more you start to develop an aversion to sin if and only if! you have truly surrendered your life to God and desire Him more than you desire the habits, decisions, actions that bind you to a sinful life. And this sanctification process doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and it is an ongoing, daily process in which sometimes there can be mishaps. It happens for everybody. And we shouldn't stay stuck on it but rather cry out to God, confess our sins and pray that He transforms us to bring us closer to his image. People tend to forget what/ who they were in the past, they tend to forget the path they have walked to be at a place today where the things that used to keep them in bondage do not affect them anymore or do not affect them as much. Jesus in John 8:1-11 when confronted with the issue of the adulterous woman stood before her accusers and said :"All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" and all of the sudden they were nowhere to be found. Jesus message was really clear: Don't judge/ condemn people because they are sinning differently than you. We are all as guilty for the things we do whether we realize it or not and perhaps the reason why we can still look at other people down is because no one has found out yet the nasty things we do. And even if people did, their job shouldn't be to condemn us but to call us upon it with love and compassion and if anything else fails, keep us in their prayers. The truth is we are no different from those people we condemn at all: we are just being "bad" in our very own, best and sneaky ways.

May God help us be kinder to those who are not at our level of faith to help them get closer to Jesus.

Much love

❤