Family

Do you find it hard to witness to your own family members? Well meaning people will always tell you things like, "well, sometimes it is not you that was meant to witness to them." I have to say that might just be a lie from the devil. I can't believe that God would be telling you not to witness. OK, here is what I mean by witnessing. Not preaching, not condemming them, not telling them what they are doing wrong, not talking about how bad they are to everyone else in the family or among your friends.

But loving them where they are and praying for them daily, and confessing them as being saved in your prayer time. You know, calling those things that are not as though they already are??? Why do we find ourselves so on fire for God and wanting to share Him with the outside world, but we let our own family members fall through the cracks?

There are ways of witnessing without ever opening our mouths. In fact that is the best way to witness, by the way we live and by the way we show love toward others. What does the Word say, something like it is easy to love the lovable it is the unrighteous that needs your love. Well something like that. In other words what have we profited, if we save the whole world but let our family members down? Didn't Jesus say, what shepherd would not leave the 99 to find the one sheep and save him from danger?

Oh I know, I have heard it before many times, where people say, I am not wasting any more time on that one. Well, PRAISE GOD, JESUS didn't say that about us. I am so very thankful for the faithful people who continued to pray for me even when I was soooooo unlikeable. There were family members who could have easily written me off and no one could have blamed them the way I acted, but they didn't. Although they might not have spent much one on one time physically with me, I know they spent alot of one on one time praying for me and my salvation. God is faithful, He is no respector of man, He will hear the prayers for the worst of them just as easily as He will for the best of them.

How do you witness to your family members? Do you have someone in your family who needs the Lord in their life? What do you do about that? Now don't go beating yourself up about not spending enough time with them, but please if you are not already doing so, pray diligently for them. Pray with a sincere heart. God didn't say we had to like each other, but He did COMMAND us to LOVE each other. First we have to check our own hearts and make sure that we have no unforgiveness for that person in our hearts. Then we love that person the way Christ loves us. Unconditionally. Then when we pray for them, we can pray out of love and not obligation.

Matthew 5 v 43-46...."You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?....

Now I ask you, have you ever seen it pouring down rain and two people standing side by side and the rain only falls on one of them and not the other? It is the same with God. It is not possible for Him to love you any more than He loves me.

Matthew 18 v 12-14...."What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.....

Remember His grace is undeserved, unearned. We can not gain His grace by our merits of doing good. His forgiveness is for everyone not just you or me. Don't give up on your loved ones, don't listen to the lies of the devil telling you that you are wasting your time, that your job is done. Jesus will be the one to say "it is finished". He has the last word. So lets get in our prayer closets and spend some time praying for our loved ones and maybe even for ourselves to cleanse our own hearts of any unforgiveness that we may be harboring.

Where do we find the strength to keep on keeping on, to keep loving the unloved, to diligently pray for the lost?

STAY IN THE WORD!