Make Allowance for Growth
Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.
Colossians 3:12-17 NLT
16 Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. 17 And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.
What makes us different? As believers, what causes us to stand out as distinct from the rest of the world? There are lots of good people in the world, non Christians, who show mercy, are kind and gentle and patient. In Matthew 5, Jesus says that even the tax collectors love their friends. Ultimately what should cause us to stand out is: who gets the glory? The ESV read verse 17 this way: And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Everything we do should be for God’s glory and in order to magnify His name. If I do something and take credit for it, I’m stealing the glory from God. How does that set me apart from the world? It doesn’t!
Lord, help me today, help the church today give you all the glory that you deserve. May I not steal any of that for myself. Help me give it all to you. Praise you, Jesus!
Thank you Greg. We must not take credit or even seek praise for whatever He has given us grace to accomplish. That’s stealing His glory.
We are told to Let (allow) the message about Christ fill our hearts in such a way that we live it as well as “teach and counsel” one another with the wisdom received from it. The word “let” shows we have the power to allow or disallow, receive or reject, cooperate or simply just not cooperate.
It appears that by a fair degree Christ gives us responsibility for one another to some extent meaning that we should be accountable to some degree to each other. I remember many years ago how among a group of twenty something year old Christian young adults we took responsibility for one another and were accountable to each other. We were free to ask each other questions like “how are you doing spiritually?” “How is your prayer life?” “Are you meditating in scripture?” In the same manner it was not difficult to open up about struggles to this group of co travellers. To this day we are still friends and some have kept in touch. Yesterday I had a prayer time with one over the phone across thousands of miles. I haven’t seen this gentleman in almost 20 years. Our prayer time was powerful and refreshing.
This stands out to me, “YOU MUST clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience”, the writer does not ask us to “pray” for these attributes, God has given us this coat to “clothe” our sinful flesh, I have the coat, my job is to put it on at ALL times????????
We have a responsibility to “put it on”
What stood out to me was “make allowance” for each other’s faults. Like we should already have the amount in reserve for when we need it. I like to try and have the mentality that the person is forgiven even if they haven’t wronged me yet. That way I’m not surprised when they do. I’m just like thank you for your apology but I already made allowance for this. We need to stay un offend able because offense is the enemies greatest tool to paralyze us and God’s power in our lives. There are so many opportunities daily we can fall into offense. I remember this one time I was hired to perform at a men’s banquet. So I prepared for that, when I got there it was not a men’s banquet. Opportunity 1 to be offended. Then the sound set up was from the 1950’s, opportunity 2, also the amount of time I had prepared for changed they cut the time down. Opportunity 3. And so on. But I walked in before hand having an allowance for the people’s faults and anything that may go wrong and an attitude to stay un offend able and I saw God move in one of the greatest ways He has moved. So I like to think of it like the verse today, God has already forgiven us for anything we may do. He made a special allowance already with Jesus. So we need to act like that and instead of waiting for the offense to take place. Let’s try and walk in an attitude of un offend ability prior to the fault taking place. Knowing just like God we have already set aside an allowance for this.
Kevin while reading your comment I latched on to the word “RESERVE.” To have a reserve we must be chock full of the substance in the first place. I think a loving spirit. Your story about the sound set up from the 50’s is hilarious :0)
We have to be thankful of Jesus and continue to grow with other christens