You can never claim to be a good or bad person in isolation. It takes a relationship or community to reveal it to you. That’s why God even uses communities to reveal ourselves to us, and to mould us into better versions. That’s why you should never be the isolated believer.
In your knowing God experientially, there will be times and seasons when God will call you out and have individualistic dealings with you, but in shaping and moulding of character strength, God always outsources that module to the body of Christ (family of faith).
How do you confirm that you truly have the love of God in your heart if you’ve never had to live with or deal with people who are seemingly unlovable?
How are you so confident that you have humility if you’ve never been in places where regardless of your past achievements and personal profile, you’re required to literally serve even those who a far below you?
How can you say you have mastery over your temperament if you’ve never been wronged so badly, and you can still maintain your calm and peace with the offender?
When I hear people tell me about how they left a church or an organization because of what someone did to them, sometimes I like to ask them, “Are you sure that’s not part of the training God intended for you to have there?”
For some of us who have spent a few years in marriage, we understand some of these things better. Because you married a human and not an angel. And a human must be given the chance to be human. The problem most times is that we pardon ourselves for being humans, but expect every other person to be an angel.
This understanding is one of the things that I took into marriage, and it has helped me a great deal. Your best quality virtues as a human aren’t useful when everyone around you is perfect. They’re only useful when you find yourself in the midst of imperfect people. That’s why our call is to be lights in the midst of darkness. God calls light to shine from darkness.
Now, when was the last time you meditated on God’s word and took some personal notes while doing that? Check out VerseTap. It’s gonna be a very useful tool for journaling your scriptural thoughts and musings.
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