Jesus told his disciples, Matthew 10:14 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.
He expected for them to be rejected and He was telling them how they should react to the rejection. If I had only been totally aware of it (although I had heard my dad preach it while sitting on the front row so that he and mother could see me if I talked which would make me deserving of a spanking when we got home) when I was young and faced all kinds of rejection because of the Armenian blood which flowed in my veins which was (horrified looks here) mistaken for being one of the very people who killed our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!!!! (Can you hear me laughing here?) This was when daddy was pastoring a church in the mountains of Tennessee and having black hair and olive skin was not the look that was popular in that time before ethnicity was something of which to be proud.
So why should we get offended when people don’t want to hear our tenets on whether Jesus is soon returning, or not, whether we all have sloppy grace, or not, whether we should have a cross front and center of the church and preach about the blood of Jesus or act like there are no worries because Jesus died for the whole world and that is inclusive so we can sin, create havoc, and still be front and center in heaven along side of our more conscientious brothers without asking for forgiveness, when he was rejected because He claimed to be the Son of God?
Isaiah 53:3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
No one is friendly or accepting now, everyone has their noses in their computer or their IPhone. I generally look at people everywhere I go, I try to make eye contact and smile. It seems to put some people off although there have been a few, like this morning at the UPS store that actually said “Good morning” and when I said God bless have a nice day said, “Thank you”.
Daddy used to tell my mother, who was shy and hated going to a new church, “A man that hath friends must show himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24
ttttthat’s all folks!
Harolene.com 