Compassion 8

On to the question of how to be compassionate.

One thing we are debating is how you become compassionate. We know that it all comes from God. So do you I ask God to make me a compassionate person and then wait? Would actually going ahead and doing compassionate acts when you know that you are not yet the most compassionate person be the wrong approach? I would partially agree with both. I would agree that we need to ask and look to God as our source. As it says in 2 Peter 1, we have all the divine resources available to us for Godly living. But I have come to believe that waiting for grace to "rain down" on us without doing anything may be misguided.

I love the quote: It is the genius of God that he would call for an action from believers that simultaneously draws them into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with him and reaches the lost world that he loves. ...

This rings true from my experience making my living helping people change, as well as from my own experience in spiritual formation. The bible is not tremendous help here since it tends to be short on process, for good reason; however, I see nothing in the bible that would preclude God using our doing as a means of teaching and changing us. Back to that balance again. We need to have the right attitude, one that trusts in God the source. We need to get off our butts and practice being compassionate and do so with an attitude and expectation that God will use the experience as a means of teaching us and change us.

Let's practice compassion, even if we don't feel it, and while we do it, let's be attentive to how God is working in and around us. Maybe we will learn something. Meet me in my basement tomorrow morning at 9 AM and let's get started.