Stop trying to see Jesus in Christians.

The longer you measure Jesus "in" or "by" the response of those around you the more you'll feel let down by God. Christianity was always meant to be first and foremost the vertical pursuit of identity and sufficiency in Christ but we've turned it into a horizontal pursuit of friendship and favour won by the actions, reactions, and viewpoints of others leaving people feeling excluded, inferior, unloved and unwelcome by Christ.?

It was never meant to be horizontal. The horizontal was only ever meant to be out of the overflow of the vertical. Work on re-establishing the vertical in life to find what true grace, acceptance, love and forgiveness looks like, realising that Jesus embraces the messiness of our lives with an attitude that is vertically focussed on the Father and out of the overflow of that is horizontally expressed to us.

Which means no matter your gender, sexuality, race, colour, past, present or future. You are loved by him. Your identity is in him and there is nothing you can do that will seperate you from his love if your focus remains vertical.

As Christians our job should be to re-establish the vertical and focus on cultivating it, finding sufficiency in it and learning to overflow it to the world around us being willing to accept and embrace the messiness of all people's lives realising that the beauty of humanity lies in the stories of individuals, that all stories can be used to shape a future for people if we're only willing to spend a fleeting moment in their world and listen, hear and love them. If we fail to do this then we end up creating false hierarchies in the church that seek to push others down while elevating ourselves, it gives way to things like spiritual abuse and judgement, a faith based on fashion and friendship, religiosity and conservatism, a rules based social club where no-one can win and favour is found in conformity and exclusionary mob mentality ultimately a breeding ground for EGO and EGO will always (E)dge (G)od (O)ut.

#christianleadership #christianliving

Mike Gore?is the Co-Founder of?Charitabl.?Australia's first app based giving platform for charities and not-for-profits. Mike is also Co-Founder of?FaceMail?an innovative mail order gift delivery service. Mike has formerly been the CEO of Open Doors and has more than 20 years leadership experience. To book Mike to speak at your event email?[email protected].