Let’s say two people are in your church.
One women knows her theology is a long time church member and plays Church piano. She is married has three beautiful children, a husband with a “butt chin”, a great job and she home-schools. She has secretly had an abortion as a teenager and only a very few know this. She trusts in God for forgiveness, and Grace but never says anything to anyone because she is ashamed and her church calls people like her murderers.
The other women comes into your church with a drug or alcohol problem and she has had an abortion maybe more. Her children don’t know their dad and maybe have had a couple of “dads”. They also don’t have Bible verses memorized. She is looking for grace, hears about Jesus falls in love with him regains her dignity and worth in Him but finds that she cannot fit in with the church because her past and maybe present is something that many cannot accept.
The church is like a hospital per sa. For some an emergency room. We are to be Jesus with skin on. Old phrase but so relevant.
Very true, Digging.
“The highest does not stand without the lowest. A plant must have roots below as well as sunlight above and roots must be grubby. Much of the grubbiness is clean dirt if only you will leave it in the garden and not keep on sprinkling it over the library table.” C.S. Lewis
Amen
Because personal change is difficult.