Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness Part 2

We have taken some different/unusual actions in our group lately. We hope that they are helpful and encouraging to those that meet with us. We have a desire to have our group known as a "come as you are group, because there are no perfect people here." There are three characteristics of Jesus that we feel will help us reach our goal; they are love, acceptance, and forgiveness. We leaders made a public commitment to the group to always love, accept and forgive any of them. We promised that they could never do anything so bad that we would stop caring for them or trying to help them. We realize what an impossible task that is without the help of the Spirit to remind us of God's love for us and what Jesus endured for us. If we don't depend on the Spirit, our promise will become worthless when put to the test. We also challenged our brothers and sisters to consider this promise and hopefully come to the same conclusion as we did.

This week asked everyone to consider those that they have grudges against and forgive them. It may have been a little theatical but we suggested we do before a month is up. We did this, because it is easy for some of us to put off forgiving and just say "I do it later, when the time is right," so hopefully the time limit will help these people.

If we can't love the people we know well and are close to, why would we put forth the effort to join God in helping those we don't know well?