http://bible.com/events/48950458
Church of the Nazarene – Harrisonburg
Learning & Unlearning: Compassion
Compassion may be what the people around you need most.
Can they count on it from you?
Series Purpose:
We must gain a perspective on how living as a Christian may be different now that we are, for the most part, on the “other side” of the pandemic. We will grasp that there are things to “unlearn” – setting aside old ideas – and “learn” gaining new understanding for real outreach and discipleship post COVID.
Today’s focus:
It’s been said that we are living in a “desert of empathy” or “drought of compassion.” As believers, we may be the only source of love and compassion left in our day-to-day world.-Compassion is at an all-time low in our society. Researchers have begun to use the term ‘compassion fatigue’ to describe this widespread decline in the ability to feel and act from a place of compassion.-One researcher states it this way, “Essentially, compassion fatigue disturbs the ability to think clearly, modulate emotions, feel effective, and maintain hope.”Matthew 24:12Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,
Mark 6:30-34
The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
Jesus begins teaching – out of a heart of compassion. Compassion is his initial response. He leads with compassion.
If Jesus’s response is compassion, what is ours?
Matthew 22:34-40
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”-We can never escape the fact that, Jesus couldn’t give just one – Love God.
He had to give the second (remember, He was only asked for “the greatest.”).-Jesus is saying that ‘all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’. All the truth of God hangs on these together.
Bottom Line:
Compassion may be what the people around you need most.Can they count on it from you?Verses for further study/reflection:
Colossians 3:12-13
Matthew 14:14
1 Peter 3:8
“Compassion costs. It is easy enough to argue, criticize, and condemn, but redemption is costly, and comfort draws from the deep. Brains can argue, but it takes heart to comfort.
“Samuel Chadwick”
Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
Frederick Buechner
“Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.”
Henry Ward Beecher