Check your eyesight

How is your eyesight?

Last week I went for en eye test to make sure that my glasses

were still fit for purpose. In my right eye I have great vision but with my
left eye I could hardly make out the chart on the wall never mind read the
letters on the third row down. But that same eye is great for reading and over
the years my eyes have adjusted to favouring the eye that sees the best in the
given situation.

My problem comes when I inadvertently favour the wrong eye. So

trying to use my left eye to see over a distance leaves me confused and
misreading situations.

I don't know about you, but so often I have done the same with my

perspective on circumstances that I have been in or with people. I have looked
at them with blurred vision. I am reading them through my own bias or have
listened to the negative that other people have said and not seen the best in
the circumstances or the person.

How often have we looked with the wrong eye and drawn our own

conclusions from what the other person has said?

We look and hear what confirms what our perspective already is,

not necessarily what the truth is.

I watched Pastor Brian & Bobbie Houston give a fantastic

positive interview for Australian television this morning (you can watch it
here- http://au.tv.yahoo.com/the-daily-edition/video/watch/21563204/the-rise-of-hillsong/
) One of the things that Pastor Brian said when asked about difficult times was
that it was really hard when they were misrepresented by people.

I guess what I find difficult is when when people look at our

church and misrepresent her. They have believed what they want to believe.

We are not perfect but we are family. Family can drive you up the

wall but we make a commitment to invest in each other and see the best. Why?
Because Christ did the same for us. He saw past our brokenness and rebellion
and saw family. He showed us grace and that then enables us to see each other
through eyes of grace.

Church is not an organisation, she is the bride of Christ, she is

our community, our home, our family. Speak well of her, bring the best out in
her. The Message says this in Eph 5:26 "Christ's love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her..."

My question to all of us who call NCLC home is will we keep our

eyesight clear and see the best, see and speak with grace, the same grace that
Christ continually extends to us? 

I am committed to creating an environment where your life can

flourish. A place where the crowd becomes a community, where the house becomes
a home and where friends become family.