COMPASSION

By Odon Bulamba (21st Sept 2011)

“Because of the LORD’s great love
we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.”
Lamentations 3:22-23

Compassion of the Lord is new every morning and He never misses a morning. Every day of creation, God created something new and each day the sun rose and gave a new day. Because we are created in the image of God, we are also pushed to work every day as a new day. How do you start your day?

“In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait expectantly.” Psalm 5:3

Each morning he introduced his day to God but we wake up most mornings and don’t care about the compassion God has on us. We plan our day but there is no guarantee that we will even live to see it. Every day comes with new challenges and a fight so the best thing to do when we wake up is to tell God, ‘thank you for this day, please protect me from temptation” and start your day with joy which is a challenge.

Every morning we have a schedule of what we do…shower, breakfast etc. During your morning schedule do you have breakfast God? He’s present for us and invited us for a new day and do we also invite him into our schedule? Do we encourage others to pray to God every new day and ask God to support us because each day has challenges.

When you panic you can easily sin, judge others, and criticize them because we have started the day without the fruit of the Holy Spirit (no patience, joy, love etc) and we start to act as a part time Christian. A part time Christian is a Christian who acts like a Christian when things are good but when things are hard, they lose their joy and act like a non-Christian.

Ex 32:22, “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil.”

Aaron blamed others for the building of the golden calf and do we do the same when our mornings go bad? Why don’t we find a way to find a solution rather than blaming others? Whenever a sin is there, instead of asking for forgiveness, we start to justify and blame others.

After creating, God said, “it is good”. Do you have a plan for your day where God will say, “it is good”? Do you have a schedule for you diary to accomplish something good for God? If you find challenges, pray and God will support you but if you panic and fear, you might hurt someone.

Our faith is built by going through tests. When you go through a test, what do you do? Do you complain, blame others, criticize other? What can destroy your day? Your anger, lack of self-control?

Galations 5:22&23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law”.

Start your day with the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Start your day with love and joy and patience and kindness so that when the person driving in front of you is driving too slow, you will have enough love to think, ‘maybe the person is sick,’ rather than judging them. Our judgements are not God’s judgements. We might think some animals (such as hyenas) are ugly but God said everything was good. Even if you have a great knowledge, don’t minimize others who you think are not at your level.

Ask God for help every second and start your day with God. Fight and pray and follow in God’s footsteps during your challenges – if you give your problems to God, He’ll take care of them. We have to imitate Jesus Christ.

Each night before sleeping evaluate your day, was it 8/10 today. Try to evaluate yourself out of ten and whenever you have a low score, ask God to help you tomorrow to win the battle. If you start your morning very well with the Lord, nothing will shake your day, you’ll start to praise the Lord for every situation.

Accept to be blamed, accept your soul to blame you, accept others to tell you that you were wrong somewhere and don’t fight with negative words or feelings. Even when you feel like you can kill someone, don’t let that anger cause you to sin, ask God to help you. Sin is not a disaster, just ask God and people for forgiveness and move ahead.

Every morning say, “help me to have a lovely day in you and remove pride so I can have a good day in you”. In every situation and second we must praise God and this will ensure that we please God during our day. Give five minutes every morning to tell God how grateful you are for Him showing you His compassion every morning.