He works with them and he blesses them. He overlooks the doctrinal problems that we all have. Come on, I am not going to stand here and say everything I believe is true. If I did not like people who did not believe like me, if I met myself five years ago, I would not like myself. Sure, I have changed, a lot. We have got to love people from our hearts. [b]Hebrews 4:12 - "See, the Word of G-d is alive! It is at work and is sharper than any double-edged sword - it cuts right through to where soul meets spirit and joints meet marrow, and it is quick to judge the inner reflections and attitudes of the heart.[/b] The word “thoughts” here, “enthumesis”, is better written “emotions or passions”, and the word “attitudes” is better written “intentions.” It is the Word of G-d that judges what is an emotion from what is an intention. Sometimes we do things emotionally, and sometimes we do things because we intend to do it. The Word of G-d judges (separates) that. I want to point out the word “judges” here. The Word “judge” is the Greek word “kritikos.” We get our English word critic from that word. What is intriguing about the word “kritikos” is that it is the only time in the New Testament that it is used. The critic, the only critic is the Word of G-d. We are not the critic. The Word of G-d is the critic and I am the lover. That is the deal! Beloved, we have to love people. We have to really care about people. We have to be able to enter into relationship with people. What I am saying here, the chewy caramel of this message is if we are going to truly be like Messiah, and I would assert, if we are going to have prospering congregations / home fellowships, then what has to live in them is love and friendship. That love and friendship has to live first in our hearts. Let me talk to you about what I mean about having love in my heart. Let us say that I am invited to a luncheon, and I sat down across the table from a member of another denomination. I am very polite, and he is very polite as we make small talk. We talk about various things; we talk about the Word of G-d and about each other’s families. That is nice. That could on the surface seem to be the start of a loving and friendly relationship. What is really important is not what I am saying to the person, but what I am saying to myself. If I am having this conversation with this person or somebody on the street and I am being polite and kind to them, but within my own mind, my self-talk, my conversation with myself says, “Well, I can’t wait until we get through this small talk to where I can really teach this guy some truth. Man, this guy must really be messing up his congregation because if he is teaching them the stuff he is telling me he is teaching them, then they are a mess. Boy, this guy is really off the wall. I can’t believe how he can read the Bible and not understand the simple truths.” If I am having a critical, unloving conversation about the person, that then, is the posture of my heart. It is not the small talk or friendly talk I am making on the outside that reveals the posture of the heart. It is the thoughts that are going on in the inside. I will assert that we will not truly be successful as lovers of people until that conversation changes. I do not for one-minute think that Messiah walked around Judea saying, “Well, that guy doesn’t know this. Well, this guy over here is really messed up because of this. Well, that guy, what a mess.” If Yeshua did that, then that is all that he would have done. Nobody held more truth than Messiah Yeshua. He was the consummate lover of people. His internal talk was about how valuable people were. That is why Scripture says in Romans chapter five that when we were his enemies, Messiah died for us. What is our internal talk about people? It is very important that we understand how to talk about people and how to change that talk. There is a book called “Practicing Right Relationship” by Mary K. Sellon & Daniel P. Smith. I am going to read a couple of things from this book because I think they are very important. I also think there is a word of hope, a message of hope, in this book for people who have a hard time with relationships. Let me tell you something. If you are now where I was two or three years ago and where I still am to a certain degree, if you are finding the truth that you know instead of driving loving relationships is actually producing a situation where you are keeping people at arms length because of the truth that you know, then you and I both need to change. We need to know how to enter into truly genuinely loving relationships. We need to learn how to truly, genuinely, love and appreciate people. This book “Practicing Right Relationship” talks about four areas where people such as us need to grow. One is “self awareness”—am I aware that in my mind I am saying nasty things about the guy across the table even though I am making small talk on the outside. The first thing I need to be is self aware. Am I aware that I am being critical which means I am a critic? Am I aware it should not be occurring? I start with self awareness. I need to be aware of what genuine love looks like. Second, I have to be able to manage that. I need “self management”. There is a big difference between self awareness and self management. Self awareness is to know you are saying / thinking something negative. Self management is stopping it from happening. Third, we need social awareness. How are we with people? Last, we need relational management. First we need self awareness and self management, and then we need social awareness and relational management. What does social awareness look like? Let us talk about love and what it feels like to be loved. Have you ever received a loving act? I think that all of us have had somebody love us at one time or another. Some of us are fortunate to have people around us who love, and they love a lot. Loving acts and kind acts are generally remembered for years and years. It was intriguing to me how the Lord helped prepare this teaching in my life through a couple of different things. As s Messianic, there are a couple of issues that we believe that do not really set well with mainstream Christianity. The main one being Torah. I end up discussing this issue a lot as well as debating it on various forms on-line. I have put much thought and prayer toward being effective; as I’m sure many of you may know we tend to not be in this area. I did not just want a surface compassion with an inward talk about how they did not know the Word, they did not know this, and they are that. No, I wanted a genuine compassion accompanied with a self-talk of how valuable people are, what a blessing they are, and how the L-rd is working with them. I heard this story about a man who was apart of D-day. He was shot in the chest in the initial invasion. He was carried off in a stretcher and taken to the hospital; of course, thousands and thousands of people were wounded on D-Day. Stretchers and stretchers were there as far as you can see. The man had a blanket put over him, but the nurses and corpsmen were so busy that they did not really have time to give a lot of individual care to each and every person. The blanket was not tucked under him, and the man was chilly. The man was shot in the chest and too weak to even straighten out his own blanket. He felt the blanket being straightened out and tucked underneath him. It was helping him to be warmed. The man turned, rolled his head over to see who did that, and next to him was a wounded German soldier. The wounded man said, “I did not speak any German and the German soldier didn’t speak any English,” but the wounded man said, “Our eyes locked, and to this day, I remember that act of kindness!” That was 60 years ago. An enemy soldier in his love to humanity just does something kind and it is remembered. I think that the enemy soldier was a German Christian. Can I prove it? No, I cannot prove it, but that is the way Christians should live. Messiah said, “They will know us by our love for each other.” He did not say they will know us because our doctrine is so right. I know that you have probably heard that before, but it is true. It is not just acts of love that we do on the outside while we have an internal conversation about what that person needs to learn going-on on the inside. We need to have self awareness, self management, social awareness, and relational management. The good news is that if you are like me and you do not feel like you have been very good in that, then you can change. I can change.