Dear People Who Keep Company With God,

 

When the Lord came into my room in a dream and prayed for me, I not only experienced the hidden wisdom of God, I also heard the cries of the perishing. What I was hearing is really hard to explain, but I knew it was people who were suffering and dying. At the end of the dream, I experienced what I was hearing, but it did not happen in a way that I expected. In the last part of the dream I found myself in our church on a Sunday morning and I was standing at the door greeting people as they came in. I reached out my hand to greet a lady whom I did not recognize and when our hands touched I instantly knew everything about her. I was totally caught off guard by this.

 

As I thought about this part of the dream I remembered a vision I had several years ago; in the vision I saw a man and I could see His physical insides. I saw all his internal organs and the Lord spoke to me, “bowels of compassion”(1 John 3:17 KJV).  When I had the vision I did not really understand it, but when I connected the vision to the dream, I understood. Seeing the insides of people was really a gift to make way for His compassion.

 

Of all the experiences that we could have in this life, I believe experiencing His heart of compassion flowing through us may be one of the greatest of all. Charles Spurgeon said, “If you would sum up the whole character of Christ in reference to ourselves, it might be gathered into this one sentence, ’He was moved with compassion’.”

 

Compassion is one of the great mysteries of God; we can’t understand compassion with the natural mind. In fact the Greek word for compassion is a word that first appears in the Bible. The gospel writers used a word someone made up to describe what they were seeing when Jesus was moved by compassion. Think about it – they could not find one word in the whole Greek language that suited their purpose, so they had to make up one. That tells you how mysterious compassion really is.

 

Compassion is not something we can make happen, it is not sympathy or human sorrow; we know from the Bible that compassion releases a power that changes circumstance, heals bodies and minds, and sets people free. So compassion is a virtue inherent in Christ that can release the power and creative force of God.

 

“But if you had known what this means, ‘ I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT A SACRIFICE,’ you would not have condemned the innocent” Matthew 12:7.

 

Without compassion you will tend to see the bad in people, be repulsed and be tempted to fall into an unrighteous judgment. When I touched that woman there was a lot I did not want to see or know, and my first response was to draw back from her.

 

But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? 1 John 3:17 KJV

 

I have found that you can actually get in the way of what God is doing in someone’s life by trying to help out. It’s like helping the butterfly get out of the cocoon; it does more harm than good. However, we can also hinder compassion from flowing in our lives. Being compassionate is a choice (Col. 2:12); we have to be careful to not turn our faces away from weakness, infirmities, pain and sorrow. Flowing in compassion is not going to be neat and tidy; in fact, it is going to be real messy and inconvenient at times. You are going to get your hands dirty.  If we value being in order and convenience too much we will miss His heart of compassion.

 

The greatest key to compassion is personally experiencing and continually walking in the Father’s heart of love. Compassion really is His love in action.

 

Many Blessings, BW

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