Everything that is good in life emanates from the purpose of life which is Blessing: the power of empathy.
We are nothing, and we have nothing if we are not connected to our fellow human beings. Through feeling, seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting life through another person’s life.Without any creepy sense where they would feel transgressed.On the contrary, in every sense that they feel blessed by our presence in their lives. Life is connection to others in safety and care.
Empathy is our capacity to experience life through another’s experience. Empathy is the power to connect to another as if we were them: a Blessing.
If we don’t achieve this through our presence in others’ lives, our Christian faith means nothing. It achieves nothing, and it is in fact a forgery, given that others seeing us as ‘Christian’ don’t associate us with Christ, and potentially worse, associate Christ as something other than love and betterment for them.
CALLING IT LOVE WHEN IT ISN’T LOVE
Let’s not fool ourselves, to the point of abusing another or of corrupting the gift given to us, that our blessing is a blessing when it isn’t a blessing.
The default way of blessing is that we corrupt what is meant for another as blessing, thinking it is a blessing when it isn’t a blessing.
If we call our blessing a blessing and it isn’t felt as a blessing to another it isn’t a blessing. Blessing as it pertains to our deeds is in the hands of the other.
EMPATHY AS A WAY OF FELT BLESSING
Empathy is the only way to the execution of a blessing that cannot miss. Such is empathy that it gets INSIDE the other person and completely understands where they are at. Empathy feels as they feel.
Empathy is that power of being able to completely understand another person, and the only assessment that matters is the assessment of the other person. We cannot say that our empathy is in fact empathy if the other person doesn’t feel empathized with.
See how empathy and blessing are all about what the OTHER person feels, and NOT what we feel. The test of empathy is the other feeling empathized with.
Empathy, the power of blessing, is the power given to true Christian people, who, inhabited by God’s Holy Spirit, do not miss meeting symbiotically with the other person.
The connection that is felt between human beings when one is compelled to be an instrument of blessing through the power of empathy is a supernaturally felt experience where the person being blessed is touched by the very presence of God.
This is how Christian people are to evangelize, not through the use of common words, but in the use of uncommon actions of empathy, where a person being blessed by the power of empathy absolutely feels touched by the living God.
So many Christian evangelists get the whole point of evangelism the wrong way around when they expect that their words will have some mysterious and magical power to ‘convert’ other people to the love of God when the love of God isn’t in them.
This form of evangelism which is quite common in the latter days of Christendom, is rife in the Western world, and without deeds of love to back these words up, the words themselves are abhorrent to the Spirit of God and wreak havoc for the mission of God.
The fact is every single person is wired, hardwired, to be met by other human beings through a cogent empathy, that speaks the powers of the living God in and through them, in much the same way as a person will know that there is a God.
This empathy is a deep-seated mode of care that takes all focus off the self and puts all that focus on another human being, that they be served, that the giver of empathy would not in any way seek to be served.
As soon as we try this, inspired by the Spirit within us, to give the gift without any seeking or desire or craving for return on the blessing, this service itself bears the touch of God.
God therein dwells amid the empathy, and as we give our empathy, we receive from God what cannot be given to us in any other way.
Can we see how this empathy, this way of being very deeply met, is the very power of God that few ever experience? The fact is, and I know this is sure, the reason I am a pastor and a counselor these days, is because I EXPERIENCED the empathy that I speak of in this article, and having experienced it first hand from others, was convicted and converted to it, that I would be an instrument of such empathy in others’ lives.
This empathy is the common salvation that is very uncommonly experienced in this world.
We are much more apt to experience a salvation that comes through words that aren’t felt in the deeper being. The more common experience of salvation is a shallow and superficial version of the truth of salvation, and no doubt can become the catalyst to the deeper empathy of God that we need to feel in coming to the true salvation.
We, as human beings who can know God, and can experience the power of God, have been predestined to experience this empathy from others, this touch of God, in order that we may FEEL it and experience it and see it with our own eyes and touch it with our own hands, in order that we would be compelled to issue it to others, simply because it is blessed to pass that blessing forward.
I hope that you in reading this will not miss the point: IT IS AS WE GIVE AWAY THAT WE RECEIVE. It is as we give away the deeper connection of our empathy that we give others access to the power of God.
Simply seeing this blessing run as it extrapolates from us in many tentacles of blessing unto miracles of transformation is the compound effect of the blessing, unto many experiences of baptism in the Holy Spirit. What needs to be seen by each of us in our living days is that we are here for a solitary purpose.
The vast majority of us will miss this purpose. We will grab at a life that insists that others empathize with us without us contemplating the truer understanding that life is an upside-down reality.
Life’s purpose is in empathizing with others, and experiencing what happens as a direct result, which is the blessing of God that is input into our lives through another person or people being blessed.
The more we give our lives away, the more God gives back to us, if only we can resist the resentment that creeps up when our blessings are unrequited. We do not bless others to receive their blessings in return. We bless others because it is our purpose.
We bless others because it is the power of empathy that blesses us. That is God’s blessing to us. It is an “inside” job.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Tribework
Featured Image by Aleksey Kutsar from Pixabay
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