{"id":533,"date":"2018-05-22T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T08:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.smallpage.online\/2018\/05\/22\/it-is-our-god-not-mine\/"},"modified":"2019-03-06T13:08:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T13:08:54","slug":"it-is-our-god-not-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/it-is-our-god-not-mine","title":{"rendered":"It is \u201cOur\u201d God, Not \u201cMine\u201d: How the Spiritual Life of Spouses Affects Them"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n
By Fr. Sergius Nezhbort<\/em><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
People have a hard time trying to let others into their hearts. More often than not, God becomes \u201cmy personal God\u201d instead of \u201cour God\u201d, and therefore attempts by other people to enter this \u201csacred\u201d union are perceived as spiritual aggression. It is vital for a person to have the experience that my God is also your God, and your sin, regardless of how abominable I may find it, is also my sin in a sense. I cannot push you off and say, \u201cYou\u2019re a bad person, go away.\u201d I have to understand that you\u2019re so bad because I\u2019m bad, too: if I were different, you would also be different.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
It is often the case that a person who apparently leads a more or less pious life (at least, visibly) thinks that he is superior to other people, as if they were lower class because they live differently. In fact, we have to realise that God does not treat us like lower class. He loves us all. He does so not because He is so magnanimous but because He sees each person as a unique personality. We can\u2019t be more misled than when we start to divide people into castes and classes, even unwittingly!<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
We\u2019re so messed up. We are touched by grace and our hearts soften; we want peace and tranquillity; but then we see a child running around the church and misbehaving, and we catch ourselves reacting with \u201crighteous\u201d anger: What\u2019s that? Why don\u2019t his parents look after him? Take that boy away! On the one hand, it\u2019s excusable but we forget that the child and his mother might also be having a very important moment.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
A man told me that he has two adopted children, and he has a lot of trouble with them. He goes through various times with them, sometimes even becoming desperate. That\u2019s why he seeks God\u2019s support and comes to church with these kids. Unfortunately, these children can\u2019t stay still in the church even for a brief period of time. Other people in the church start complaining and demand that he either \u201cteaches his kids to behave\u201d or \u201cleaves\u201d\u2026 People just don\u2019t care to know why these children act like that. If only they stopped to think what kind of life these children had had, what traumas they had endured, and why they had been left without their parents. We don\u2019t know the full story and we are hardly capable of digesting it. We prefer to focus on our own stories and feelings.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Here I am with my prayer, my fasting, my righteousness. Okay, I admit it\u2019s not as perfect as I would like it to be, but everything else is rubbish.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
It would be great if, before commenting or complaining with someone, we could pause to think that I might have a stake in that person whom I dislike and whom I prefer
\nnot to see or hear. Maybe it\u2019s me who is responsible?\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Therefore, when we come to church, we should lay all earthly cares aside but remain thoughtful towards the people around us. God sometimes acts through these people. It is through them that He can tell us something, warn us, or stop us from doing something wrong. If we become sensitive and compassionate, we will really abide in God.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Fr. Sergius Nezhbort \u00a0 People have a hard time trying to let others into their hearts. More often than not, God becomes \u201cmy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65],"tags":[6,7],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","tag-family","tag-personal-thoughts-on-orthodoxy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/km6qdzdpdui_595-1.jpg","views":{"total":81,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1767820192},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paPyw9-8B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20659,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/20659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}