“All humanity bears an image… God did not create us like the animals, but He made us in His own Image…

We were created like God in character and personality… It’s the desire of God that we would live up to the image of God that He had placed on us at creation…

We do not have to be slaves to our lower desires…

We also have a moral character, we can recognize right from wrong, even if we don’t want to follow what’s right… When we sin we mar the divine image of God that has been placed on us as His special creation… we lose the innocence and moral integrity that He created us for…

• And we are utterly unable, and hopeless, to save ourselves from the price of those sins… No amount of soap can make us clean again…

• This is why Jesus Christ came… because, in the love of God, He knew we were incapable of cleansing ourselves from our sins… so He died on the cross that we would not have to die for our sins…

• And He was resurrected from the dead, that when this life is over, we too can know the resurrection of God in Heaven…

When we can grab hold of this truth; that we were created in the image of God, it can transform our lives…

The truth of the image of God will give us greater confidence…
• I am more than a cosmic accident, but a living, breathing, bearer of the image of God…

• And when this world is cruel to me, or I begin to compare myself with others, I can look back to that truth and know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made… you are beautiful in the eyes of God!

This truth will also transform how we treat others, and how we respond to conflict…

This is the key to fulfilling the greatest and second greatest commandment of God… “to love God, and to love man”
• To love people well, is to love the image of God within people well… So practically how does that look…

We must move away from “I-it” relationships, to “I-Thou” relationships…

“I-it” relationships:
These relationships dehumanize people and make them objects… And if people don’t line up with our expectations, we have no use for them…

The result of “I-it” relationships is that we get frustrated when people don’t fit into our plans… We isolate ourselves, we become inward focused, we become polarized…
• And when conflict invariably comes instead of working through issues, we cut people out of our lives…

“I-Thou” relationships:
These relationships recognize that; I am made in the image of God and so is every other person on the face of the earth…
• And that every other person on the earth is unique and has a separate existence apart from me… in other words, though you are different from me, you are still respected, and loved, and valued…

• This is not to say that there is no standard for right or wrong…

• Only that however people may stack up to the standards of God in any particular moment… they have not lost their value, and the image of God… no matter how marred that image is, it is still on their life…

• These true relationships can exist only between two people that are willing to connect across their differences… God and His grace fill that in between space…

This kind of relationship imitates the relationship we have with God…
• Where I am at, and where God is at, no matter how good my intentions… are worlds apart… to think that every thought, and every reality of my life line up perfectly with the will and the desire of God is the height of hubris…

• So as I yearn to be closer to God, and He remains perfect in all ways, the space in between, it’s filled with His grace towards us…

• This is what a relationship looks like when we truly grab hold of the image of God in others… when we can have genuine love like this in our relationships… in this the presence of God fills our fellowship…

• We can allow the spaces between us and others to be filled with the love and grace of God…

The result of “I-thou” relationships is that we get frustrated when people don’t fit into our plans…
• We remain gracious toward one another, we continue to look at life from others perspectives, we don’t become polarized…

• And when conflict invariably comes we work through the issues, because people are worth it, the image of God within them is worth it…

If a relationship can be restored, we will seek for that restoration…”

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