When we look at fellow believers, our ‘brothers and sisters’ in Christ, our friends and sisters, neighbors, our own families, we tend to see first their behaviors, their shortcomings, their personal struggles. 

We know the scripture teaching us to look at the plank in our own eye, before we point out the spec in another’s eye…

Can I encourage you today? God’s using this truth to silence the flesh in my life…

Look through them to their Spirit. 

The part of them that is transformed by God when they got saved. 

The part that God sees when He looks at them.

The same Holy Spirit that transforms in me, lives in them; He is transforming them, too.

And we all are overcoming the flesh, each in our own way. 

Sometimes it is a quick, powerful transformation, and sometimes it’s slow. 

Neither one better or worse in the eyes of God. 

So God shows me, and is teaching me, to see people His way. 

In the Spirit. 

Just as He forgives us, and has forgiven every sin we will ever commit already ahead of time, we are to be long suffering, seventy times seven. 

So we really should stop counting. 

It’s here that we can let people go, we can let them off the hook for being just like us. 

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“And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭7‬:‭3‬-‭5‬ ‭NKJV‬‬
https://bible.com/bible/114/mat.7.3-5.NKJV