Romans 12:1 (NKJV)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not everything can be achieved by force and \u2018pushfulness\u2019. There are some things that require the patient use of wooing. Paul in this case could have directly presented God\u2019s Word and expectations to the people as an instruction to be obeyed, but he didn\u2019t. He chose to \u201cbeseech\u201d them, meaning, he chose to plead with them, to woo them. Spiritually wooing someone takes inner strength. It\u2019s easier to give instructions and commandments, than to woo someone. With wooing, you leave the onus of obedience at the full discretion of the other party, without providing a sanction that compels him to act in the direction of your desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s learn to plead with people more. Let\u2019s appeal to their inner conscience and their inner desires. Let\u2019s make a logical case that\u2019s strong and can attract their positive response. Wooing and pleading with people may look weak and may make us look weak, but it\u2019s a spiritual way of relating with people. There\u2019s a place for forcefulness but there\u2019s also a strong place for wooing. We must note also that we cannot force inner conviction or true spiritual transformation. It therefore takes spiritual discernment to know who and when to woo and who and when to force. May God grant me the inner strength to practice the humility of wooing, even when I have the authority to compel obedience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLord, teach me humility and patience as I need to grow in this grace of wooing men towards spiritual compliance. In Jesus name. Amen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Romans 12:1 (NKJV) \u201cI beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God\u2026\u201d Not everything can be achieved by force and \u2018pushfulness\u2019. There are some things that require the patient use of wooing. Paul in this case could have directly presented God\u2019s Word and expectations to the people as an instruction to be obeyed, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-reflections-from-romans"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Reflections-from-Romans.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3065,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions\/3065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}