Feedback

What do you think of when you hear the word "feedback"?

If you're a musician, you immediately relate to that high pitched and annoying squeal that results from the sound recording or playing device being placed too near the speakers.

If you are in marketing, or some other discipline that involves activities and responses, you'd relate that feedback is what you need to know if you are hitting your goals.

If you're an Ebay'er, you think of the comments given by sellers and buyers after a transaction has concluded.

I recently purchased an item on Ebay, and after the sale, the buyer sent me details about the shipment and then he wrote " I leave feedback for people who leave feedback for me."

That was more like feedback in the first sense to me. It sort of annoyed me - he did - then the fact that I got annoyed - annoyed me again. It made me stop, and prayerfully consider.

Is that the way we should act? Should we return in kind what we receive, and get what we want before we give what others need? While I was stewing over his self-serving comment, a verse popped into my head.

Luke 6:35 (Msg)
"Help and give without expecting a return. You'll never—I promise—regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we're at our worst."

God loves me today - even though I got up ornery.

God loves me today - even though I rushed past Him on my way to work.

God loves me today - even though I'm struggling just to glimpse what I'm supposed to be.

God loves me - just as I am, even at my worst - generously and graciously.

So what I've got to do, is to give everyone some feedback, through my everyday, walking around worship of God through my life - through my interaction with people.

God's always right, we all know that. How many times have you ever really regretted a kind act to an unkind person?

And how many times have you regretted __being__ that unkind person?

Break the feedback cycle. Stop the squeal of battered lives and broken people.

Love. Because He first loved us.

Grace!

David Wilson

This devotional is written by David Wilson, pastor of New Hope Baptist church in Valparaiso, FL. If you find you have received this via a forward and would like to receive it regularly, or find you no longer wish to receive it, drop me an email at dwilsonfl@earthlink.net and I'll make the change to the list. If you'd like to know more about New Hope, visit our website at www.newhopevalp.org . May God bless you.