When you follow Jesus through the Gospels, he had the ability. In fact, he made it a habit to take an individual's entire story into account when he interacted with them. And there are several examples of this in the New Testament. But our tendency is the opposite. We don't take people's entire story into account.

But for one reason, we can't. We don't know their whole story. But even if we did, we have a tendency

to just size people up and just ride them off based on a single event in their life, based on a habit

in their life, based on something we've heard about them

from their life. A single, we size them up and write them off based on just a single chapter

in their story, not their whole story. And if their decision or whatever it was, if their

decision or that chapter impacted us directly or our family directly,

it's hard not to see them any other way. It's hard to see them in any other light, right?

That thing that sort of just cast a negative shadow over them, it's the first thing and

it's the only thing that comes to mind when they come to mind.

But the problem, of course, is that that goes both ways, right? That people size you up and they

write you off as well. Sometimes you know and sometimes you don't know. And to complicate matters

even further, and here's what we're going to talk about for the next few minutes.

We have the potential.

In fact, perhaps you have the tendency to do this to yourself.

That we have the potential and maybe the tendency to do this to ourselves.

To define ourselves by a failure.

To define ourselves by a failed relationship,

an event in our life, a season in our life, a decision in our life, an addiction in our life.

And then our tendency is to project that onto God.

In other words, if I see myself this way, then certainly that's how God sees me as well. But he doesn't. And we know he

doesn't. This is so important because Jesus didn't. Jesus didn't size people up and write them off.

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