Love Restores!

What does it take to restore a believing brother or sister who has failed into sin--to restore them again to a place of fellowship and spiritual usefulness? Every believer sins. And when we confess our sins, God is faithful to forgive, to cleanse, and to restore. But what if we fail to see or repent of the sin? What if we are overtaken by a fault and are struggling to overcome the sin? Then we need someone who loves us enough to confront us with our sin and to help us deal with sin issues in our lives. We need someone who is 'spiritual', that is, walking in the Spirit, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit, and who also is dealing with the glaringly obvious sins in their own lives. We need someone who will approach the restoration with the right attitudes. They need to be gentile for the goal is not demolition but rather restoration. Not by quarreling but by gentle persuasion and instruction, leaving room for the Holy Spirit to convict and lead to repentance.And they need to be guarded in their approach realizing their own vulnerability and fallibility for they too could be tempted in the same way or with pride. Those doing the restoring need to take heed to themselves lest they too fall. So one of the ways we 'serve one another through love' is that LOVE RESTORES!