“Vicarious intercession means that we deliberately substitute God’s interests in others for our natural sympathies.” Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest.

There are those that we are naturally attracted to, those people that we relate to, that are like us. And then there are those that we have no affinity for. We don’t understand them, they are not like us and we can’t naturally connect to them. There is nothing of God in these reactions, they are of our human nature.

Are we content to live and love in our own humanness or will we allow God to identify us with His interests in others? He sees no difference between us and them. He is as much theirs as ours.

Are we too easy on “our people,” and too hard on the “others?” Do we lean into those who touch our natural sympathies, but lean away from those who don’t? Do we preach forgiveness for those we can relate to and condemnation on those we don’t?

To be Christlike, to live apart from the world while living in it is to supernaturally identify with the concerns and grace of God in the lives of those He loves.

What good does it do to love those who love us back? Everybody does that. The Spirit of God is revealed in the supernatural, powerful, extravagant, reckless, passionate, foolish love of God in the lives of our “others,” no matter who they might be.