I personally hate 1st impressions. They are not usually accurate and people use intuition. 1st impressions tend to be judgmental, wrong, and hard to forget. It could happen that when you meet a someone for the first time, they might not be them self. Even though we are supposed to be the happiest people on this earth-seeing as we are Christians and we are saved by grace by the Lord of the universe-we do slip in our attitudes someday or another. We are not joyful all the time. I know that I don’t mean to give off some first impressions but I definitely do not have it together all the time. I really hate when my personality is not the 1st view that people see when they meet me sometimes. I definitely hate it when they judge me. But, then I remember that I do the exact same thing to other people. I am shamed to say that some of my thoughts go like this: “They look weird.” “They’re not really skinny.” “They are extremely quiet.” “Why do they act like that? It’s not normal.” “I don’t like who they hang around with.”
These are only a minuscule amount of things that I think. I sin with even a hint of these thoughts. I have to ask forgiveness over and over again. I am sad to say that I cannot meet someone for the 1st time without judging them in some way. Maybe you’re like me. I often find out I am so far off from what they are really like that I hope they do not find out what I first thought of them.
I’ve found that you need the Lord’s prayer to correct your mindset when you meet a new person. You also need to keep your thoughts to yourself. Let me repeat this: Keep your thoughts to yourself. This is something that helps greatly in changing how you respond to people, whether new or someone new.
The final ingredient is love. Isn’t it obvious? Since God is love and we are striving to be like Christ, it is logical that we too love like He does. Because if we don’t love like He does, then we are not His child. 1 John 4:8 says, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Although this is the last component to help change our mindsets, it is the most important. To be truly Christ-like is to have love.
Granted, your first impression may be right, whether good or bad. But whatever it is, we should have love for whoever we meet, even if they become our enemy. Just remember: you don’t know what they’ve been through, what they’ve done, who they are, and what’s gone on that day. Let’s push all those judgmental thoughts away and focus on loving people with God’s love. You never know; they could become a sincere and genuine friend later.
