When you decide to be a disciple of Christ, you are choosing to learn, grow, surrender, obey, and change anything that doesn’t look, sound, or resemble Christ’s attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors.
When we operate from our broken love design, we can believe these lies and allow others to disrespect, hurt, manipulate, or abuse us. Victims of abuse need to know these verses are a picture of the love we give and receive. Christ’s love NEVER includes abuse.
Christians must not confuse forgiveness or being understanding with accepting excuses for disrespectful, sinful, or abusive behavior. It’s easy to fall into this trap when you feel love-starved, and the person plays on your empathy with excuses, guilt, or blame. In fact, excuses and blame reveal their choice to avoid owning their feelings, words, choices, actions, consequences, and lack of godly repentance.
We can’t stop the challenges or trials we face on this broken earth, whether we are disciples of Jesus or we choose to do life without him. The question is, will you choose to have his true love in your life guiding you, strengthening you, and empowering you to have a grateful heart? Or will you choose to let bitterness and unforgiveness overshadow Christ’s, true love?
If we expect to automatically think and speak like Jesus, after accepting him into our lives, we do not understand God’s definition and design of our faith.
Every new start comes from an ending. When you find yourself in a challenging and painful place, look for the new beginning God has planned for you.
To find our original created identity, we must find the truth in God’s word. We must know the origin of our identity. Who made us? How we are made, and why?
When we begin our walk with Jesus, many of us are not taught how to study God’s word, how to pray and praise him, and how to create or grow in a personal relationship with Jesus.
However, we are responsible for learning how to live through Christ and to be transformed into his likeness in our lives. Jesus doesn’t automatically show us how to live for him. He waits for us to seek him and to walk hand in hand with him as we learn.