“My mother-in-law told me that I wasn’t meeting up to her expectations as a wife and mother. She said that I was a mess and a disappointment to everyone. I have been kind, and I have even followed some of her suggestions. But no matter what I do, it is not right or ever good enough.” “One of my oldest…
A face mask can shield us from some destructive airborne germs. What shields us from the airborne destruction of words that disrespect and dishonor us? How can we help people see how life-giving or destructive and deadly words can be? Why has the world made verbally attacking and hurting people easy, fun, and considered “normal?” The staggering number of COVID-19…
Once we are living in Christ’s love design, other people will notice a change in us. In Christ’s love design, we will understand what is healthy and what is unhealthy. We will understand the difference between forgiveness, trust, reconciliation, persecution, and how to draw and live in healthy boundaries.
If you were not taught the path of living your life for Jesus Christ and your loving Father, God, then you will use your imperfect understanding of love by default. Without God’s truth and revelation, you will be a frustrated Christian, always trying to do better. Unless you study God’s word and have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ every day, you will not see or understand how to live in God’s agape love.
When you love someone with all of your heart, you can’t wait to treat them well and to honor and respect them. Jesus died for you and gave you the gift of salvation. However, it is your choice to honor him by your devotion, service, and obedience as you live your life in on earth.
The first step to any change is the awareness that something is not right in the eyes of God; it is disrespectful and dishonoring. In your heart, you know these words or acts would not come from Jesus. Therefore, they must not come from you because Christ lives in you. Many Christ-followers have not been aware of their discriminations or racism until now. However, now that you are aware, you will need to break your learned cycles.
It takes a while to unwrap and understand the complex prisons of our beliefs and brokenness, our unawareness of God’s word, power, and Christ’s love design, and our unawareness of abuse. Unless we know the aspects of Christ’s love design and how the enemy has used our brokenness, we can only make a little better choice. We trade up in each relationship, but we remain in our prison.
The depth of our peace correlates to the depth of our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Christ’s words reveal that we will have visible and invisible storm elements in our lives from time to time. Some storms are expected, and we can see them coming. Other storms just pop up because we live in this broken world.
Christ’s peace is always flowing through us, even if we can’t feel it or we don’t think it is there. When we accepted the salvation of Jesus, we received all of him, not certain aspects. However, we must choose to work with him.