God has called us to settle our relationships with each other.
For this handful of posts from my Happy Day Moments Facebook Page, this one sentence had people sharing and commenting “Yes!” and “Amen!” Seems we’ve all got relationship issues. 🙂
God forgives us; we gotta forgive others.
It’s as simple {as hard} as that. Or is it?
Others damage us, hurt us, and when we’re stung by betrayal or rejection, our natural bent is to think “I’m justified in feeling this way. I’m going to hold onto this a while longer.” We think we’re entitled to some kind of emotional justice.
However, we express His love when we seek reconciliation, even in the place of raw anger and pain, because, seriously, it’s hard to forgive jerks and rapscallions. And it’s a challenge to reconcile our pain with God’s command to forgive.
So if we desire to love like Jesus, we can’t keep score of the wrongs people do against us, we can’t catalog offenses and grievances, we can’t maintain an inventory of grudges.
Sure, it may be pretty awful what they did, what they said……but …
Let go.
Step into forgiveness.
Because forgiveness isn’t about agreeing with those who’ve hurt us. It’s not condoning their conduct or sanctioning the terrible things they’ve done or agreeing with their motives or their methods.
Fix the situation, the one who hurts us? That’s God’s job.
Forgive them? Ah, that’s what we’re to do….. We forgive.
We have choices when we’re offended. We can surrender our hurt or hold on to our hurt. We can extend grace or harbor bitterness. Let’s make the gracious decisions that model Jesus.
Let’s forgive, let’s throw all that detritus, all that junk, all that weight and wreckage behind us, and let’s become freer, moving forward into a journey of grace, a pathway of love.
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Don’t be angry with each other, but forgive each other. If you feel someone has wronged you, forgive them. Forgive others because the Lord forgave you.
This is grace. This is love. This is what God says.
And then there are these….
the rest of the handful of the Happy Day Moment Facebook posts from February. The other ones that had the most likes, the most comments, the most shares.
- At all times – and regardless of circumstances – we’re called to love others.
- Let’s marinate our hearts in gratefulness.
- Those who dare the most shall win the most.
- Let’s believe that goodness and intelligence and bravery will win the day.
- God uses those who raise their hands and volunteer to take on someone else’s problems, who step out of comfort and into impossibility for the good of others.
- Let’s not seek our own good, but the good of others.
- If you keep your eyes open, you’ll discover that kindness is all around us.
- Speak your love. Speak it again. Speak it yet again.
- Today, choose somebody you want to be creatively kind to.
- Wherever you are, remember, it’s temporary.
