by
Joyce Meyer
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We can, of course, choose not to obey in the area of forgiveness, but we pay a price for doing so. We hurt ourselves more than we hurt other people by refusing to forgive. Refusing to forgive is like taking poison and hoping our enemy will die. We may spend years being angry with someone who doesn’t know or care that we are angry. They are living their life and enjoying it, while we are miserable and bitter.
again cheesy but not wrng
Let me encourage you to turn yourself over to God. Tell Him that you know you cannot change yourself, but that you want Him to change you and make you what He wants you to be. He will do it at a pace that is just right for you, and He will use methods that would not have occurred to you. It is God’s grace that changes us, not our self-effort. All we can do is want to be what God wants us to be, repent that we are not, and put ourselves completely in His hands to make the changes that need to be made. Of course, we make an effort, but it is an effort made while depending on God, not ourselves, for victory.
Love is liberating. It offers people both roots and wings. It provides a sense of belonging and acceptance (roots) and a sense of freedom (wings). Love doesn’t try to control or manipulate, and it doesn’t seek its own fulfillment through trying to control the destiny of others. In a truly loving family, a father who dreamed of being a pro football player doesn’t try to force his son to play football when he would rather be a dancer. A mother who wants her daughter to be popular because she never was doesn’t force her to be a cheerleader, get in with all the “right” people, be on the debate team, or run for school president when she is more of an academic who wants to quietly study and isn’t concerned about her reputation with people. Parents don’t project certain roles onto their children because they accept and enjoy them as God made them to be.
Love finds out what people need and helps them get it.
[...] I do believe we can love someone and still not enjoy being around them a lot. Don’t forget that love is not necessarily having loving feelings, but a decision to treat people as God instructs us to treat them.
When you read about loving everyone unconditionally, you may feel there are certain people you simply cannot love because of how they have hurt you or because they may still be abusive, and being around them would not be safe for you. You can love everyone, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to spend time in their presence. Pray for people, don’t speak unkindly about them, and help them if they need help, but always remember that you have a right to safe relationships.
Realizing that I can love from a distance has been extremely helpful to me. I once felt, as you may feel, that loving someone meant I had to spend time with them, but it doesn’t. [...]
We often hear “Life is not fair,” and it isn’t, but God will bring justice if we patiently trust and wait on Him. In reading Paul’s letters, I have noticed that he never prayed for people not to have problems or for their problems to go away. He prayed that they would have “the power to endure whatever comes, with good temper” (Colossians 3:12 AMPC). I am always amazed when I read, think about, or teach on this scripture. Our prayers are quite different than Paul’s. We simply want our discomfort to go away, but Paul wanted something much more valuable. He wanted the people to be able to adapt and remain peaceful in the midst of their trouble. He knew this would make them stronger to handle future difficulties.
Do we always pray for the easy way out? I think we usually do, but we can learn from Paul’s teachings and begin praying to be able to endure whatever comes with patience and good temper. Paul states in Philippians 4:12–13 that we can be content whether we are in need or have plenty, and that we can do all things through Christ who is our strength, whatever condition we are in. Let each of us ask ourselves if we are able to do this and answer truthfully.
[...] Jesus has set before us two paths to travel through life, and we must choose one. He offers us a narrow path, which, although it is “contracted by pressure,” leads to life. He also offers us a broad path that is easier to travel but leads to destruction. Our temptation is to take the easy way, but it is not the best way. This could be a place where many people would use the excuse “It is just too hard.”
It is interesting that the narrow path, the one that leads to life, includes pressure. This is because the devil will do anything he can do to prevent us from taking the path that leads to a life we can enjoy. Notice that there are few who take the narrow path, but many take the broad path, not realizing, I’m sure, that it will lead to destruction, even though they have been warned.
If we choose to do the hard thing now, we will reap an abundant harvest (the fruit or results of our choices) in eternity. But if we take the easy path now, we will experience destruction and misery in eternity. We should begin now to live for eternity. We should not simply live for the moment, because it passes in the blink of an eye, and we are left with the consequences and results of the choices we made in it.
funny how similar this is to the way i've been thinking recently (secular)
I pray that you will be a person through whom God can work in the days in which we live. Ask yourself if you are more concerned with God’s will than with your own will. Does your heart break with what breaks God’s heart? Are you willing to sacrifice in order to be someone God can use to change the world and help get things back on His track? It is good for all of us, including me, to take a personal inventory occasionally and ask ourselves if we are still swimming upstream against the current in the world or if we are merely floating downstream with everyone else because that is easier than living according to God’s ways.
James 1:22 says that if we hear God’s Word and don’t do it, it is because we deceive ourselves through reasoning that is contrary to the truth. We know what we should do, but we find a reason to think that not doing it is all right, thereby excusing our disobedience. There should never be an excuse to disobey God.
When I become angry over something Dave has said or done, I don’t want to talk to him or even be in the same room with him, but I refuse to let my emotions control me, because I know they will lead me toward destruction. Although sometimes I need a cooling-off period, I make the decision to talk to Dave even if I don’t want to, and I refuse to avoid him, because I know division is what the devil wants.
What about your emotions? Do you let them prevent you from doing what you know you should do? If you tend to follow your emotions, you can change that today by making the decision to do so. You can feel your feelings, but you cannot follow them and be a mature Christian. Always make the decision to do what God wants you to do, and you will be victorious in life. Emotions are deceptive. Sometimes they are good, and other times they are bad. We all have them, and they will not go away. We simply need to learn how to manage them and not let them manage us.
I was thinking, no doubt, of our nights in bed, of the peculiar innocence and confidence, which will never come again, which had made those nights so delightful, so unrelated to past, present, or anything to come, so unrelated, finally, to my life since it was not necessary for me to take any but the most mechanical responsibility for them. And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one towatch, no penalties attached—it was this last fact which was our undoing, for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. I suppose this was why I asked her to marry me: to give myself something to be moored to. Perhaps this was why, in Spain, she decided that she wanted to marry me. But people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
[...] And I realized that my heart was beating in an awful way and that Joey was trembling against me and the light in the room was very bright and hot. I started to move and to make some kind of joke but Joey mumbled something and I put my head down to hear. Joey raised his head as I lowered mine and we kissed, as it were, by accident. Then, for the first time in my life, I was really aware of another person's body, of another person's smell. We had our arms around each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find. I was very frightened; I am sure he was frightened too, and we shut our eyes. To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it. I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst. But out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joy that night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love.