All tagged neighbor

The troublemakers in our lives... E.M. Bounds spoke to this subject in his devotional this morning. He began by saying "Some troubles are human in origin. They arise from secondary causes. They originate with other people, but we are the sufferers." This is true, many of our day to day problems are caused by those around us. In life we will run across those who do us harm; some out of meanness, and others while trying to advance themselves at all cost. I have had my fair share of bullies in my life that were so full of anger that it was hard to see a glint of good in them, and I have also fallen victim to those whose great desire to advance themselves have hurt innocent people in the process. So how do we deal with this fact? Do we ask God to curse them, or perhaps to destroy them? Well Jesus tells us something much different... we are to love them.

In His final moments Jesus prayed forgiveness for those who were crucifying Him, do we have it within us to do the same? Could we forgive those that we would call our enemies? If we listen to Jesus as he underwent the passion, and took His final breaths from the cross, it should become apparent to us that He never called them His enemies, and as a matter of fact He never called anyone His enemy in all that is written about Him... why not?

God is love and he loves us perfectly. When we accept this fact then we can understand our true relationship with Him, and He will reside in the deepest recesses of our heart and soul. How can we say we know God if we don’t know His love, and how can we say that we are created in His image, and not have His love within us? To believe in God is to believe in love... who is it that abides in us today?