Hello everyone! I hope everything has been going well for you lately. I know I have been very busy recently. I hope that hasn’t stopped you from spending time with our wonderful Lord. I know it can be hard to find time amongst our busy schedules to spend time with Jesus. I struggle with that constantly. Do you do a daily devotion? If so, contact me and let me know what you do to study God’s word. I love hearing different ways on how people study the word.
One of the ways I have started studying recently is by a prayer guide called “Putting Off...Put On”. Two sweet friends of mine started a prayer group a couple weeks ago for girls from the ages of 13-25. I haven’t been able to go the last couple of weeks because of my work schedule, but I went the first night and they gave us these pieces of paper that has seventy some characteristics that you need to put off and the same amount of characteristics that you should replace it with. Each characteristic comes with a bible verse (or two) and tells you how to put it on.
For example, this week’s characteristics were “bitterness” and “tenderhearted and forgiveness”. The definition of bitterness is, “anger and disappointment at being treated unfairly; resentment.” You know, so many of us struggle with being bitter and we don’t even know it. It honestly breaks my heart that I know I am capable of being bitter towards someone. And I know for a fact that I have struggled with this problem more times than I would like to admit. Because when someone does something wrong towards us, it is implanted in our sinful hearts to automatically resent that person. Sometimes we end up wanting to hurt them back and get “revenge” and “justice”. But justice isn’t ours to give. It’s the Lord’s.
Hebrews 12:15 says, “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.” We are called to forgive one another, just as Christ forgave us. We have to remember that nothing someone does towards us is as awful as what we did to Christ. We killed Him with our sin and made God turn His back towards His son because of how filthy He was being covered in our sin. And God had to send His wrath upon Jesus. There is nothing worse than that.
We are called to forgive one another. Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” No one deserves to be forgiven. We didn’t deserve to be forgiven by Christ. But He did it anyways because He loves us and wants us to be able to spend eternity with Him in heaven. How amazing is that?
I encourage you, as you go about your daily life, start thinking of ways to forgive people. I know I need to pay more attention to how I treat people and forgive people. We can’t be hostile and bitter towards others. That is not the way to present Christ to those around us. Love and forgive people well. Love you guys!
Here is the link to the “Put Off...Put On” page if you would like to look at it and print it out. https://lifeaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/PutOffPutOnRevivalWorksheet-bw.pdf
- Han <3 -
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