God’s Love & Words that Wound

Here is a spiritual principle: We cannot exercise love unless we are experiencing grace. You cannot truly love others unless you are convinced that God's love for you is unconditional, based solely on the merit of Christ, not on your performance. Our love, either to God or to others, can only be a response to His love for us.  Jerry Bridges

Did you know there are over 470,000 entries in the dictionary?  Every year new words are added.  So out of 470,000 some odd words, why do we choose to use the worst of those 470,000 on the people we are supposed to love the most. 

We are all guilty of using words to hurt others.  Sometimes we use them and don’t even realize how much they cause harm to another person.  I was thinking about why we do this.  We supposedly love this person but we kill them with words.  I received some wise words from my cousin.  She said sometimes we harm those we love the most with words because we believe they will never stop loving us.  Basically we take for granted that this person will continue to love us no matter what words we use on them.

Why do we believe that the people in our lives that we are closest to can withstand our harmful words and continue to love us?  If harmful and hurtful words are used often enough and long enough those very people can and often will stop loving us.  God didn’t create us to be unloving.  He wants us to love as He does. If the people in our lives don’t understand God’s love; we stand the chance of losing their love.  If we don’t express God's love to others, we will eventually lose those we love.  

When you think about God’s love, it is quite different from human love.  Jesus is the only man who lived that loved like God loves.  God’s love is the “only” pure love.  His love covers everything.  His love means we are accepted as we are warts and all.  There are no conditions to receive His love.  He doesn’t want to lose a single individual that He created. His love is all encompassing and Jesus loved us the same way.  Love like this is nailed to a cross for us.  God’s love is not based on what you do; it is based on who He is.  God’s love is also never ending.

Is there someone in your life you are harming with words?  If we don’t stop using words that wound; we shouldn’t be surprised when that person eventually no longer loves us. 

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I want Your kind of love.  Not the superficial kind of love that only lasts for a moment.  I want the love that Jesus showed me by dying on a cross for the sin in my life.  Love like that is hard to come by in this world where self has become the most important thing in life.  I pray that You will make me more like Jesus.  I want to give others that same love so they can see what it really means to be loved. Your kind of love means I will also forgive the very people who use words to harm me.    

    

Scripture: The Greatest Gift

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.  1 Corinthians 13:1-13