“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” 1 Proverbs 10:12
Years ago, God showed me a powerful truth about loving people past any offense we may have over them. He directed me to 1 Corinthians 13 and told me to replace the word love with God. He then explained how we can love people unconditionally by giving them over to Him to love. We may not be able to feel affection for them, but we can ask God to pour out His love over them for us.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
"God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy. God does not boast. God is not proud. God does not dishonor others. God is not self-seeking. God is not easily angered. God keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God never fails.”
1 Corinthians describes the Father’s nature. When we love others through His nature and allow Him to be love for us, we can start the reconciliation process we’re called to walk out in 2 Corinthians 5:16-19 with patience and kindness:
“So, we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know Him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to Himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to Him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.”
A.W. Tozer, who was an American Christian pastor and author wrote:
“When scripture says, God is love, it means that love is an essential attribute of God’s Being. It means that in God is the summation of all love, so that all love comes from God. And it means that God’s love, we might say, conditions all of His other attributes, so that God can do nothing except He does it in love.”
When we release our affronts to the Lord, we’re free to walk in love and forgiveness. We can then have pure heart motives towards others through Christ and be freed from the bondage of offense. Every time we release a person to Jesus, we’re released from offense, unforgiveness, hatred and bitterness. We need to train ourselves to walk in love and Philippians 4:13 from the Amplified Bible describes beautifully how we can do this daily.
“I can do all things [which He has called me to do] through Him who strengthens and empowers me [to fulfill His purpose—I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency; I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses me with inner strength and confident peace.]”
When we walk in love through Jesus, His peace in us will overshadow the greatest of offenses. When you’re in constant communion with love it’s impossible to walk any other way. The very nature of God is love and we’re told we can partake in His Divine Nature through Jesus. I use this scripture often because it’s so powerful and imperative for us to grasp in order to attain its promise.
Read it carefully. Meditate on it. And live it out.
2 Peter 1:3-8
“His Divine Power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the Divine Nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. “
"You are God’s girl and He loves you! You sprinkle His seeds of love wherever you go!” Those words were spoken to me by my husband Joe many years ago. They came at a time when I was questioning my self-worth in God’s Kingdom, purposes, and plans. The Father made sure that in my darkest spiritual hour, I heard His Truth about my identity and self-worth. It has been my passion ever since to deliver that same message to any who may need to hear it. It is not about who we are, but Whose we are, and I am God’s girl!
