There are a group of ladies from my area that meet on Saturdays for a Bible study, if you are reading this and you are a guy don't tune this out. We are taking part in the Good Morning Girls Colossians Bible Study. Today's scripture is something I wanted to share!
Colossians 3:14
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
What I love about this is that the importance of love is shown here. In the previous verses we are given a list of virtues to clothe ourselves in and told to make sure we are forgiving one another. Now to be told that LOVE is what holds, or binds, all of that togerther! Mind blowing!
Have you ever heard someone say you can't live off of love? Well this scripture tells me that you can't live without it! The list of virtues we were given to uphold and obtain were compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (verse 12). Have you ever tried being patient with someone who you don't like? It doesn't work that well! EVERYTHING they do you are watching to judge in one way or another, you will nit-pick their every move and look for a way to make yourself feel better because of a mistake that they made. That is just an example of one of the virtues!
Those virtues would be close to impossible to obtain if it weren't for love. As Christians we have the love of God in us and He loves every single person. So now that person who you may have differences with or completely opposite personalities, you can show them patience and kindness. You have LOVE!
Some of you are already saying okay I got it, we don't have to discuss the forgiveness part, but if it is important enough to be wrote in the word of God than we should maybe take a look at it. We are told to bear with one another and forgive as God has forgiven us (verse 13). That can be very hard to do. I would venture to say that fogiveness is probably one of the top 10 if not top 5 things that people, even Chrsitians, struggle with. Why is it so hard? Well, we are prideful people, we have a prideful and sinful nature. Our flesh will just about turn inside out if we even have to think of forgiving someone who has hurt us! The thing is, when we recieved our salvation we were made new in Christ. We have no more excuses. We cannot set here and tell God, I just can't forgive them, my flesh won't let me. That is a crock of c-rap, and yet we do it. Sometime we do it without even realizing it.
We are told to forgive one another as God forgave us. I don't know about you, but my B.C. days were HORRIBLE!!! God did a LOT of forgiving on my part. I wouldn't want any less either. So why would I not forgive God's other children, my brothers and sisters? Do you have siblings? I had 2 younger sisters and we fought ALL THE TIME. We alwasy got over it and forgave one another though.
Sometimes it took a little longer than other times, but they're my sisters. We still have to forgive each other for things time to time. These people who we are holding grudges against are our siblings in Christ. Plus the real harm is done to ourselves by keeping unforgiveness.
So today I challenge you to
1. Make the concious effort to obtian compassion, kindness, humility, ggentleness and patience today.
2. Forgive the person you haven't forgiven yet and
3. Do it all with the love of God
~Awaken Us~
Brenna Stanford
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