Day 337: When the Heart Goes Bad!

John 14:17

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Philippians 4:7

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Today let’s talk about the heart, and the condition of it. Sometimes our heart can go bad. Not in a sense that sin has completely taken us over, which is one way a heart can go bad but in a sense that sometimes it’s too broken. What I mean by that is, we go on day by day without ever really addressing what is going on within us until it is too late. Our hearts become so broken and battered that we begin to think that there is no way out. Many of us know what a broken heart feels like, and sometimes that can seem to carry on for a very long time, the heart takes time to heal. It sometimes seems like the pain just keeps coming. We all want our hearts to remain healthy and fresh and we even get to the points when we try to convince ourselves that we are okay when we’re not. The truth about life is, sometimes it hurts, and that means our hearts will be broken. But the truth about Christ is He can put the pieces back together and make it stronger than it has ever been.

For those of you who have had your heart broken, you know what can come from it. There is so much pain that takes root, anger starts to arise, then bitterness, and unforgiveness, then hate. When our hearts are ruined because we cannot seem to get past the pain we throw ourselves into a deep and dark world of hurt. I know these things are hard to get over, I know it hurts, but somewhere we have to find hope that we will be okay again. That hope that I’m speaking about is only found in Christ. Christ is the light and the only way out of this deep, dark, painful tunnel. We cannot dwell in our pain it will get us nowhere. Facing the source of our pain is going to hurt in the moment but it’s part of the process of healing. We are in need of some healing to take place. We are all or have all been walking around with our heart’s light going more dim as we go.

I want to talk about how some of us are walking around with a rotten heart and it’s not completely our fault. Sometimes we put our hearts on the line and they get ripped to shreds and we continue to put our hearts on the line for others and continue to get hurt. Some of us are suffering from bitterness and guilt that is eating away at us. Some of us are holding grudges and harboring unforgiveness. Some of us can’t seem to let go of the things ruining us. Some of us are letting fear run wild in our hearts. I name all of these things because we are walking around everyday not dealing with what is really going on in our hearts. We can see everything in everyone else but we tend to overlook it in ourselves.

We live in a time where mental health has become more widely spoken about. But we also live in a generation that is told by older generations that we are too soft. We’re too emotional Therefore we hide our feelings we cover them up because we do not want to come off as week. Let me tell you right now, if no one else wants to deal with your broken heart, God will. If no one else wants to talk you off a ledge God will. There are too many people in our generation that are suffering because their heart has gone bad. Too many people are walking around like zombies because they do not have it in them to love anymore because they have been hurt so much. We are walking around with fake smiles trying to be okay because society says we have to be.  This is not the life God wants us to live. Yes we will go through seasons of pain, yes our hearts will be broken but God is a healer. It is not His will for us to harbor that pain or let it manifest in us. There is peace with the Father, there is healing with the Father. We get to a point where we begin to project our feelings onto God. We forget that the one who created the heart is the only one who can completely heal it.

All this to say, we have to check in with our hearts and be honest about what is really going on within us. There so much pain in each and every one of us, but trust God with your heart. He will protect it and guard it. God gave us feelings for a reason, he gave us emotions for a reason. He gave us tears for a reason. Do not allow your feelings and pain to be suppressed because of what someone else thinks. God cares for them. He sees every tear, He hears every prayer. Look for hope in Him.

Reflection/Prayer Time

Take the time to respond in whatever way you feel led. Pour your heart out to God tonight, if any of this resonated with you talk to God about it and allow Him to heal your heart. God is a healer, he wants to give you peace, let Him do it.

I love you so much! I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 338!

Day 279: Hold On to What is Good

1 Thessalonians 5:19-22

Do not stifle the Holy Spirit.  Do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil.

Something that I’ve been thinking about this past week is, the things we remember. It’s very interesting when you think about it. We as people have certain memories that are locked in, things we will never forget. The advice, the moments, the quotes, the smells, the melodies, the feelings, the things that stick with us for the rest of our lives. It’s crazy how everything we’ve ever been told or heard or seen throughout our entire lives, there’s that one thing that stays with us forever. Something our parents told us when we were fourteen stuck with us and will still resonate with us at thirty. It seems like many times we remember the things forever that had a good impact on us, sometimes we remember the bad. But the quotes and advice continues to help us through life. It’s like we unconsciously choose what to remember and can call upon those memories at different points in our lives to help us through certain moments.  I think Paul is getting at something similar to this in the above scripture.

Paul tells the people of Thessalonica to hold on what is good and stay away from every kind of evil. But before he says that, he tells them not to stifle the holy spirit, or scoff at prophecies but to test everything that is said. Everything should line up with the word of God. Test the things that people say to you. Sometimes we are Christians can be naive, and believe what people say, just because they say it in the name of Jesus. As it says in Matthew 7:21-23,

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

We must test the words of people because their are many  who claim to serve God but their hearts are far from it. At one point or another we might have been one of those people. We cannot be swayed by the words of liars and deceivers.

When we do find what is true when we know what is good. Hold on to it. Hold on to the things that are good. In doing so we are to stay away from from anything that is evil. I don’t know if you know but good and evil cannot cohabitate. It’s not a good mixture. But I talk about memories and the things we hold onto throughout our lives because we hold on to the things that are good for us. Even if we do hold on to things that are bad for us, or the things people have done to us to hurt us, we eventually come to the realization that it is not good for us. So  we let those things go. However the things that are good tend to stick with us forever, and that’s the beautiful thing about life. We are so often under the impression that we as humans remember the bad things over the good, however that is not always true. No matter how angry we are at someone, and we may not want to admit it, there is so much good we see in them.

For a long time I was angry at my father, because I felt like he walked out on us. So I harbored anger towards him, or I tried. I wanted to be angry at him and I wanted him to know I was angry. However whenever I talked about him I could only talk about the good things. The things he taught me as a child, how he raised me, the great impact he had on my life, how I am a spitting image of him. And every time I saw him and had a plan to tell him off, my love for him always overpowered my anger towards him. That’s my dad, no amount of anger could ever stop me from loving him no matter how hard I tried to put on the mask of anger, only love came through. Because I remembered the good times, which were so much greater than the bad.

-Dyamond

All this to say, hold on to what is good and let it stick with you. Test the words of people, and do away with all evil. Remember the good things. It’s easier than we think.

Response/Prayer Time

Take the time to respond to what we discussed today. Whatever resonated with you today, allow it to guide your prayer. Pray about whatever is on your heart. Remember that prayer is just a conversation with God.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 280!

Day 204: Comfortable With Who You Are?

1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Today I want to talk about growth and maturity and how the society we live in has a huge impact on that. I grew up listening to this scripture, and from the very start I knew that it was about  growing up and being mature. At some point in our lives we will have to move on from being a child and become an adult. Not just physically but mentally.

We live in a world that teaches us to be comfortable with who we are, in every sense of the word. There is a problem with that, it also teaches us to be comfortable with who we are not without ever exploring who we are really supposed to be. I can speak for nearly everyone when I say, the person we are right now is not the person we were a year ago or maybe two years ago, maybe even a month ago. As humans we are constantly changing, constantly evolving, so why are we settling?  This new movement of comfortability has caused a generation to be stagnant. If we were always comfortable there would be no growth, we grow as people when we are pushed out of our comfort zones. However, I am afraid this society is teaching people to stay in the box they are comfortable in, in order to be happy. Sometimes reaching our highest potential means that there will be moments of sadness, bitterness, anger, frustration, confusion. We are not always going to be happy and that is okay. God gave us emotions and He gave us life, to feel and explore every part of it. Why are we stuck where we are comfortable and safe? Why are we content with being semi-good or semi-okay? Why are we okay with living a life we know could be better but we’re happy where we are so we aren’t going to go any further? Why are we pushing people to believe they are something they’re not when we know the truth?

We are conditioning people to live and accept a life of sin or a life unfulfilled because in the name of not offending anyone we want you to be comfortable with who you are. We have become more concerned with people’s emotions rather than their souls. It has caused a growing number of stagnation within the body of Christ and humanity as a whole. If Jesus was concerned about all the people who would be mad at Him for speaking truth and imparting wisdom, where would we be? If He was more concerned about hurting someone’s feelings rather than saving them from their sin where would we  be? If He was concerned about what people would think of Him, He would not have gone and died on that cross. Jesus had a bigger picture in mind, He wasn’t concerned that people were angry because He interrupted their corrupt and comfortable ways of living. No He was concerned with their soul, they’ll get over the anger eventually, but they couldn’t get over being condemned for all eternity. It was as if Jesus was saying, “If I have to take this cross so that you can see you are more than a sinner, and more than what you think you are, I’ll take it. Because where you are is not where you are supposed to be.” He loves us that  much.

All this to say, who we are at the present moment in  time is not who we are meant to be or who we are going to be. Yet due to the changes and conformities within this modern society and the sensitivity of a generation we’d rather you be semi-happy than uncomfortable. Somewhere along the line we stopped growing. Somewhere along the line the truth got a little too real for some people so we started to conform. People started getting angry and hostile so we started to retreat, and let them be. We, as the body of Christ cannot allow any of that stop us. If we want growth we have to be willing to change. We have to be willing to step out of old ways and walk where God wants us. That means that we even have to deny ourselves sometimes and claim our identity in Christ and not settle for who we think we are. But the goal is to really be the person God created us to be.  That will take a lot of moulding and shaping to do. Now don’t get me wrong, I am all about self-love and confidence, but I am against stagnating oneself. Yes I want to encourage people to love themselves but I also want you to know that growth is limitless.

Response/Prayer Time

Take the time to respond, however you feel led. There was a lot thrown at you today. Talk to God about what we discussed today, have a conversation with a friend or someone else, start a discussion. Just respond, however you respond is okay. Then pray about whatever is on your heart.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening. Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 205!

Day 160: How Do You Respond?

I must admit that our generation is very hot-headed. We have no problem defending ourselves, and others, we also don’t mind speaking up when we don’t like something. This is both a blessing and a curse, we won’t let our voice be silenced but sometimes the best way to fight back is through silence. Our response and reaction to things is very important. We must learn self-control and how to turn the other cheek when we want to respond out of anger or animosity, or even spite.

Matthew  5:38-40

“You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too.

Before moving forward allow me to break the above scripture down. If you’re like me you’ve always had a bit of confusion about this scripture, and if I’m being honest, a hard time obeying it. Am I really supposed to let someone slap me?” “So if someone slaps me once, I have to turn my cheek and let them do it again? Seriously?” These are the questions I asked, when trying to understand this scripture. I wasn’t looking at it from a spiritual or metaphorical standpoint, I was look at it from a natural standpoint. All I knew is, if someone slapped me they had better been prepared to get slapped back. But as I began to read more and get an understanding of the scripture I realized, that same attitude is what the scripture is speaking against. We don’t always have to do to people what they do to us. We don’t always have to get revenge on someone. The next paragraph is a bit lengthy but bare with me, I need you to understand this. Here’s an explanation of the scripture from Watchtower online library, The Bible’s Viewpoint,

“It is noteworthy that in harmony with God’s Law, the “eye for eye” retribution mentioned in those scriptures was properly administered only after an offender had stood trial before the priests and judges who weighed the circumstances and the degree of deliberateness of the offense.—Deuteronomy 19:15-21.

In time the Jews distorted the application of this law. A 19th-century commentary on the Bible by Adam Clarke states: “It seems that the Jews had made this law [eye for eye, tooth for tooth] a ground for authorising private resentments, and all the excesses committed by a vindictive spirit. Revenge was often carried to the utmost extremity, and more evil returned than what had been received.” The Scriptures, however, did not authorize personal vendettas.

Jesus’ teaching in his Sermon on the Mount regarding ‘turning the other cheek’ reflects the true spirit of God’s Law to Israel. Jesus did not mean that if his followers are struck on one side of the face, they should stagger to their feet and offer the other side as a target. In Bible times, as is often true today, a slap was not intended to injure physically but was an insult intended to provoke a reaction, a confrontation.

Evidently, then, Jesus meant that if one person tried to goad another into a confrontation with a literal slap—or with stinging sarcasm—the person slapped should avoid retaliating. Instead, he should attempt to avoid what could become a vicious circle of rendering evil for evil.”

Ephesians 4:26

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,

Proverbs 15:1

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

1 Peter 2:23

When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

Proverbs 16:32

Better a patient person than a warrior,

one with self-control than one who takes a city.

James 1:19

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.

2 Timothy 1:17

For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.

Today we are going to talk about how to respond with respect and gratitude even when we get the opposite. As I stated above, our generation is a bit hot-headed, we do not like the idea of being disrespected and we are very blunt and upfront about our feelings. A few things we must learn to do is: walk away, be slow to anger, and bite that tongue.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, most people who really know me know that I am very sarcastic and I can have a very smart mouth. I’m not one to get angry really quickly, though i used to have a really short temper, but I do have a few triggers that will send me from 0-100 in a matter of seconds. I had to learn to kill my pride and shut my mouth. I had to learn that a soft answer really does turn away wrath. Even when my blood is boiling on the inside of me, I’ve learned to just smile and walk away. I cannot lie and tell you that it’s easy, I still find myself wanting to give a few people what I think they deserve sometimes, but at the end of the day, it’s not worth it.

I know I said previously that silence is sometimes the best answer, but it is so hard to stay silent. Especially in today’s society where it seems like the word respect in part of a lost language. It is so hard to think about Jesus and pray when person number one is in the corner testing you. It’s hard to turn the other cheek when you turned as many times as you could, and you’ve finally had enough. It’s hard to give a soft answer sometimes. It’s hard biting your tongue, some of us bite our tongues until they bleed. Sometimes you just have to respond, sometimes you just have to retaliate. Sometimes you just have to go off on that person. Sometimes you need to blow up and go crazy, and use the excuse that Jesus overturned tables in the temple. Sometimes you just have to do it. Sometimes it’s necessary to just, go there!...

...But do we really have to? That’s the question, is it necessary? Do we have to get out of character and do something that we will end up having to repent for later. Is the moment of pleasure really worth it? The scripture teaching us to be patient, it teaches us self-control, it teaches us to give a soft answer, don’t be so quick to get angry. We don’t always have to respond, we don’t always have to have an answer. Trust me I know it’s tempting, but we cannot fight fire with fire, we cannot fight hate with hate, but we can fight it love. We can fight it with a soft answer. We can choose to turn the other cheek and not retaliate. As christ followers we are called to live like Christ. Jesus received the ultimate amount of disrespect, he was spit on, slapped, punched, betrayed, by one of his own, mocked, pushed down, beat, accused, slandered, everything. Jesus took it, He chose to forgive them, even while they were hanging Him on a cross. He chose to die for the very people that killed Him. He always responded with love, even when He received hate. Jesus is a prime example of how we are to live and how we are to respond to others.

We must learn to control ourselves and our tongue. We do not always have to be right and we do not always have to have the last word. This does not mean that we let people walk all over us and not defend ourselves. What this means is, we have to learn to respond the way Jesus would. Sometimes our soft response can do more than a haughty one. Don’t get out of character or allow yourself to get angry to the point of sin. There is nothing wrong with being angry, it’s a human emotion we can’t avoid it but we can avoid acting on and holding on to it. I know it’s hard and we’re only human, but so was Jesus.  

Response/Prayer Time

Review the scriptures we went over today, think about how you respond to certain people and certain things, it is good or bad? Whatever the answer is, talk to God about it. Have a conversation with Him.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 161!

Day 69: Being Honest with God

Why are we afraid to show God our hearts? Why are we afraid to be brutally honest with Him? We’ve been told by pastors and elders and religious traditions not to complain, don’t talk to God this way. Basically only use “Christianese” when speaking with God. But what about when we’re hurting, what about when we want to do the wrong things, can we talk to Him about that? Can we talk to Him when sex is on our brain and we’re saving ourselves for marriage? Can we be honest about that? What about when we don’t understand why life is going the way it is? What about when we want to curse someone out, or better yet when we want to hit someone? These are the thing we don’t really talk about in church anymore, the forbidden subjects. If I mention sex I just might get splashed with holy water. We tend to shy away from these things because they are not flattering to the Christian community. They don’t scream holiness. But this is real, it’s real life, we are real people who face real problems. Jesus isn’t on our mind twenty four hours a day seven days a week, and that is okay. But when those unholy thoughts creep up when no one is around, we had better call on Jesus, or find ourselves in a tough situation.

I say, why not talk to God about these things? I mean if there’s anyone to help us through it, it’s our heavenly father. Why hide these things from Him? Why put up a facade, as if He doesn’t already know? There's no reason to put up a front with Him. be real.

Psalms 62:8

Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Selah

Psalms 142:1-2

1 With my voice I cry out to the Lord; with my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord.2 I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him.

We are allowed to pour our hearts out to God even when they don’t “look” like a Christian heart, to us. We are allowed to have feelings, we are allowed to be angry, we are allowed to ask questions, and we are allowed to have sexual feelings, we’re human. Most importantly, we are allowed to talk to God about what is really going on in our hearts and in our minds. That’s what having a relationship with God is, we have to be brutally honest sometimes. God knows our hearts, He knows what they look like, He created them. He knows the struggles we go through, the pain, the temptation, Jesus went through it. God wants all of that. Turning to God in every instance shows trust, it shows that we love Him so much that we are willing to give Him even the embarrassing parts of our hearts. We don’t have to hide it, we can’t hide it from Him anyways, no matter how hard we try. So why not pour it out on Him. There is no judgements, so there should be no shame. God is not going to love us less, and He loves us so much that He couldn’t love us more.

This subject brings me back to Genesis 3:7-10

7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool[c] of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”[d] 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

After they had eaten the fruit their eyes were opened and immediately they wanted to cover their nakedness. They wanted to cover up because they were exposed. They started sewing fig leaves together to cover themselves up and then hid from God when He came looking for them.  We tend to cover up when we are bare before God. We don’t like being exposed or exposing ourselves. When we bare everything to God that is when we are truly free. If there is anyone to be exposed and open before, it is God. There’s no use of sewing fig leaves to hide our shame, instead bare to all to God. There’s no use of trying to lie to Him.

See, the thing about being honest with God is that He works through it. The Holy Spirit is working always. When we bring to light the things that we have been trying to hide from Him, that is when we will know what it is to trust God wholeheartedly. We will enter a new level of relationship, knowing that God can handle my humanity, but He can’t handle my sin. Being human isn’t a sin.  

Reflection

1. What are some things you need to be honest with God about?

Prayer time

Talk to God about these things, whatever is on your heart, pour it out to Him, no matter what it is. Just be as honest as possible. If you're hurting tell HIm, if you’re tired, angry or frustrated, tell Him. The beauty in that is, God can pull us through anything, He can work through everything.

I love you, I hope you have an amazing day or evening. Make sure you share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 70!

Day 64: Respond with Love (Dealing with People)

One thing we can all agree on is that there are some people, who are hard to deal with. There are people that we would rather not be around. We all know someone who is just mean, and mad at the world. Maybe we were that person. But sometimes dealing with people and their attitudes is exhausting. Especially when you try to do it the way Jesus would, then it just gets hard.

Proverbs 29:11

Fools vent their anger, but the wise quietly hold it back.

Proverbs 15:1

A gentle answer turns away rage, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Luke 6:27 

But I say to you people who are listening to me, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.

As we grow older we go through a point of being hot-headed, hard headed, and very short tempered. We have all been in a position where we have either flipped out on someone or had to bite our lips and tongue not to. As we grow in Christ we will start to learn how to control our tongue but also how to respond to people who are mean and just hard to deal with. We all have that one thing that set us off. There’s a lot we can overlook and avoid but there’s that one button that if pressed will take from zero to a hundred in a matter of seconds. But what if we could control even that. as we grow in Christ even our biggest triggers become things that we can brush off because it’s not worth the energy.

The best thing we can do is respond with love. I know it sounds crazy and it is so hard to do, and we may fail many times before we master it. Anyone who knew me when I was eighteen compared to now can testify to this statement. We have to learn how to bite our tongue and give a soft answer. Sometimes we will constantly be provoked by others, who want to see us get angry. I’d like to point out that being angry is not a sin. It is what we do with that anger that can lead us to sin. Ephesians 4:26 says, Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, I’m not telling you that you can’t be angry but don’t act on it. Be angry but do not allow that angry to let you fall into to sin, and don’t let it turn into a grudge. Nothing good comes from acting on anger.

Exodus 14:14

God will fight the battle for you. And you? You keep your mouths shut!”

Psalms 141:3

Post a guard at my mouth, God, set a watch at the door of my lips.

Our biggest defense against others is out mouth, some of us are very keen with the comebacks. If you are like me you are very sarcastic and your mouth is very smart. I had to learn how to shut my mouth sometimes, because I used my bluntness as an excuse to be rude and disrespectful. I also used my smart mouth as a defense mechanism. I had to get past my own pride of feeling like less of a person or even a woman, if I didn’t attack my attacker and win. I always had to come back harder when someone came at me, to prove that i wasn’t to be played with. That was the pride in me.

-Dyamond

But when dealing with others we must be able to look past our anger and see that they have a heart just as we do. They can hurt the same way we do. We do not inflict pain on someone because we can or because we want to, even though they might do it to us, just to get them back. We have to respond with love, even to the most  grotesque things that comes our way. We have to let God handle the battle, as only He can. Now this does not mean that we allow people to treat us any kind of way, it is okay to defend ourselves. As the men did in the book of nehemiah when they were building the wall. Nehemiah 4:18, And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me.

One of the best examples I can think of at the moment is when the men came to capture Jesus and Peter cut off one of their ears. Peter responded with violence, Jesus responded with love.

Luke 22:48-51

48 but Jesus said to him, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” 49 And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” 50 And one of them struck the servant[h] of the high priest and cut off his right ear. 51 But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him.

Now this is the part of the bible where Jesus is betrayed by judas and was arrested to face the death penalty . This is where the disciples became our friend group. We all have those group of friends that we have been through everything with and we will fight for if we had to. When one of us is in danger we’re all coming to their defense. Then there’s always one specific person in the group who just reacts. This is how it was that night was ,the disciples were ready to go to war for Jesus. They saw what was happening and they all looked at Jesus like do we need to start cutting people, do we need to pull out these swords? Before Jesus could answer Peter pulled out his sword and cut off someone’s ear.

It was at this very moment that Jesus showed us what it meant to respond with love. He yelled for Peter to stop, and then went over to the man, who was preparing to kill Him, and healed him. That’s love, mind you, this man was here to carry out the plan of killing Jesus. Throughout His crucifixion Jesus showed us what a soft answer or no answer at all looks like. People walked up to Him, spat on Him, punched Him, slapped Him, and He never responded with anger or hate, always love. And in the end God was glorified.

Sometimes it’s not worth the time to get back at someone, or get angry, many times the best thing we can do is respond with love. Return rage with kindness. I know it’s hard, but it isn’t impossible.

Reflection

1. Are you easily angered or hot tempered?
2. How much of a struggle is it for you to respond with love?

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer. Take in everything that was talked about today, and talk to God about it. Ask Him to help you control your tongue, and teach you how to respond with love. If you have easily angered talk to God about controlling your anger. Pray for those who are hard to deal with, pray for your enemies, and pray for yourself.

I love you! I hope you have an amazing weekend. Make sure you share this with someone and be sure to come back tomorrow for Day 65!