Day 288: Living Well Series (Part 3): Our Living is a Result of Our Loving

Matthew 22:37-40

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

Ephesians 5:2

And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

2 John 1:5-6

I am writing to remind you, dear friends, that we should love one another. This is not a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning. Love means doing what God has commanded us, and he has commanded us to love one another, just as you heard from the beginning.

John 12:34-35

So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

Recently I was listening to a podcast of Chad Veach he said sometime that really struck me and inspired this series. He said, “Your living is a result of your loving.” When I thought about that, it made so much sense to me and it actually shined a light on how we as Christians are living. Are we loving people the way god has purposed us to. Our entire faith, our foundation is built on love, so how we love is ultimately a result of how we live. So few words, yet so profound.

Over and over throughout the bible there is a common theme, love. God loved us, we love Him, and we love people, in that order. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus’ response was love. Love God, love people. In those two commandments we obey the law. Love impacts the way we live, it impacts who we are, and how we see people. When we come into the knowledge and understanding of God’s unconditional love towards us, it changes our lives, and ultimately changes how we live. 1 John 4:8 tells us whoever does not love does not know god because god is love, so there is no way we can walk with God and live according to Him word if we are not walking and living in love.  

I’m not sure if you’ve ever hated anyone before, but I have and I can tell you it impacts the way you live, it breeds nothing but bitterness, anger, frustration, revenge, and disappointment. It was when I learned to love that my life began to change for the better. Walking in love means walking in and with God all the days of our lives. Meaning we are full of forgiveness, humility, patience, joy, peace, kindness.  

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.  It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

I propose the question, how are we loving? Are we loving God and loving people? What I’m getting at here is are we loving the way we say we are? Because how we live will show it. I can save for myself that I do always love the way I should. Sometimes I can treat people better. Sometimes I can have a bit more patience with people, with God, and myself. I’m not perfect, none of us are; but we serve a perfect God. A God who is constantly teaching us, molding us, and correcting us. So even when we aren’t loving the way we should we can turn to Christ and take an example from His life. That’s how it should look. When we truly walk in love we are walking in the light of Christ. When we walk in love we inhabit all the fruits of the spirit. When we walk in love, loving our neighbor isn’t that huge of a task. We as must learn to allow how we love dictate how we live. Meaning we must submit our hearts to Christ and allow Him to teach us how to live and walk in love. Over and over the Gospels tells us to love God and love people. If we break that down a bit, when we truly love God it will change the way we live. We will live a life devoted to Him because we love Him. We will seek His face and live according to His word because that what love does. We will not walk away from someone we love, we will not want to live apart from the person we love, so loving God automatically impacts the way we live. Anything that separates us from God we will do away with it because we love Him so much we cannot bear to be away from Him. That’s good living. Then as we love God, we love His people,  we begin to see the world through the lense or filter of God’s love. Meaning we begin to treat people the way Jesus would. Loving people the way we love ourselves means doing what we would do for ourselves and even more. How we love one another is a result of how we love God. We cannot know what love is until we know God’s love. Sometimes we are loving people the wrong way because we have yet to experience God’s love. God not only loves us but He teaches us how to love.   

All this to say, love changes the way we live. Living well means walking in love, and walking in love means walking with the Lord. Living well is a result of how we love. Are we loving the way we should? Love gives us a different outlook on life, a new perspective. Living well is loving well.

Response/Prayer Time

Respond in whatever way you feel led. Talk to God about living well by loving Him and his people. Have a conversation about what that means.  

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 289, to continue the series!

Day 269: All Loss for One Gain

Philippians 3:7-8

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

Paul was on to something in these scriptures, he saying something along the lines of, ‘nothing compares to having Christ in my life’. Everything I had, everything I have gained, I would count it all lost just to have Christ in my life. I would lose it all, if it meant I would gain you. I would rather lose everything before I lose you. This almost seems like our response to God leaving the ninety-nine to find the one that wandered away. Christ gave up everything, His throne, His life, so that we may live. This concludes that life is so much greater than what we gain or lose here on earth. There is a greater purpose, a mystery to it all. That mystery is Christ. How great it is to gain everything through Christ, even when we’ve lost everything in the world.

How many of us can say that we are willing to lose everything for the sake of Christ? If we had too or if we were given the choice. I’m not telling you to go and give up everything you have, what I’m saying is that if we had to, if we lost everything it will have been worth it, just to gain Christ. Just so we can have a relationship with Him, and experience the love and freedom He has given us. I believe that this is what Paul was saying. He’s saying none of it matters if I don’t have Christ. I will rip up my credentials, and give up all my earthly possessions because truly if I do not have Christ, what do I have? I have nothing.

I remember when my sister and I were sixteen, it seemed like our world came crashing down. My mom, my sister, my brother, and I fell on very hard times. We lost everything. From our house to our car. We put everything we owned into storage and then we lost that. Everything we owned, thousands of dollars worth of stuff, heirlooms, everything! All we had were the bags of clothes we needed and the clothes on our backs. We were living in a motel at the time. As someone who grew up very sheltered and spoiled, I found myself at the lowest point of my life. I thought we couldn’t get any worse. But it was in these moments that Christ found me. I would love to say, I found Him but I wasn’t looking for Him, if I’m being honest. It was when I had nothing that Christ gave me everything and I don’t mean materialistic stuff. I mean He showed me that there was a reason to live beyond what was tangible. He showed me that I had a greater purpose, He gave me life when I was dying. Everything I could need or ask for He gave it to me. I found it all in Him, all the answers I needed, all the healing, all the grace, everything was and is in Him. Going through all of this sucked, it was very hard, but if Christ didn’t find me, if He didn’t meet me where I was I would not have made it through. Going through much more than just losing everything I was dealing with some dark emotional, and mental issues at the time, and battled with suicide. Even went as far as planning my suicide, multiple times, but He never allowed me to carry out the plan. If He hadn’t found me, where would I be? I would have died at my own hands. So yes, I lost everything but it was all worth it just to gain Christ. I would not go back and change anything because through it all I receive my salvation and an eternal relationship with my heavenly Father. I might have lost everything, but in reality I truly gained everything.

-Dyamond

All this to say, sometimes we have to lose everything to gain Christ. Maybe not on that grand of a scale but we must come to realization that all of this can vanish at any moment. We must not put our faith in what is disposable. This doesn’t mean that we dismiss everything that is tangible, or things that are disposable, but our faith, our lives, our devotion belongs to Christ. When we put Him first, everything else will fall into place. The biggest lesson I learned from that experience is, I can live without these worldly possessions, tangible, and even sometimes intangible things that make up my life here on Earth, but I cannot live without Christ. I cannot do it.  At the end of the day, none of this can save us, whatever ‘this’ is. It cannot save us and it cannot give us peace or life. We have to get to a point where we hold tightly to God, so that when other things fall away we will still be standing because of our firm grasp on God. We will not be shaken or moved. Even when we have everything we ever wanted we will still have a solid foundation in Christ. Because like I said before if we are not living in Christ, are we really living?

Response/ Prayer Time

How do you respond to what we discussed today? Are you truly living? Maybe you’ve had a similar experience, maybe not, but respond however you feel led today and let that guide your prayer. Have a conversation with God, just you and 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 270!

Day 242: Faith is For Everyone

Galatians 3:26-29

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.  There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.

Let me first start off by saying that, no one, and I mean no one is excluded from God’s love. No one. Now that we’ve discussed that, let’s dive in a bit and talk about how faith is for everyone.

When we think about the Old Testament and the Law and how the Jews were God’s chosen people, you would think that anyone who wasn’t Jewish was excluded from the faith. You would think that God loved Jewish people more than anyone else, because they were His specially chosen people. When we think about it, God used a people to be set apart from the rest of the world and say, these are my people and this is how they will live. I believe it was to show that God’s people were set apart for the word. Actually the Hebrew word for “holy” means, to be set apart. So when God called the Jews to be holy He was calling them to be set apart from the rest of the world. Meaning obeying the law, and commandments, Obeying every detail in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, no matter how boring and repetitive it is reading them. Jewish people were living lives so completely different from the rest of the world that it made them stand out. It made them different from anyone else, because they were following commands directly from god. God has chosen a people to carry His word, to live out His commands and lead generations of people to Him. Anyone who was not living the way God had instructed the Jewish people to love were not considered people of God. They were Gentiles (non-Jewish people).

Now that we’re done with the little history lesson let’s take it back to the New Testament, when Jesus arrives. Jesus, a Jewish man Himself, comes to save all humanity, Seeing that He was Jewish He was obligated to obey the commands and the law, which He did, He did not come to destroy it but fulfill it. Jesus came to offer everyone a relationship with God, not just the Jewish people. Because of Jesus you no longer had to go through a priest to be forgiven of your sins. We had a direct connection with God.

Jesus came and united all people for one purpose, to serve god. He came and said, you weren’t born Jewish but you deserve salvation too, it doesn’t matter if your Greek, God loves you too. Oh, you’re a sinner, come to me, I can fix that. Jesus came and changed the game completely when He came looking at people’s hearts, and seeking their souls, instead of trying to figure out their bloodline, (plot twist: He already knows). It didn’t matter if they were Jewish, Gentile, slaves, sinners. None of that mattered anymore because god wanted His people, not just the chosen people of Israel. No, He wanted all of us, every single one of us. Which brings me to my main and perhaps only point I want to make today, faith is for everyone.

No one is excluded from Jesus, No one is denied access to God. We are all one in Christ Jesus, He loves us all the same. When Jesus came He did not show favor to the Jews, in fact He was harder on them. He came to let everyone know that it doesn’t matter who you are, there is room at the cross for you.

I want to you know that. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’ve been, Jesus wants you. I think a lot of times, for many different reason we feel like God doesn’t want us. We feel like we aren’t good enough or we’ve done too much. We feel unworthy of His love and grace. I want to let you know today that God loves you so much. He wants to have a relationship with you so bad that He sent His only son to die so that you could have a direct connection with Him. I know sometimes we feel unworthy when we think about how good God is, but He’s so good that He’s finds us worthy of His grace when we know we don’t deserve it.

All this to say, there is room for you in the house of the Lord. There is a specific spot waiting for you actually. We are all His children, no one is excluded  from that. We all have a seat at this table, even when we decide to give it up. It’s always open because Jesus is constantly interceding for us, and pulling us back. We always have  seat waiting waiting for us at our Heavenly Father’s table. This message will never get old or tired. No matter who you are, where you’ve been, or where you are at the moment, God loves you. He is waiting for you, standing there with open arms, He will not judge you, but He will shower you with gifts and grace. One day, it will be too late. None of us know what that day is, but let’s not try to wait and find out. Turn to Him today, make that decision.

Response /Prayer Time

Respond today however you feel led. Talk to God about what we discussed today, and have an honest conversation with Him.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! Be sure to share this with someone and discuss it with someone. Come back tomorrow for Day 243!

Day 218: Leah's Perspective

Genesis 29:16-35

Now Laban had two daughters. The older daughter was named Leah, and the younger one was Rachel. There was no sparkle in Leah’s eyes, but Rachel had a beautiful figure and a lovely face.  Since Jacob was in love with Rachel, he told her father, “I’ll work for you for seven years if you’ll give me Rachel, your younger daughter, as my wife.” “Agreed!” Laban replied. “I’d rather give her to you than to anyone else. Stay and work with me.”  So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel. But his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days. Finally, the time came for him to marry her. “I have fulfilled my agreement,” Jacob said to Laban. “Now give me my wife so I can sleep with her.” So Laban invited everyone in the neighborhood and prepared a wedding feast. But that night, when it was dark, Laban took Leah to Jacob, and he slept with her.  (Laban had given Leah a servant, Zilpah, to be her maid.) But when Jacob woke up in the morning—it was Leah! “What have you done to me?” Jacob raged at Laban. “I worked seven years for Rachel! Why have you tricked me?”

“It’s not our custom here to marry off a younger daughter ahead of the firstborn,” Laban replied.  “But wait until the bridal week is over; then we’ll give you Rachel, too—provided you promise to work another seven years for me.” So Jacob agreed to work seven more years. A week after Jacob had married Leah, Laban gave him Rachel, too. (Laban gave Rachel a servant, Bilhah, to be her maid.) So Jacob slept with Rachel, too, and he loved her much more than Leah. He then stayed and worked for Laban the additional seven years. When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he enabled her to have children, but Rachel could not conceive. So Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “The Lord has noticed my misery, and now my husband will love me.” She soon became pregnant again and gave birth to another son. She named him Simeon, for she said, “The Lord heard that I was unloved and has given me another son.” Then she became pregnant a third time and gave birth to another son. He was named Levi, for she said, “Surely this time my husband will feel affection for me, since I have given him three sons!”  Once again Leah became pregnant and gave birth to another son. She named him Judah, for she said, “Now I will praise the Lord!” And then she stopped having children.

Many of us know this story and have heard this story before. We usually talk about Jacob’s willingness to work for Rachel and Rachel’s beauty. We pass Leah off as “the ugly sister”. Rarely do we look at this story from Leah’s perspective, so that’s what we are going to do today. Many of us read this story and we like to think that we are Rachel, but the truth is many of us are Leah. We know what’s it’s like to feel unloved, and we know what it’s like to want someone to love us. Many of us know what it’s like to chase love and do things that will make people love us. I think though many of us have characteristics of Rachel we relate to Leah. Leah has always been overlooked in favor of her younger sister, she was unloved.

Let’s break this down for a minute, her father tricked someone into marrying her. It’s almost like he knew that was the only way someone would marry her. It seems as if he was trying to get her off his hands. Jacob unknowingly sleeps with her. The very next morning he is in a rage because the woman he slept with was not Rachel. It was Leah. ouch! Jacob never looked at her as a wife, never loved her as a wife, or acknowledged her as a wife. Then Laban tells Him, wait until the bridal week is over, then you can have Rachel but you still have to work seven more years for her. Can you imagine how Leah must have felt, how heartbroken and unwanted she felt and was. First her father and then her husband. That must have hurt. Can you relate? I can relate, I grew up being brutally bullied, and one of the things that stuck with me for so many years was being told I was ugly, not just by the girls but the boys too. Also being told that I was the ugly twin. So I can relate to Leah, I know what it’s like, to feel unwanted. They said part is, too many of  us know what this feeling is like.

The story goes on to say that God saw that Leah was unloved. When we think we’re invisible, God sees us. When we think no one loves us God loves us. That’s the beauty of this story, God saw Leah. He did not look at her through the eyes of man, or the way that men have looked at her. In God’s eyes, she was just as beautiful as Rachel, He loved her the same as He did Rachel.

Leah began to look for love in all the wrong places. She thinks that by having a child Jacob would love her. She has three sons and we hear nothing from Jacob, When she has her last son, as pointed out by the website “Today’s Christian”, she decides to praise the Lord, not try to get Jacob to love her, I think this was the moment she decided that God’s love was enough. She had been looking for Jacob to love her for years, and probably her father as well, then she realized that the man who truly loved her was God. And He gave her four sons that would love her unconditionally.

All this to say, God sees you, and He loves you. Don’t look for love in all the wrong places. Even when you feel unwanted or unloved, know that God wants you and He loves you so much. More than you will ever know.

Reflection

1. Can you relate to Leah?
2. Where have you searched for love?

Prayer Time

Allow you answers to the above questions guide your prayer. Talk to God about feeling like LEah, and pray for those who feel like this everyday. If you still feel like this, know that you are loved in the same way that Leah was loved. You are not forgotten and you are not unwanted.

I love you. I really do and I want you to have a magnificent day or evening. Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 219!

Day 213: Timeless Love

We’re going to start this week off talking about love. Yes I mean the love of God but also, I’m talking about romance. I mean we can’t truly love someone without first knowing the love of God and falling in love with Him.

Jeremiah 31:3

"I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With that unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.

God’s love is everlasting, it stands the test of time, it stands through everything. There was never a time where God did not love us. His love is unconditional. He loves us throughout all of our ups and downs, everything. God’s love for us is so great that nothing we do can make Him love us less. This is the type of love that we should seek in every area of our life. No one will be able to love us in the exact way that God loves us, but the type of love He shows to us is how we should strive to love others and be loved by others.

We’ve talked about loving our neighbor and we’ve talked about loving our friends, we’ve even hinted on relationships. However we’ve never dived into the idea of falling in love and how God’s love for us influences the way we love, in a romantic way. Sounds crazy right, but God teaches us how to love in every area of our lives.

Genesis 29:20

So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel. But his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days.

One of the earliest instances of true love I can remember in the bible is when Jacob worked seven years in order to marry Rachel. Now for those of you who know the story you know Jacob, the trickster was tricked by his uncle Laban into marrying Leah. Leah was Rachel’s older sister. So he worked seven more years to get the woman of His dreams. Yeah I know, it sounds crazy, but that’s how it happened. A lot went down in the old testament, if you think reality tv is something read the old testament of the bible. That’s something! However back to what we were talking about. Jacob worked fourteen years in order to marry the woman of his dreams. When he saw her, he was like ‘I like that girl and I’m going to marry her.’ I’m sure he didn’t think that He would have to work fourteen years to marry her, but he loved her so much the time flew by. He was so in love that the time he has to work to get her was nothing to Him. I mean what was seven or fourteen years compared to a lifetime? Many of us can’t imagine waiting that long to marry someone. We can’t imagine waiting that long for anything, but when love is involved it changes everything. Love can change things, and if it’s the right type of love, it will always change for the better. I know some of us are like, ‘love won’t change me’ and saying how you’ll never do things for love. Yeah okay, fall in love and see how that changes. I’m pretty sure Jacob thought he wouldn’t have to work fourteen years for love, but it had him in those fields everyday and the time felt like the speed of light.  

Now I’m not sure how many of you have been in love. I’m assuming quite a few of you have been in love this is the age where many of us are either falling in love, have been in love, or are currently in love. I’ve been in love before and first let me start by saying that I hope your first love ended much better than mine. However when you’re really in love with someone, time flies by. It’s timeless, you believe at least for the time being that you will love this person forever. It’s like Jacob, his love for Rachel was so strong that seven years felt like a few days.

When it comes to love I believe that there is both a healthy way to love and an unhealthy way to love. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard the term blinded by love, but it’s not really a good thing. This is the type of love that is run by infatuation. The times when we are so into a person that we are blinded by all the red flags that God is flashing in our face. This is the type of love that leads to heartbreak. There’s a few things that we must learn about love as we grow.

We learn how to love from the love we have been given. For those of us who are Christian we have come to the knowledge that God’s love is unconditional and full of grace. We learn how to love properly because we serve a living God and He is love. His very essence is love. Everything about Him screams love. His love is unconditional. He sees our sin and sees our mistakes, yet He still chooses to love us. Seeing that this is the way God loves us, this is how we must love our others. Which leads me to my next point.

We must love ourselves before we can love anyone else. My mom always told us growing, “No one will respect you, if you don’t respect yourself.” I say that to say, sometimes we go looking for love and validation is someone and we end up ruining a great thing because we don’t love ourselves, and therefore we cannot grasp the idea of someone else loving us. Meaning we can sometimes stand in the way of being loved. The bible tells us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves but if we do not love ourselves how are we going to love someone else. Especially in a relationship.

Last but most definitely not least, love is work. If we want it to work  we have to work for it. Jacob worked seven years for the love of His life, and it flew by. We have to be willing to work for love. It won’t always be peaches and romance, sometimes it will be hard.  It’s those moments we have to work through. Now some relationships are only meant for a season, but when God sends the one trust me you will know it. When God sends the person you are meant to spend the rest of your life with, even then, especially then, we have to work for it. We choose to love that person every day. We continue to fall in love.

However, just because we’re falling in love with someone doesn’t mean we stop falling in love with God. God must always come first, always. Nothing and no one should ever come before Him. We must fall in love with Him more and more everyday. It is the only way we will be able to survive and live.

Reflection

1. Are you in love?
2. Are you in love with God?
3. Do you love yourself?

Prayer Time

Allow your overall response to today's discussion and the above questions guide your prayer. Talk to God about love, being loved, and falling in love.

I know you’ve read this word a million times, but I love  and I hope you have an amazing day or evening. Be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for Day 214!

Day 209: Patiently Waiting (It's Coming)

Romans 8:25

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Patience- an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay:

One thing that I can easily admit is, I am not always the most patient person. I don’t like waiting, especially when I feel like there is no need to. one of the reasons I hate traffic. Like I hate it, it makes me so angry, especially when I need to get somewhere. I especially despise it when the traffic is unnecessary, for example one lane is closed due to an accident and everyone wants to stop and look at the accident instead of going on about their business. It makes my blood boil. I just don’t like waiting, I will but I won’t like or enjoy it. This is where we learn the difference between just waiting and being patient.

This is one of the things God has taught me over the years, patience. Not everything will move in my timing and I have to be okay with that. I have learned that sometimes I will have to sit through some traffic before I get to where I need to go, and by the time I get there, everything will be right.  Everything will fall into place because God’s timing is perfect. I’ve learned that sitting through the traffic is what teaches me patience. Sometimes the things we want take a bit more time, some prayers get answered quicker than others and I the only reason that I can give you is, God’s timing is perfect. Many times God does things to teach us, to help us grow. I believe that when we are waiting it is teaching us a lesson in patience. It’s teaching not only to wait but to wait in good faith, wait with integrity, wait with smile on our face.

Sometimes we can get impatient with God. We get tired of praying because we don’t see anything happening. We often dismiss the fact that we will not always know what God is up to but He is in fact up to something. We just have to have faith in Him, and trust in His word and His timing, because I am not over exaggerating when I say, His timing is perfect.  When we ask God for something we have wait for it. Sometimes we view God as genie. Like all we have to do is pray or fast for a day or two and then we will have everything we ever wanted or needed. God will answer our prayers, and He will give us what we ask for but it’s all in His timing. It’s not always an immediate thing, like we close our eyes and poof everything that we’ve been praying for will be right there in front of us. No there’s some waiting involved, the scripture above tells us so, when we pray for things we don’t have we wait for it patiently. The keyword right there is patience. Everything we need and want, it’s coming we just have to wait patiently for it.

All this to say, don’t get impatient with God, trust in His timing. Trust that everything is coming together and working out we just have to be patient and trust Him. One of the fruits of the spirit is patience, I believe that this is a trait we all must posses because in life there we be a lot of waiting. We must learn to wait with dignity. I know it’s hard especially when we stand in desperate need and we are praying to God with everything and in desperation, but even in those moments, trust His timing.

Also, don’t get impatient with yourself. At our age we often come down on ourselves for not being where we want to be in life. Have patience, not everything will go according to plan but God is in control. God knows where you are and where you will be. Trust me, where you are is exactly where God wants you to be.

Reflection

1. Are you a patient person? Be honest.
2. What moments do you find yourself being impatient?
3. Are you impatient with yourself?

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer. Talk to God about what it is to be patient and ask Him to help you and teach you how to be patient.

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 210!

Day 208: True Colors

Ephesians 5:13

But everything exposed by the light becomes visible--and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.

Galatians 5:22-23

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

What are your true colors? What do they look like? I’ve always heard people say, especially when they’re angry at someone or felt betrayed, “Thank you for showing me your true colors.” Meaning you're not the person I thought you were. You’re not the person you have been pretending to be. Many times people make mistakes and it ruins how people view them. Other times people have ulterior motives that are revealed. Whatever the situation may be our true colors will always be revealed. There are a few things I’d like to point out today.

Showing our true colors is not always a bad thing. We are almost never the people others think we are at first sight. Sometimes our true personality isn’t revealed until someone really gets to know us. We all have an ‘idea’ of who we think people are when we first meet or see them. I think the problem with this is, and it’s something I pray about all the time, we often assume the worst about people. For me people always say they think I’m mean or find me intimidating. Once you get to know me you find that I am the least intimidating person ever and I’m not mean at all. I  also believe that due to judgements people pass on us before getting to know us we hold back from showing who we truly are. We have to learn to let our colors show and fly no matter what people will think about us or say about us.

Point two, our true selves will be revealed. I don’t know if you all know what it’s like to live a secret life but I do, and the fear of being exposed is unbearable. When I was younger my mom would always tell us, “everything done in the dark will come to light.” I think many of us can look back on our lives and see that at one point we were not the best people we were actually pretty bad and terrible people. We can see a point when we were pretending to be something or someone we’re not. Everything that we do in the dark, will eventually some to light. Everything we try to hide God knows what we’re doing, we cannot hide from God. We must be able to own up to our sin and surrender before God shows who we really are and what’s really going on in our life. We often talk about how people reveal their ‘true colors’ to us when we are hurt and we find out that they aren’t who they say they are. What about when we’ve hurt other people? Everything will come to the light eventually, the question is when the light is flashed over our lives what will be revealed?

Which brings me to my next point. Let your colors be beautiful. When I think about it, it always brings me back to the fruits of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness. Let these colors show. When people see our true colors let them see love and joy, patience goodness, all the fruits of the spirit. These should be our true colors. It’s not always a bad thing, it can be and actually is a good thing. Let it show, let it fly.

All this to say, be a good person, live right according to the word and will of God. Let you true colors be beautiful.

Reflection

1. When people see your true colors, what are they seeing?

Prayer Time

Talk to God about what we discussed today, Have a conversation with Him about your true colors, reveal to Him you heart and surrender to Him everything.

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 209!