today's prayer

“May the LORD make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May He strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our LORD Jesus comes with all His holy ones” 1 Thess 3:12-13.

I can’t make my love increase and overflow. There are people I don’t want to love, people I don’t care to love. People I want absolutely nothing to do with. And I can’t love them. I need God to love them through me. It would be so much easier, so much less painful to just not. To just let them go. How do you know when to let them go? I have no idea. I thought I knew. I thought I was supposed to let them go. How could I let them continue hurting me? How could I keep being hurt by them, when history keeps repeating itself? How am I supposed to live with their best intentions and not read into anything? it’s really difficult. It’s impossible. And yet I find myself going back, feeling a surge of love for them. I know one should not act on their feelings, but when I feel prepared, when I feel strong, I go back. And I’m reminded.

‘The open secret of healthy spiritual growth is to know and settle upon this fact as set forth in Romans 8:28, 29 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.” When we see that all things are working together to make us more and more like the LORD Jesus, we will not be frustrated and upset when some of these “things” are hard, difficult to understand and often contain an element of death. We will be able to rest in our LORD Jesus and say to our Father, ‘Thy will be done’. And our constant attitude of faith will be: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”. (Job 13:15)’

I’m reminded how hard it is. That it needs to be hard, it needs to be destroying to myself because I need to be dead to myself in order to live of Him, with Him, with Him in me. And of course selfishness rears its ugly head. It usually does. And then I fail. Again. And that’s ok.
But LORD I have such a weak heart. I have the ability, on my own to love those who deserve to be loved. I can’t love those who have hurt me, who make me crazy, who try to constantly tear me down. But it is so easy to love You LORD. Will You give me more love? Will you push me further so that I may love more? Make me love more. Make me love those who I want nothing to do with. Make me see Your compassion for them. Let me love those who need to be loved. And keep me strong. Keep me safe. Keep me as Job, so regardless of how I am slain, I will trust in You.