Inspired to love

“Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own home. 

Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor . . .

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. 

Be the living expression of God's kindness; 

kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, 

kindness in your warm greeting."

- Mother Teresa

The holy-spirit has been convicting me recently about love; Phileo love, or in other words... brotherly love!

Looking into my past I am filled with guilt, and grief because of the choices that I made to judge certain people and to hate certain people.  Never did I do this to anyone's face....but in my heart, and in my mind I kindled an abhorrence for these individual people in my life. 

I let this hate grow and grow inside of me, until even hearing their names enraged me. 

NEVER in my life do I ever want to feel that again! 

I couldn't tell you why I hated these people so much, I didn't really have any good reason, only excuses. 

I knew in my heart that what I was feeling was wrong! and I knew that I wasn't reflecting the Attributes of Jesus Christ. BUT, my feelings tend to rule my life, so I continued to hold on to my anger. 

Then one day it all came together, what I knew in my head and what I felt in my heart. 

Where anger had ruled my feelings, God is now helping me replace with love. 

My first action was to repent and ask forgiveness from God, and then, to do the same to those people that I had sinned against. 

Not all of them did I expect to forgive me, not all of them did I expect to ever talk to again. 

But my heart is new and I'm full of hope, just like the new year, and the new fallen snow.

My dad quoted this verse at breakfast and it really fits my day..

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6)

And just a few other verses that stuck out to me..

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13:34) 

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ..." (1 John 4: 7-21)

"Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." (Philippians 2:3-4)

Blessings always <3