Tenderness

Matt.5:⁴⁴ (KJV) “…Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you…” [with emphasis].

The sixth way to deal with difficult people is to Respond With Love. To respond with love, you must remember two things; inspite of people’s behaviour or what they have done, in spite of how irresponsible or how saucy they are, God loves them. And He loves them passionately and completely. Secondly, God wants you to learn how to love them too even though they appear to be unlovable.

The starting point to responding with love for some of us reading this devotional today is to first forgive. God says to us, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you…” You may be familiar with what I am about to say next, but if you are not, then this is your chance. Unforgiveness is drinking poison and thinking someone else will die. Unforgiveness is poison and if you have it in your system, it will affect you. Guess what? The effects of this poison of unforgiveness transcend the spiritual into the physical.  You need to forgive.

I love to take on challenges that prove the Lordship of Jesus. One day, I saw a couple of my friends praying passionately for a lady to be healed of shingles. So, I jumped straight into the prayer session. I heard God tell me to ask the lady about her father. He said if she could forgive her father, the shingles would go. So, I stopped the prayers because I was excited that the solution had come. And in a not so direct way, I told her what God had said.

She responded as though a demon had possessed her. The story was that her father had abandoned their mother and they had suffered a lot. She had resolved never to forgive him and if the shingles were a punishment from God, then she was ready to die with the shame. She was the one suffering yet insisting on holding on to the poison of unforgiveness. Her father had probably moved on with another woman. Is it really worth suffering because of him and suffering with this illness? My friends continued praying but I left because it was pointless.

Prayer: Father, according to Your Word, forgive me for the wrongs I have done as I forgive the wrongs that others have done to me, in Jesus Name. Amen!