- John 13:34 (NIV): “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another”.
- John 15:12 (NIV): “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you”.
- 1 John 4:7 (NIV): “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God”.
- Romans 12:10 (NIV): “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves”.
- Ephesians 4:32 (NIV): “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you”.
- I have been thinking on the above scriptures and I began to see my thinking was a bit distorted when it came to words like, “just as in Christ God forgave you. Love others like He loves me! Honor others above myself!” Does anyone else have troubling thoughts about such language? I realized I need to gently rubber band stretch my distorted thinking.
- I paused to think on the gentleness of Jesus when He would respond to others that might have been church pew sitting with me for years.
- The Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in John 4 had a mind-action changing experience after a conversation with Jesus. Jesus and the nameless woman defiled social, gender, and racial barriers by communicating an offer to her of God’s living water
- Jesus responded to her, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”
—John 4:10 (CEB)
In a Morning Devotion I read; “The kind of drinking that Jesus invites us to is not the polite, sipping from our teacups with pinkies extended kind of drinking. It’s a drinking that drenches us, that causes rivers of living water to flow out of our hearts.” By Jan L. Richardson, In the Sanctuary of Women: A Companion for Reflection and Prayer
Today, we are told by religious leaders, politicians, news shows as well as neighbors, family and friends we are broken apart and shattered rather than whole and healed.
Seems to be true but not hopeless when I allow these scriptures to change my way of thinking!
thedailylily.com 