Love Always Wins

We know a woman who committed her life to God after she and her husband married. Although her husband wanted nothing to do with God or church, she was always compassionate toward him. Her overwhelming desire was to see him receive God’s free love and forgiveness through Jesus.
 
We were amazed when we visited with her. She never spoke unkind words about him even though he was sometimes insensitive toward her. She always got tears in her eyes and said, “All I want is to know that one day, when he dies, he will go to heaven and not hell.”
 
She was grateful for him continually and would never complain about him or their marriage. She also invested time each day praying for other people’s marriages. It wasn’t long before he asked Jesus into his heart and now is close with God himself!
 

This wife is a great example of how we are able to choose our own thoughts and words; our circumstances don’t have to dictate them. When we make a conscious choice to forget the past and let go of wrongs done to us, we’re then able to focus on receiving God’s love and bringing out the best in others. When we do these two things—meditate on what we have to be thankful for today and declare God’s Word—we are truly able to reach forward to the good things God has in store for us. As the Apostle Paul said,

 

I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. (Philippians 3:13b-14 NLT)

 

You may be asking yourself, “Is it really possible to forget bad things that have happened to me?” According to 2 Timothy 1:7, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” When we look at Scripture, we find one key to healing our hearts of wrongs done to us (as well as forgiving ourselves for anything we’ve done) is receiving God’s love.
 

We receive God’s love by putting our faith in His promises, then we can make the choice to love others by faith, even if we don’t feel it at the moment. The first step of being healed of past hurts is forgiving a person by faith, and God’s love helps us do this. Let’s look again at Ephesians 3:14-19:

 

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant to you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

 

Often when people read this passage, they assume the “saints” mentioned above is simply a reference to godly people here on earth, but it isn’t. The Hebrew word for that kind of saint is used in Psalm 116:15 which states, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” The word used here for “saints” means “godly man, good, holy (one), merciful.”[i]
 
However, in Ephesians 3 the word translated as “saints” specifically refers to “God, an angel, a saint, a sanctuary.”[ii] This means Paul is praying for believers to be grounded in and understand all forms of God’s love just like God, His angels, and the saints who already live with Him in heaven! You may be wondering, what does this have to do with not meditating on wrongs done to me? Everything!
 
When Shaun was preparing to preach the message for his mother’s memorial service years ago after she moved to heaven, it was clearly put on his heart to tell people they should focus on thinking about the good things they had done for his mom during her life here on earth, rather than thinking of any regrets.
 
Colossians 3:2 encourages us, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” Everything in heaven is good and lovely because God is the focus of heaven and He is good and loving. People in heaven think only of the good and loving memories from earth now that they are with Him, therefore we also can choose to be heavenly minded and only look for the good in people. We are able to do this more and more as we “know the love of Christ which passes knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19).
 
In the presence of God, who is love, there is no desire to meditate on hurts from the past or flaws in a person’s character. Even when Jesus hung on the cross He said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). When a person truly experiences God’s unconditional love in life, they passionately desire to show God’s love to those around them so others can experience His goodness.
 
You may have heard the old adage “If you choose to remain in your pain, you will stay the same.” We would like to add to this, “If you choose to meditate on what is right, you will be a pillar of God’s light!” The truth is – anyone can find imperfections in people. Some people look for faults in others like they think they’re going to get rewarded for it, but this brings no reward! It comes with a great price tag! The real talent in relationships is choosing to look past mistakes and focus on the good in others.
 
In love,
Pastors Shaun & Amy

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