Wednesday's In the Word

Need a little encouragement in the middle of your week? Start you Wednesday's off right! Renew your spirit and refresh your soul.

"Let love be genuine." That may seem like a tall order in this day. How do we genuinely love certain people if it would be a stretch to even say we like them? What if we love what is good about the person-hold fast to that. This might be the best area to be genuine with God in. Admit to Him the feelings we are having. Admit to Him our struggles to love them. Tell Him from our hearts the emotions we are feeling towards the other person. Maybe He is trying to teach us something through the tension.

We are called to abhor (hate or detest) what is evil. I think a good questions to ask ourselves is, "are the acts of other people that we dislike truly evil, or are they just a matter of a difference of opinion?" There is a difference. It seems to be a daily battle to roll our eyes at someone we don't agree with. To shove them to the wayside and think "your ideas are ridiculous, I am done with you." While that may be the way of the world, we are called to set a better example. Even if we shove those people to the side, the feelings still linger. Those feelings will be there whether the person is your friend or not. So when the world says be done with them, Jesus says love them with a genuine heart.

We all have good inside. So the next time our friends or coworkers do something we detest, doesn't mean we have to detest them. Hold fast to the positive. We never know what battle they are fighting and we never know what day our love and kindness could make the difference for them.