glorycloud's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We Love Because We Love Because Why are we so hard with “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) Maybe one of the biggest sins in our relationships with one another is the sin of forgetting. It is so easy to forget how profound your need for grace is, and it is equally easy to forget the amazing grace that has been freely showered upon you. And when you forget the grace you’ve been given, it becomes very easy to respond to the people around you without grace. A joyful life of grace toward others grows best in the soil of gratitude. When I reflect on who I am, when I take time to consider the grace that I couldn’t have earned, achieved, or deserved but which has been lavished on me, and when I remember that that grace came at the cost of the life of another, then I am joyfully motivated to give that grace to others. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32) For the believer, harsh, critical, impatient, and irritated responses to others are always connected to forgetting or denying who we are and what we have been given in Jesus. No one gives grace better than a person who is deeply convinced of their own need of it and who is cogently aware of the grace they have been, and are being, given. “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” (2 Peter 1:5-9, ESV) God bless, Paul David Tripp 10:29 a.m. - 2021-11-11 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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