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Loving Spiky People!

Colossians 3: 12-17

V12   As chosen ones of God; Recall who you are: declared holy & greatly loved by God! Wow! What an honour! God sees your worth and His Word declares it! Receive it and believe it!

How?   By proactively doing some things: 

Be compassionate,

kind,

humble,

gentle,

patient,

bear with one another:  be patient with, show forbearance toward, make allowances for, tolerate, put up with, endure.

Forgive each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone;

Just as Jesus forgave you!

 

V 14  Put on love. Just as v12 says we are to put on a heart of compassion.

This is the perfect bond of unity. That's what Jesus prayed for His church. Its what attracts others to us! And it ushers us into the peace which is ours through Jesus.

 

How do we put on love or compassion when we feel anything but?

The answer is in v 15 and beyond:

1.     Let the peace of Christ rule your heart. Not your own emotions, self pity, sense of offence or outrage. Stop, focus afresh on Jesus' presence within you. Let His love flood into you again. Let the peace which He secured on the Cross that reconciles us with God, and us with one another, no matter what we have done! It's not natural! Oh no! Such a miracle of forgiveness, of acceptance of a wounder, or a thorn in our flesh, or an unlovely person, even an enemy, can only come through the grace Jesus releases into our hearts. It flows from His practicing this very love compassion, acceptance for us in the Cross! By the Cross we have been called to such radical peace in one Body, and therefore within our church.

2.     Be thankful. Look for what you can see in the one you judge to be thankful for! Speak it out to God, and maybe the person themselves!

3.     Let the Word of Christ well in you richly!

4.     Use wisdom and psalms, songs and spiritual songs to encourage one another as a community. Love will grow!

5.     Sing with thankfulness from your heart to God! Don't just speak out your thankfulness! Worship it out, using your whole being. Singing form the bottom of your lungs releases your spirit, and engages your whole soul and body.

6.     Whatever you do, ensure it is something of which Jesus would approve. That He would do Himself!

7.     And give thanks, yet again, that you can do it!!

 

Back to the beginning at verse 12.  We can't love others unless we love ourselves and know God's deep love for us in our own hearts. These verses are a cycle. As we stand with a certain knowledge of God's love for us, and put that into practise by loving others, especially the prickly, we in turn will grow in our understanding and the grace of God's love for us, which in turn will help us love others better, which in turn will help us grow in God's love, which in turn………!!

Love well! God, yourself and all others!