Extra Grace Required | By Pastor Rick Warren, Open Doors Devotional

"Ask God to bless those who persecute you - yes, ask him to bless, not curse."

                                                                                                     Romans 12:14

We all have EGRs people who come with Extra Grace Required-in our lives. They annoy us, anger us, frustrate us, and test us. But they also help us grow. God calls us to bless people who cause us the most trouble. How much more is this true for those who only annoy us?


Do what's right, no matter what the EGRs in your life do. If they insult you, treat them with kindness. If they wear on your nerves or they're too slow for your pace, treat them with patience.


You cannot control what other people think about you. You cannot control what other people do to you. But you do have 100 percent control over how you respond.


You might be completely within your rights to retaliate, but Jesus calls you to take the higher ground, for it is where you're given a clear perspective. When you take the high ground, you can see past a person's actions to their pain. When you take the high ground, you rise above the irritation and the conflict, choosing to keep the peace. You might have the perfect comeback to put them in their place, but Paul tells us to lift them up, not to cut them down.


Maybe you are thinking, "I don't have anybody persecuting me." Cross out the word "persecute" and replace it with "irritate." Ask God to bless the people who irritate you. Instead of asking God to judge them, ask him to bless them. This is what real love look: like. Real love doesn't just love people who are lovable; real love loves the unlovable. Real love is patient with th irritable people in your life.
 

God empowers us to love even those we find hard to love.

 

Extra Grace Required – Elmvale Community Church

Popular posts from this blog

Out of the Darkness....Into the Light! By Patrick McGinnis

Image
  So, if you recall from last week’s post, a few days prior to landing in the hospital a few weeks ago, Stephanie and I were enjoying God’s amazing underground creation of Linville Caverns, near Linville Falls, North Carolina. It was incredible! So many colors, formations, textures, blind trout, and a “bottomless” lake, which without realization we stood directly over on a narrow walkway, until the tour guide informed us of our position! It was all quite remarkable! The coolest experience, though, was when we went as far into the caverns as was passable. Beyond that, the ceiling quickly reduced to approximately 18” and stayed that way for ½ mile before opening up into another series of caverns. Fun fact! According to the tour guide, in the late 1800’s Thomas Edison traversed that ½ mile of 18” tall crawl space, through several inches of water, in search of platinum necessary for the invention of the light bulb! He didn’t find any, but he did sign the wall of the cavern. Another fun
Read more

Advanced Recovery : A Prelude To Relapse | By Durrell J. - Celebrate Recovery at University Carillon

  “If we stay in the basics, we never have to go back to basics.” That phrase came to me after I had relapsed from over a year of continuous sobriety, and almost 18 months into my recovery. “Relapse is entirely preventable” is the lesson I learned from that experience, and I’m now living that lesson out one day at time. If we are consistent in working our program with our recovery tools, accountability partners, our sponsors, and our Higher Power: Jesus Christ - we will find consistent sobriety and growth in our recovery. If our work is inconsistent however - missing meetings, skipping Daily Inventory, cutting short our prayer time, white-knuckling in isolation - our sobriety and recovery will be inconsistent. We get the results we're working toward. The practices laid out here are simple and straightforward - just the same as the Lord spoke to King Solomon in 1 Kings 9 . God made it plain to Solomon that if he continued to honor and love God, that the Lord would cont
Read more

We're All In | By Pastor Tullian Tchividjian

The word “Recovery” brings to most minds people in recovery programs for things like alcohol or drug abuse, eating disorders, anger management, sexual addiction, those sorts of things. Yet the truth is that we’re all in recovery. We’ve all been hurt and disappointed, we’ve all experienced the disillusionment of unmet expectations, we all have fears and insecurities, we’ve all felt unloved and rejected in some way. And therefore, we all have unhealthy relationships with something or someone we depend on to soothe the pain—to make us feel strong, secure, safe, important, loved, in control. We’re all attached to something we think we need to be happy and content. Your addiction may not be alcohol, but it may be getting approval. It may not be getting high, but it may be getting respect. It may not be sex, but it may be getting attention for the way you look or for your professional achievements. It may not be food, but it may be financial stability. It may not be nicotin
Read more