“Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

I Peter 3: 8-9 ( NIV )

TURN IT AROUND

Our emotional pain can be so difficult to understand and bring under God's control. We want to turn our hurt into love, but just don't know how. Our natural instinct is to attack and hurt back or withdraw from the source of the pain.

I recently read that one of the marks of an individual's spiritual maturity is a growing understanding of, and appreciation for, the body of Christ. We can no longer be satisfied to sit on the fringes of a relationship with Jesus, to remain babes in Christ. He will not produce the spiritual maturity in us needed to turn our hurts into love while we sit passively on the sidelines. What would happen if each one of us made the decision to let Christ transform us, to offer our lives as a living sacrifice to Him? From what chains of hurt and bitterness could we be free?

I'd like to share part of a song,* which in the middle of one of my bouts with pain, jumped out and grabbed hold of me. “There's so much hurt and anger that we can't see anymore what we do to each other. We all long for the freedom of letting it go and loving our brother. Well I tried to move this mountain by my own strength and it's getting me nowhere. I've got to turn it over to the One who is love, to the One who is stronger. So turn and love, turn it around, turn the hurt into loving. Love can change the heart, time is right for the healing.”

God wants to do it in you.

JULIE LETTEER

* Turn and Love by Lisa Bevill