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The greatest miracle ever is the miracle of salvation! It’s the free gift of God, lest no one boast. We can’t earn our salvation. If we could be holy enough on our own.....Jesus wouldn’t have gone to the cross on our behalf. Religion is a trap. It’s the idea that God loves us so long as we don’t sin. So it leads us to fight to be holy so Jesus will love us. That leads to either.....self-righteousness or shame. That’s not love it’s manipulation. Jesus doesn’t love us if we love Him. He loves us p …

If someone loves you they will protect you. They are not perfect in love, but they will want to be. They won’t defend their selfishness. They will fight to protect you at all cost. They would prefer to pay the price then to see you pay the price for sin. If they hurt you, they will not make excuses. They will regret it and be quick to repent. If we love someone we will protect them, and if someone loves us they will protect us. If we love, we are more concerned with protecting then we are being …

The second sign someone may love you is that they will be kind. Love is kind, but kind is not always nice. Kindness never wants to hurt you, but more than kindness doesn’t want to hurt you, it wants what is best for you. If someone loves you, and it comes down to them telling you what is best for you or telling you what you want to hear, they will tell you what is best for you. Even if it may cost them their relationship with you. If someone is really kind they won’t just be kind to you. They wi …

Though we are created to be loved and to love, we only control whether or not we love. God loves us, but we don’t control if others love us. If others love us, then it’s easier for us to love. If others don’t love us, then it’s harder for us to love. But loved or not, our purpose is fulfilled in loving not being loved. Romans 12:1-5 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worsh …

It’s not loving to knowingly allow people with no intention of changing to keep running over you. That’s selfishness. Love does trust and seeks truth, and if people are truly repentant after failing, then love trusts again and again. We all fail - often even when love rules our life. We have a responsibility to seek the truth and pray and decide if someone is really in the fight to live a loving life. If they are, we should trust God, pray for them, and give them a second chance. Trusting someon …

Bullying as we all know is an attempt to manipulate other people. It’s an effort by people to get what the bully wants without regard for other people. A bully is someone who either willingly rejects the truth or doesn’t know the truth. They are unwilling to change and won’t listen to truth that suggest they should. Either way, they don’t feel safe standing for the truth fearing it will cost them too much. So they attempt to manipulate and control others by overwhelming power, shame, or the thre …

What matters most is what we believe. Love requires we seek and believe the truth. Fear wants us to believe what we feel. Whatever we believe will guide our lives. Our beliefs are the rudder on our ship. We don’t need to figure out why the truth doesn’t fit our beliefs and bend the truth to fit our beliefs. We need to figure out why our beliefs don’t fit the truth and change our beliefs to fit the truth. The truth is not hard to find but it takes courage to seek it. It’s found by asking “why” th …

Maybe the biggest struggles we face is the struggle to know what is God and what is our own feelings. If we are asking that question though, I believe we are in a good place, because many times we don't have to ask. We know what is right and just don't want to do it. When we are unsure, we should wait and pray until we are confident in the next move we should make. We can know God won't lead us with fear, He doesn't want us to follow signs, and while we wait we should make sure we are giving Him …

Feelings are real and they are for a reason. They are also valid, but more than anything they are misleading. Sometimes our feelings lead us to the truth, but more often than not, if we follow them we will be led astray. Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? Proverbs 28:26 Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered. 1 John 3:20 For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our hea …

Fighting to be loved is a trap. It’s not loving others....it’s using others to love us. If I fight for you to love me, then I won’t tell you when you’re selfish or try to stop you from being selfish, because that may hurt my chances of being loved by you. If I love you I will tell you...as kindly as possible.... when you may need to change, even if it means you may not love me. Loving to be loved is called enabling or co-dependency. Loving to be loved is not love. It’s selfishness. The answer is …