One Month To Live: Love Completely
Posted: August 14, 2011 at 5:00 pmLast week I shared the first part of the One Month to Live book series I picked up recently. The section discussed living passionately and included many great insights. You all seemed to enjoy it, so I decided to continue with part two this week. Let’s talk love!
God’s Love Helps Us Love Others: It takes a huge investment to give ourselves over to other people and care for them. Love carries a price – sacrificing your own desires at times, risking pain or disappointment, facing potential loss, and more. Loving is not easy. We need God’s help to go beyond ourselves and have the commitment to invest in our relationships fully.
We Need Others…But Challenges Will Happen: The most effective way to get through life is with a team of support from loved ones. However, just like sports teams or business teams, our relationships will have occasional conflicts and flare-ups. The most common scenarios include misunderstandings, a “me-first” attitude, and mistakes we all make that need forgiveness. Part of love is accepting others and not trying to change them. We all have qualities and faults that can present a problem or frustration to someone else. Focus on letting God change you instead of you trying to change other people.
Forgive: Without forgiveness we would drown in bitterness. Refusing to forgive others only hurts ourselves because we hold on to resentment and allow those hurting us to continue having the power. It is okay to be angry. It is even okay to be angry with God. However, we must find a way to express that anger in a healthful way so we can move on.
Action Required: Actions speak louder than words. Be sure your actions match up to the love you declare. Also, pay attention to actions that mean something to the other person. What does your spouse or friend really desire? Give what they need…not what you think they need.
Have an Attitude of Gratitude: What prevents us from noticing more of those everyday moments we have to feel thankful for? How often do we forget to thank God for the people in our lives..and to show them our appreciation? A simple thank you goes a long way.
Communicate: We have to communicate to have a relationship. Yet too often in today’s society effective communication gets lost in the hustle and bustle of life. We skimp on relationship time to be more “efficient” in life, but only end up hurting and longing for those connections God wants for us to have. How do we communicate? We listen intently. We share our time. We expose our hearts. We share our needs. We strive to understand. And God is like the satellite in that the more connected you are to Him, the clearer the signal to those with whom you communicate.
Gotta love love. Hope you enjoyed reading this week’s topic. See you in the morning!
- What do you think is the hardest for you to manage in relationships - misunderstandings, a “me-first” attitude, or mistakes needing forgiveness?
- What is the last loving action you showed someone? Keep it clean, people! 😉
Tags: faith, relationships
I made my parents and sister breakfast this morning before church! I am soo excited your reading this book! Every time I see the posts dedicated to it, I get really excited 🙂
I am so bad about forgiveness. I have a very very bad problem with holding onto things and not letting go, forgiving, and moving on. Definitely something I struggle with and need to focus on.
What lovely remarks. I so agree that you need to give people what they want instead of what you want to give them. Thanks for the wonderful reminders. Your blog is so honest and I love your devotion to your family.
ah what i wonderful post this is! i think my biggest struggle in relationships is actually openness.. knowing if i’m sharing too much or too little, being a burden or not opening up enough. i definitely have been trying to work on that but it’s still hard. and in terms of loving action, my best friend has been going through a lot lately and is really nervous to go back to school so i made her a little “happiness” pack of things that make me smile, or things i enjoy when i’m down, so she can bring it back to school with her!
I agree 100% with accepting God’s love to help us accept the love of others.
I just received my own little act of love from my boyfriend Will. I wrote a pretty deep post this morning (and my first boldly Christian post at that) and Will brought me flowers as a congratulatory gift. So cute 😀
LOVE this post! My husband loves nutella crepes so I surprised him with some when he woke up this morning! 🙂
Such good words! Well-spoken, and true. I usually struggle with misunderstandings – hope someone will read my mind, rather than being honest even when it requires bravery.
My most fun recent loving act – my husband has wanted an iPad for the longest time, but we said it would never happen (too expensive!). However, before we left for vacation, I cleaned out a ton of stuff we didn’t need and sold it on Ebay, then surprised him with the iPad we could now afford. So rewarding to see his face 🙂
That is awesome. What a great idea too.
I find it very difficult to communicate effectively. I’m always overreacting or (not) reacting at all. Oh well, I’m a work in progress!