Friday’s Wrap-Up

How quickly the week flies! It’s that time again, it’s Friday; time to take a pause and review the blessing of yet another week.

• While life can be difficult, we find relief as we live between “a rock and a God place!” He is our Rock, we are not in this battle alone.
• I will never, ever, NEVER again oversleep on a "Wednesday’s with Beth" morning! While I have received the discs I ordered through Life Today, they are not DVD’s—they are audio CD’s! Now, don’t get me wrong, I love hearing Beth Moore, but as I sat listening to Part Three of Loving a Difficult Person, I missed seeing her visual energy. However, I will share just a few of the Beth Moore-ism’s I listened to this morning! To love a difficult person, we must:

1. Know and rely on God’s love for us. When we try to love with a natural love, we burn out. When we fill up with God’s agape love, we can love supernaturally.
2. We must fill up our hearts with God’s love. Remember the canteen analogy? Are we daily dumping out the toxic water we fill our canteens up with and replacing them with God’s love?
3. Learn to love with insight: “Hurt people….hurt people.” “Misery loves misery.” When we try to love the handicapped heart without God’s insight, it is as if we are expecting a person in a wheelchair to get out and jump around. It can’t be done. Consequently, we must rely on God for insight. Philippians 1: 9-11: “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.” When we struggle to love the unlovable, we must go to God for insight, discernment, and knowledge. While we can’t change them, however, we can deepen our understanding supernaturally.
   
   If you love a prodigal, this lesson is a valuable tool. So many times, we teeter between aiding and abetting (enabling) and helping. What’s the difference, we ask? How can we love our prodigals without hindering the lessons they must learn to return? Philippians 1:9-11 gives us the answer. Test each effort to help through the filter of God’s insight, His discernment and His knowledge! This allows us to love our prodigals with agape love: the love that is other centered, with only their best interest at heart. This, my friends, is a very fine distinction. For, when we love through natural abilities only, we miss the more powerful insights and knowledge; we sometimes get in God’s way of the work He is doing in the life of our prodigal. We want to be partners with Him, not stumbling blocks! As Beth reminds us, “We will never be more like our Father in Heaven than when we love the unlovable.”
   

• There’s a kind of hush at my place today! My son is on day two of the med’s the Dr. prescribed. He is sleeping much better, his mind has decreased in it’s racing, and there is a calmness about him that hasn’t been present for awhile. Peace, peace, God’s peace! Psalm 29:11 “The LORD gives strength to his People; the LORD blesses his people with peace.” What a faithful God we serve! I am resting in His love and faithfulness.
  
  Wrapping up this pause in our week, I have been blessed! Your faithful visits, your compassionate comments and your prayer warrior hearts have truly been a blessing this week! Hence, the songs I find myself humming as I type! From my lips to God's ears:
  

“He drew [us] up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set [our] feet upon a rock, making [our] steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.”

Psalm 40: 2-3


Have a great weekend! AND keep singing!