I will share about Christian books I have read or listened to.
I will be sharing about my life before and after Christ. I will include stories about my pet and other pets I have encountered.
Loving Your Family
The word family can carry a lot of different meanings, depending on who you ask. But, the command to love your family comes straight from God.
In the Old Testament, the command to honor your father and mother was included in the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses for the people of Israel:
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
Exodus 20:12 NIV
As Paul, the author of Ephesians, is teaching the church in Ephesus about the implications of following Jesus, he repeats this command from the Ten Commandments. Paul knew that if we are to follow Jesus then we need to learn to love everybody, even those who are closest to us—and especially our own family.
Now, everybody grows up in different family circumstances. Some are born into nuclear families, some are raised in situations of brokenness, and others are welcomed into adoptive families. Regardless of how or where we grew up, God calls us to love those who raised us.
That may be a hard thing to do. Sometimes a family member seems like our greatest enemy because of how they’ve hurt us. But even in that, Jesus encourages us to love our enemies and pray for them.
While learning to love those who are closest to us may be one of the most difficult things we do, it is also one of the most life-changing. It increases our capacity to see and love others, as well as honor God with our life. Consider how you can take steps today to better love those God has placed in your life.
“Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem: and lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about. Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty ...
