Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Accepting the Change in Others



Galations 5:13-15 For you have been called to live in freedom—not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But if instead of showing love among yourselves you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another. (NLT)

Paul’s letters to the Galatians was about receiving God’s blessing by  fully accepting Jesus for their salvation. Paul told them that in Christ we are all free—free to live under God’s grace. And in that freedom we have one responsibility: Love one another. As partners, family members, friends of someone struggling with addiction or poor behavioral choices, it can be hard to remember to love one another as ourself. Just as the Galatians struggled with how to accept non-Jewish converts into the fold, friends of survivors may struggle with how to accept those in recovery—how to trust them again, how to love them without being hurt, and how to believe that God is changing them. Change is hard for everyone involved in this healing process. But if we can remember to start by accepting God’s love for us, then maybe we can just love those in the process of transformation until we can trust and believe again.

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