So things have been insanely busy for me lately and this poor blog has suffered for it! Thank you all for being so patient with me during this new season of my life :) 

I am very excited today to share a guest post with you all that Cari from A Writing Maiden wrote. What a sweet spirit she has and I encourage you all to check out here blog for more encouragement. 

The Lord has made us to be creatures with souls and emotions, like Himself.  With this comes a desire for friendship and relationship.  But, so often, we can easily develop negative feelings towards people: anger, bitterness, envy, jealousy.  Even in our own families, it can be easy to find fault and to get in arguments.

I'd challenge you to consider: we live for a very short time.  We will soon be dead.  It is a simple fact of life, and we do not have long upon this earth to really love each other.  Our lives should be focused on preferring others, and serving the Lord, but instead, we easily get caught up in what other people are doing and how they compare to ourselves.  Our lives should be taken over with a servant's heart, but in reality our hearts want to serve ourselves.

I believe the Lord has been teaching me recently about how I view and treat those in my own family.  If someone does not do something up to the standard I would wish, I sometimes get upset with them.  I think I am trying to confront them in a biblical way, pointing out their faults in love, but that is not really the case.  In reality, I think I was really just trying to convict them of what I thought were sins in their lives (and they may have been).  But, I was not pointing anything out with biblical love.  I was irritated with them, and was just trying to get them to change into how I wanted them.

They may have faults, and sins they are struggling with, but you see, God does not call me (or anyone else) to be the Holy Spirit.  It is not our jobs to convict people of their wrongdoings.  That is not to say we can never point them out.  But, for single young ladies like myself, I think we should really be striving to focus wholly on the Lord and OUR relationship with HIM.  Instead of focusing on others' shortcomings, we should be focusing on our own, and repenting from them.

I might easily avoid something which another struggles with each day.  And that is their struggle, which the Lord will work with them on.  He doesn't need my help; He knows fully what He's doing, and what is the best approach for that person.  I might not struggle with that thing they're struggling with, but I have many other struggles.  And my struggles are not theirs.

I think it's important to have understanding for each other and I believe that is a part of having brotherly love.   Romans 12:10 "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor;" We need to understand that we are each going to have a different walk, and we are each going to have our own unique struggles.  I believe this is where forbearance comes in as well. 

I know I still do not completely grasp all of this; it is all so profound (not what I'm saying, but what I was trying to explain).  The way God's love works, and the way He wants us to live is so complex even in its simpleness.  I really think I'm just scratching the surface of the iceberg in what I'm learning now, and when I die, I really think I'll only have made a small dent.  Even when I begin to think I know what love is, I'm just catching a small beam of it, and looking at it in awe, when the whole of it is so magnificent and bright in its glory.

"Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

May the Lord be praised!  He is patient with us, even when He looks down here to earth and sees us messing up our relationships, and blundering around with clouded vision.  He loves us anyways, and He is still willing to teach us, over and over again, how to love like He does.  He is patient with our feeble efforts to understand Him and His love - He is awesome!  His might is really unspeakable, isn't it?  "For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods." Psalm 96:4