Avoiding a Family Feud

Avoiding a Family Feud

by Diana Scothorn

With the busy Thanksgiving and Christmas Season ahead, along with work schedules, life often becomes intense. It’s easy to get wrapped up in my “to-do” instead of being wrapped up in Jesus, the reason for this season.

People need to see Jesus in this season. I’ve learned to purposely look for people who may be…

…lonely and have no family during Thanksgiving. The people who often seem the hardest to love, are the ones who need love the most.

It’s a perfect season to practice love. 1 John 4:7-8

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

God is Love, His Love is Perfect, His Love is Never Ending, and His Love will Never Fail. One of my deepest desires is to be perfected in love.

The Bible instructs us to love one another deeply. (1 Peter 4:8) To acquire PERFECT LOVE, you must PRACTICE LOVE. I’ve learned there’s a lot of opportunity to “practice love”, especially in this season.

To practice means to be habitual with the performance of what you’re practicing. It means you’re exercising to acquire skill and proficiency in a specific area. It’s a skill to be proficient in love.

When you’re skilled, you’re trained, developed, and perfected through experience. When you’re proficient, you’re well advanced and skilled. The opposite of proficient would be deficient, which means lacking—lacking what?… PRACTICE.

Any skilled athlete or professional requires discipline and habits to achieve success, and the same is true with love.

It’s hard to find perfect love when we lack experience practicing love. I remember desperately wanting to find my “perfect love,” yet I was deficient in love. I didn’t even like myself, let alone love myself. It’s hard to find something when you don’t know what it looks like.

We have a world filled with people searching for love, yet, deficient in love. With that in mind, there’s a world filled with opportunities to practice love.

We have to exercise our “love muscle” if we want it to be able to lift the weight of unlovely people and be skilled in loving the people we’re in relationships with daily. When we advance in loving people, God will see we’re faithful in order to advance us in our relationships.

It takes relationships for every successful venture we encounter.  That includes marriage, business, and ministry! I’ve learned I have to start with my husband and family before God can trust me with influence in other areas.

I’ve had to practice giving when others don’t give back.  It takes practice not to receive offense, as well as to let go of negative or derogatory remarks. It takes practice to refrain from having the last word, and this is something I’m still practicing!

My husband and I have made it a habit to pray for those who have wronged us. If we pray and bless the ones who have treated us wrong, Jesus will make everything turn out right!

Although there are times it may seem as if our love is of no avail, God promises that even if the odds appear to be against us, His perfect love will never fail in our time of need!

Love is a skill that is perfected through Jesus. Anything we desire to be good at takes repetition to be perfected because a life worth living is a life worth loving!