Loving and Forgiving

Growing up and living with parents, stepparents, adoptive parents or those close by can create not only the personality but also the thinking mind of an individual. 

If you're blessed with having loving people around you, the love of God will make you respond positively with hugging, kissing, and godly love. But even if the people around you are controlling, dominating, and abusive, your faith in God will still help you respond positively even to the negative people around you. 

Why and how?

God says you should not only honor your father and mother (Exodus 20: 12) but also obey them. Your obedience may not immediately lead to their love and approval, but it will lead to the help of the Holy Spirit in changing them ultimately. Remember, God is a father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5). So, surrender your will to God, and let the Holy Spirit work in your heart throughout your life through God's Word. 

Forgiving your loved ones for their abuses and wrongdoings is everything. Accept them as who they are with their imperfections, and cultivate your love, compassion, and forgiveness no matter what. 

So, continue to focus on your own relationship with God to experience your own healing. Your faith in God gives not only your salvation and hope but also the repentance of your loved ones. Yes, as a believer, you could be the light that leads to your unsaved and wayward loved ones to their own repentance and salvation too. God can do just about anything and everything in your life. With God's love, you just wait and be patient, with neither anger nor rage toward those negative people around you. 

But without God's love, an unbeliever could become so obsessed with the things that he or she loves that leads to an irrational act. 

An Illustration

A 10-year-old boy shot and killed his mother on November 21, 2022. The boy allegedly claimed that he took the gun from his mother's bedroom and went down to the basement where his mother was doing her laundry. Initially, he claimed that he was "twirling" the gun around his fingers when it went off and accidentally killed his mother.

But, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the boy later confessed that he carried out the heinous act out of his irrational anger after his mother refused to buy him a VR headset. Members of his family further revealed the boy's many previous episodes of erratic anger behavior, such as setting fire at home and causing an explosion when his mother refused and rejected his demands. 

Even while being interrogated by the FBI, the boy surprisingly asked if his VR headset had arrived or not--the one that he ordered from Amazon the day after the death of his mother. 

Without faith, the boy just loved his things more than people, including his own mother. 

Stephen Lau