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“It’s easy to love others when we have no conflict with them.”

A thought by Jentezen Franklin from his book, Love Like You've Never Been Hurt: Hope, Healing and the Power of an Open Heart. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) 

Jentezen continues, “Or when we share the same viewpoints. Or the same theology. Or the same standard. It’s easy to love when marriage is in the honeymoon stage when our children act right all the time when we have our health and our happiness. But no one lives in that kind of state all the time.”

No, we don’t.

He goes on, “Jesus told us that in this world we would have trouble (John 16:33). In Matthew 18:7 (NKJV), He even says, ‘Offenses must come.’ Getting hurt is part of life. It’s inevitable. But that is not the end of the story.

“God does not want us to be the walking wounded. He intended for us to be healed and to be whole. He created us to love like we’ve never been hurt because that is what He does, and we are made in His image.”

“James Garfield had been the twentieth president of the United States for only four months when he was shot in the back on July 2, 1881, by a would-be assassin. He lived just under three months more. You would think it was the shot that killed him. It wasn’t.

“You see, the bullet did not penetrate any vital organs. It got stuck behind his pancreas, but it was not a fatal injury. But back then, doctors weren’t concerned about germs; they did not even believe they existed because they couldn’t see them. So minutes after President Garfield was shot, doctors pressed in around him to stick their fingers and push unsterilized instruments into his wound. They poked and prodded as far as they could in his body, hoping to find the bullet and remove it. They continued to do this for eighty days while President Garfield languished in the hospital. As we today would expect, this regular unsterilized digging worsened the president’s condition. He developed infections and eventually died."

Jentezen says,“I find it fascinating that President Garfield did not succumb to death because of the bullet wound. He died from the infections caused by doctors who kept probing the wound.

“Funny—we tend to do this with our own wounds. We replay the bad memories again and again. We talk about them repeatedly to anyone who will listen. We think of ways we can exact revenge. We poke and prod at our gaping wounds. In the process, we become bitter. Hardened. And, often, we withhold our love from those who need it most.

“But this is not how God wants us to live. He wants to give us a new beginning. A new story. A fresh start. He wants to heal what has been broken. He wants to reconcile what has been torn apart.”

Is that what you want, a fresh start?  If you do, then will you reach out to God and let him start the process of healing that which has been broken?  Will you?


Yes, yes!  

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