The Lord has been so gentle this week. He has restored broken relationships and taken great care to protect my heart.
This week the Lord restored broken relationships within my team on many levels. He reconciled relationships that have been strained for quite some time and strengthened ones that have been weak.
Thee ugliness of my heart came out quite a bit this week. We all have ugliness and brokenness the Lord longs to heal and redeem in us and this was a week the Lord put the pressure on some of the brokenness in me so my ugliness would surface. I did not like this one bit. I did not like being a jerk and not really knowing what to do with it or how to be better. I did not like getting upset over the little things and I did not like snapping and having an attitude with my teammates over little things.
The Lord calls us to love one another sincerely, from a pure heart. This means to love in action, but also with the heart. Acting lovingly towards someone with hatred in my heart is not loving at all, but sometimes I just don't know how to do this.
"Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God."
1 Peter 1:22-23
I believe this is partially why the Lord is allowing this to come up. He doesn't want to change my behaviors without changing my heart. Though there has been ugliness, the Lord has shown such great love for me through my team. Through my ugliness, my team has responded so kindly towards me. They have shown me so much grace and allowed me to fail so God can make me better. They have listened to my frustrations and loved me through my shortcomings. This has been such a beautiful example of grace and my heart has felt so cared for through it all. Because of the patience and love my team has shown me especially this week, I realized my heart is much more hopeful that I can change and be better than this. The Lord will not relent until He has it all and He will not relent until I look like His Son and reflect His glory.
