Growing In Grace

I am learning that in every situation in life we must always come back to the gospel, and that this is especially true in interpersonal relationships. Most of our lives are spent in relationship with other people, and since no two people on earth are going to be able to agree on absolutely every issue conflict is a natural part of every relationship. I want to look at some practical ways that the gospel should change how we as believers interact with other people, but first we need to consider a few foundational principles. We are all creatures of habit. Some fight against this more than others, but to some degree we all have our little routines that we can't live without. Perhaps some would try to argue that this is not the case for them because they intentionally avoid routine, but avoidance would still be classified as a routine. Since we are creatures of habit, for the most part, we are going to continue to resort to many of the same thought and action patterns that we have

For many years, having grown up in the church, I had always read and understood Jesus' words in John 14:15 in what seemed to be a pretty straightforward way. In that verse Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey my commandments." These words were so important to the Apostle John that he repeated them in his epistles numerous times (1 John 3:23, 1 John 5:2-3 & 2 John 5). It seemed plain enough to me, that if we really love God then we will prove it by obeying what He commanded of us. Maybe many of you have had similar thoughts regarding these verses. Jesus Himself said that the greatest commandment was to love God and the second greatest commandment is like it, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Naturally we realize that the greatest commandments were summary statements and that the implications of them are quite far reaching. Elsewhere Jesus would say that the love believers are to have for one another should cause the world to recognize that we are His disciple