Train Your Heart

Compassion and mercy are not my strong suits. Seriously. I scored so low on them on my spiritual gifts test. I've always known that but somehow seeing your weaknesses on paper really cuts deep. One day my oldest son Noah told me, sarcastically, "Mom, you need to show love better. You're not very good at it."  Well if the low score didn't confirm it, getting majorly called out by my 10 year old certainly did. C'mon, of course I love people. I am just so honest, I keep it a little too real sometimes and I forget that other people, not only don't like it, but don't respond well to it. I don't want to be that wife, or mom or friend. That's not who I think I am, its definitely not who I want to be. I need to get my actions to match my words. Where's my follow though?!

So, I prayed about it. At first I argued, "that's just me" and God made me this way so its fine. Then I thought, I need to learn everyone's love languages that I know and learn to love them their way. Both of these thoughts are not wrong but the trick, God showed me, was combining them. Me and my gifts include having a strong vision to constantly push forward and to feel strongly convicted about, well, everything. These are me, and they are good qualities, gifts that God gave me with a great purpose. But I understand 1 Corinthians 13 now more than ever. Gifts without love are nothing. I prayed a lot on this. That God would give me wisdom for truth, that I would love others the way that He does and see them through His eyes and not mine. Then I prayed for opportunities to speak truth in love. He brought me friends searching for advice and prayers or maybe just a random text that He showed me was a divine appointment to be used by Him, to speak life. God also gave me the idea to send notes to some friends just simply telling them how great I think they are and that they are loved, encouraging them, praying for them. I called it Pass the Love. My goal was to be more intentional about saying the positive things I think. I want to speak life into my relationships. The world tells us all the time that we aren't good enough. We need more love spoken. We should never underestimate the power of encouragement. Or God's ability to use our tiny choices of obedience to bless someone. He gives us the words and the timing. God is crazy y'all! and I love that about Him. He's spontaneous and fun but always with purpose and never wasteful.

I want to be intentional like God. So I have to work out that muscle just like I would at the gym. If you want a specific muscle to grow, you have to push it, intentionally use it, break it down and build it back up and that's when it gets stronger. "{Watch over} your heart for everything you do flows from it" Proverbs 4:23 Train it. God is the best personal trainer. He gives help when we ask, He pushes us to more, he also gives rest and no one, friend, loves better than Jesus. He gave His life for you.

Tip: One prayer I pray everyday is to love God more. That simple. Mind blowing right?! I learned this from Beth Moore. But truly, because if I'm filled up with Him, it will overflow onto everyone around me. He is all I need. The more focused I am on Him, the more everything else just falls into place. I'll have love to give abundantly. I can learn to love better because apparently I'm not that good at it. Yet.