You cannot do it perfectly. But you are not alone in the attempt. God never gave you a commandment without also giving you help to carry it out. The Holy Spirit is that help. And learning to depend on Him is how imperfect people give the most extraordinary love the world has ever seen. We have covered a lot of ground this week. Four types of love. Match them to the right relationship. The giving versus receiving distinction. The commandment to Agape love unconditionally. And

Because Agape love was never designed to be easy. It was designed to be unconditional. And unconditional love, by definition, cannot have a condition that says I will only do this when it feels good. The commandment is the commandment regardless of how the other person is behaving. We have spent this week building a framework. Four types of love. Match them to the right relationship. Understand that giving love can cost you something while receiving real love should not hurt

Because they are giving you what the relationship was designed to carry. And you may be expecting something the relationship was never built to hold. When you match the right type of love to the right relationship, the confusion and disappointment start to make a whole lot more sense. We have been building something this week. We looked at the difference between giving and receiving love and why one can hurt while the other should not. We looked at the four Greek types of lov

Check whether it is based on what you feel or what you do. The highest form of love in Scripture is less about emotion and more about demonstrable action. And the reason so many of us are confused about love is that English only gives us one word for something the Bible describes with at least four. Yesterday we talked about the difference between giving love and receiving it. Today I want to pull back even further and look at the foundational question. What is love actually

Because there is a difference between giving love and receiving love. And Scripture is actually very specific about which one can hurt and which one never should. Once you see that distinction, a lot of painful experiences in your life are going to start making more sense. We talk about love like it is one thing. We use one word for all of it. The way you love your mama, the way you love your spouse, the way you love your best friend, the way you love God, the way God loves y

Spiritually, physically, and relationally. Unforgiveness is not a neutral place to stay. It is actively costing you something every single day you hold it. And the person you are trying to punish by withholding forgiveness is not the one paying the highest price. You are. We have been with Eric all week. His wife and unborn child killed in a car crash caused by a driver named Matt, a twenty year old firefighter who fell asleep at the wheel after a twenty four hour shift. We h

Because replaying it usually means the forgiveness is still in process, not that it failed. Forgiveness is not a single moment. It is a decision you make and then keep making until the hold is gone. And there are a few things you might still believe about forgiveness that are quietly keeping you stuck in the replay. We have been with Eric all week. His wife and unborn child killed by a driver in a car crash. His nineteen-year-old daughter surviving. And now we know the driver

It doesn't. Forgiveness and justice are two different things and they can both exist at the same time. God never asked you to choose between them. What He did ask is that you release the debt, even while other things are still being addressed. We have been walking through Eric's story this week. His wife and unborn child were killed in a car crash caused by another driver. Yesterday we cleared out a long list of myths about what forgiveness is not. Today I want to deal with t

It does not mean what culture told you it means. And if you have been trying to do culture's version of forgiveness and failing, that is not a faith problem. That is a definition problem. Let's fix the definition. We left off yesterday with Eric, a pastor whose wife and unborn child were killed in a car crash caused by another driver. His nineteen-year-old daughter survived. We asked whether Eric should forgive the driver. And we looked at Stephen, who forgave the people ston

Because culture handed you a version of forgiveness that is almost impossible to actually do. And then told you that if you can't do that version, you haven't really forgiven. No wonder it feels impossible. The good news is that God's version of forgiveness looks very different from what most of us were taught. I want to tell you about a man named Eric. In October 2006, Eric received a phone call with devastating news. His wife, who was 30 years old at the time, and his unbor

Exactly as it is. The messy parts, the parts you are ashamed of, the parts you have never said out loud, all of it. Not in spite of those things but because of them. Your story does not just give God glory. It magnifies it. And there is a difference. We have spent this whole series looking at who God actually chooses to use. The last. The small. The ones with the jacked-up past. The ones who were overlooked, written off, behind, or disqualified in the world's eyes. And the qu

Because their armor was not made for you. The moment you try to walk in what God gave someone else, you stop being able to move in what He gave you. Comparison does not just steal your joy. It stalls your purpose. It is so easy to do. You see someone else operating in their gift and it looks so polished, so effortless, so impactful. And then you look at what you are carrying and it feels small by comparison. Maybe they have a bigger platform. Maybe their gift is more visible.

Being behind is not the same as being finished. David walked into the most uneven fight in the entire Bible carrying a slingshot and five smooth stones, and he won. Not because his weapons were impressive. Because he used what God had already been faithful to him in. That is still available to you right now. You look around and it feels like everyone else is further along. They have the platform, the following, the opportunity, the open doors. And you are still here, doing th

No. And Scripture does not just say that gently. It proves it repeatedly, loudly, and with some of the most unlikely people you will ever read about. Your past is not a disqualifier. For God, it is often exactly the thing that qualifies you. This is the question a lot of us carry but do not say out loud. We have been in church. We have been saved. We love God. And still, somewhere in the back of our minds, we have a running list of things we have done that we quietly believe

He can. And He tends to do His best work through the people who look the least likely from the outside. That is not an accident. That is a pattern. And it runs all through Scripture and all through history. Maybe you have been sitting on the sidelines for a while. Watching other people get used, get seen, get chosen. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet thought has settled in that sounds something like this. Maybe it is not my turn. Maybe I am too behind. Maybe I a

A lid that is no longer there. A rope that has already been removed. A pair of ruby red slippers you forgot you were wearing. The thing holding you back is not your circumstances, not your past, and not God's withholding. It is a perception that has not yet caught up with your redemption. And today we are taking the lid off for good. We have spent this whole series looking at the lenses we carry and how they fog up what we see. We looked at how our cultural lens shapes every

Because you are still jumping like the lid is on. Christ removed it. But if nobody ever told you the lid was gone, or if you have been hitting it so long that your body just adjusted, you will keep limiting yourself to a jar that has no ceiling anymore. You know God has more for you. You believe it. You have confessed it. You have prayed about it. And yet here you are, in what feels like the same place, the same ceiling, the same invisible wall that you cannot quite push past

Because it is. The Bible calls you to live by a completely different set of rules than the ones your culture handed you. And when those two sets of rules collide, it is going to feel like you are rowing against the current. That is not a sign something is wrong. That is a sign you are taking the Word seriously. If you have been walking with God for any length of time, you have probably felt this tension. The world tells you one thing and Scripture tells you something that sou

The Bible was written in a different time, a different culture, and a different language. When you read it through a 21st century Western lens, some things are going to feel confusing or disconnected. That is not a faith problem. That is a lens problem. And the good news is, lenses can be cleaned up. You open your Bible expecting clarity. You know the stories. You have heard them your whole life. And yet sometimes you walk away from a passage feeling more confused than when y

You are not seeing situations objectively. Nobody is. Every person on this earth interprets everything through a lens that is 100% unique to them, and until you understand that your lens is not the same as everyone else's, you will keep having the same misunderstandings and wondering why. You know the feeling. Something happens in a conversation, or someone says something, or somebody looks at you a certain kind of way, and you are absolutely convinced you know what it meant.