There are few things more powerful than personal peace and relational grace.  With the one, our hearts are made glad and with the other, we bring joy to others.

Obviously, something as powerful as this must be divine!

The truth is that love, as God designed it, is made for believing the best … about ourselves and others. Love that is born of God is entirely pure and extremely powerful.

Believing The Best … His Command, Our Commitment!

It is for this reason that we find this very clearly defined description in l Corinthians 13. The clarity is convincing and the expectation, though it may seem to be extremely high, is intended to empower us to live and love at the highest levels.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (l Corinthians 13:4-7)

Believing The Best … His Command, Our Commitment!

In making the commitment to live this out, we recognize that ‘believing the best’ is an undisputed ultimatum.

In choosing to offer this to others, it allows us to benefit as well.

Steven Handel, says it this way, “In forgiving others and being understanding of their behaviors, we open the door for being more forgiving of ourselves. Being gentler in our judgment of others, allows us to be gentler in our judgments of ourselves”.

Believing the best …

• Causes us to make a sincere effort to see things from a renewed perspective
• Calls on us to be active listeners, remaining open to new and different ideas
• Constrains us from taking personal offense

We have been called and commissioned to carry these things out. It is never easy, neither is it something that we can do alone.

Believing The Best … His Command, Our Commitment!

Taking this on changes everything in us … and in the lives of those around us … and that is a good thing … a very good thing!

Personal peace and relational grace await us!

-Terry