- “Even if someone hurts your feelings, please forgive them with a serving heart. When you consider others better than yourselves, you can serve them.”
- “When we forgive our brothers and sisters, God, in turn, forgives us and guides us to heaven.”
- “Even when angry, one should have patience and endure, thinking first, ‘Will Heavenly Father find my demeanor pleasing or worrisome?’ ”
“Even if someone hurts your feelings, please forgive them with a serving heart. When you consider others better than yourselves, you can serve them.”
Among people, there are those with personality like a Cola bottle and a personality like a water bottle. A Cola bottle, when shaken, bursts open with a “pop,” spraying even those nearby. In contrast, a water bottle, though shaken, does not produce bubbles or trouble others. Let us not adopt a hasty and impatient personality like Cola but rather cultivate a calm and serene disposition like water.
“You, my brothers and sisters, . . . serve one another humbly in love. . . . If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit.” Gal 5:13–16
Within us, there coexists a sinful disposition that cannot resist impulses, leading to anger and the creation of discord, alongside that of God’s Holy Spirit. We must live by the Holy Spirit. Even if someone hurts your feelings, please forgive them with a serving heart. When you consider others better than yourselves, you can serve them.
“When we forgive our brothers and sisters, God, in turn, forgives us and guides us to heaven.”
True love involves forgiveness. When we forgive our brothers and sisters, God, in turn, forgives us and guides us to heaven (Mt 6:14–15). The Bible assures us that God will not judge us but will generously bless us like a good measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over, if we refrain from passing judgment on others (Lk 6:37–38). Parents reward their children when they please them. Therefore, to receive God’s bountiful blessings, we must strive to be good children.
“Even when angry, one should have patience and endure, thinking first, ‘Will Heavenly Father find my demeanor pleasing or worrisome?’ ”
God said, “If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Mt 6:14). Since God said that one must be born again to see heaven, in order to go to heaven, we must give up earthly desires and follow the Holy Spirit, transforming from a disposition of discord into that of harmony and unity.
Even when angry, one should have patience and endure, thinking first, ‘Will Heavenly Father find my demeanor pleasing or worrisome?’ To transform us from sinful beings into the beautiful image of God, He came to this earth. When we embrace the sacrificial heart of Christ, who, while being God, took on the form of a servant and became like a human, we can be united and enter heaven.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. . . . have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature[a] God, . . . rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. . . . he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! . . . it is God who works in you . . . Do everything without grumbling or arguing.” Php 2:3–16
