Loving one another

Dears in Christ,

A month back, a lady in my office wrote an unwarranted mail against me to my senior manager. Even though I had not done anything wrong. She wanted to complain against me, and she did. I was feeling angry with her, and decided never to speak with her ever again. Later though, she realized and apologized to my manager for sending the mail out.

And circumstances brought both of us together again, that only both of us had to work on a particular project. And again she took a chance to bring me down in front of my senior managers. She had previously spoken badly about me behind my back as well.

This time, I could not take, I seriously wanted to go and tell to my manager that I could not work with her anymore. Hatred and spite was overwhelming me. I knew it was no point pouring out this story to my colleagues, as they cannot do anything about it. So I decided to take it with Jesus. This evening, I started to talk with Jesus “Jesus, you know this lady in my office, I cannot take it anymore, do something about it.” I could not even finish this first sentence, when I felt a voice speaking to me saying, “Love her.”

I knew, that it is His usual way of saying, so I asked how could I love her? The voice carried on “I loved Judas, I loved the one who spat on my face, and I loved the soldier who nailed me to the cross, I loved the Pharisee who said that I was demon possessed. I loved the people who shouted, “Crucify him”, I loved the world.”

Though, it is difficult for each of us to love one another despite the harsh realities. Jesus had set a model for us. To quote Peter, “We do not follow, cleverly invented stories” we follow the truth which sets us free and asks as to love one another the way he loved us.

Dears in Christ, I write before you not as a perfect saint, but as a sinner who has been showered by his love. That kind of perfect love, that is unseen among mankind or unheard among nature, the love of Christ.

Let me conclude by narrating a true story by Corrie Ten Boom. This was her story; The Nazis tortured her and her sister Betsie during the Holocaust. Betsie unfortunately was killed in the concentration camp. Corrie became a missionary and took the word of God, preaching forgiveness. By chance, in the year 1947, after the holocaust was over, she came face to face with one of the Nazi who had tormented her.  This narrative tells us what happens to a person who has the love of God.

It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavy-set man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. …

And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. …“You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.

“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, …” his hand came out, … “will you forgive me?”

And I stood there — I whose sins had every day to be forgiven — and could not. Betsie had died in that place — could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. “I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us.”

“If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion — I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.

May God bless you and give you the power to Love.

Bro Gideon Paul Rufus

God’s love missions family