For the past few days (since my last blog post) I’ve really been focusing on aspects of my life that I’m not sure I like anymore, things I wish were different, and things that I find myself obsessively worrying about even when I say “I’m surrendering everything.” Over the past week, I’ve really learned that I focus a lot on how I think I make other people feel. Now, granted, I know that it is important to not make other people feel bad intentionally, and that we should always strive to be uplifting and supportive of others, but sometimes I think I don’t do a very good job of expressing that. I have a tendency to be extremely blunt, sometimes abrasive about what I think and expressing my opinion.

I think I want to change that. I don’t want to become a floor mat and let people run over me by any means, but I do want to learn how to be gentler in my interactions with people. As I surrender more of my life and more of me at my core to Jesus, the more I just want to approach people with the type of quiet confidence he had. He wasn’t shaken by what other people said. He wasn’t concerned about making other people angry when he was speaking the truth. He stood for what he knew was right, but he wasn’t agressive about it. He loved his people into truth; and that’s the type of relationship I want to have with the world. Jesus wanted his followers to do three things: Love Him (and the father), Love others, and stay strong in a world that is constantly trying to tear them down.

So I’m still focusing on Lamentations 3:19-33 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out my last post here). But now I’m also focusing on how to love people better.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” – 1 John 4: 7-8