Basic HTML Version
Cultivate Tenderness In The Home, September 19
And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity
shall cover the multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8
.
The young man who came to Jesus asked what he should do that he might
inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to keep the commandments, and enumerated
several of the precepts of the law. The young man said, “All these things have
I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?” (
Matthew 19:20
). The first four
commandments enjoin upon man the duty of loving God supremely and the last
six present the requirement of loving our neighbors as ourselves. How many are
truly, sincerely, and wholeheartedly doing this?
The Lord is coming in a little while, and are we performing the duties that
result from righteousness? Love is the basis of godliness. No man has love to God,
no matter what his profession may be, unless he has unselfish love for his brother.
As we love God because He first loved us, we shall love all for whom Christ died.
We shall not feel like letting the soul who is in the greatest peril, and in the greatest
need, go unwarned, unlabored for, and uncared for. We shall not feel like holding
the erring off, and being critical and exacting, or letting them alone to plunge into
further unhappiness and discouragement, and to fall on Satan’s battleground, for
God will deal with us as He deals with our brethren or the younger members of
the Lord’s family.
Cultivate tenderness of heart; surround yourselves in your home life with
the atmosphere of love. But the spirit that has largely pervaded the church is an
offense to God. Everyone who has been free to condemn, to dishearten, and to
discourage, who has failed to give tender kindness, sympathy, and compassion to
the tempted and the tried, will in his own experience be brought over the ground
which others have passed over, and suffered with their hardheartedness, and will
feel what others have suffered because of his want of sympathy, until he shall
abhor his hardness of heart and open the door for Jesus to come in.
The converting power of God must come to every soul who has any connection
with the work and cause of God that each one may be filled with the love and
compassion of Christ or many will never see the kingdom of heaven.
[242]
278