I hope I got the main points covered in the title. These are some of the very important principles on how to live, taught by Jesus. Words won’t mean anything until you are able to do through real life experience. Once you experienced, you’ll know the significance of these words.
Father and Child
When the child was young, he depended on his Father and loved him. He also feared his Father and obeyed him.
As the child grew older, he found some of the commandments his Father gave him were very hard to follow:
Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Of you it is required to forgive all men.
The child struggled through his life but did not forget about these words, out of love and fear for his Father, and out of concern for his own future as his Father had promised him. Tribulation after tribulation, the child found out that every commandment his Father gave him was absolutely right. Each tribulation brought him closer to his Father and more understanding of what his Father has told him to do. He sensed that these commandments could liberate him from pains and chains and bring peace and joy into his heart. Then the opportunity came and he was able to overcome his stubborn heart and talk himself into obeying these commandments completely. He felt he was finally able to love all men regardless of what they did to him. Immediately his burdens were relieved and he felt peace and joy all around him. His heart was filled with gratitude and love for his Father and he knew how much his Father loved him to give him these commandments to follow.
He doesn’t seem to care much about what other people said to him, thought of him, or did to him. He decided to love them no matter what. Out of compassion and love, he felt bad about the way he treated others. He truly understands how important love means in this world. When love is taken out of men, that’s when quarrels, fights, and wars start. With love, men can endure all things done onto them and not revenge. Who can make a man stop arguing and fighting? - When he loves someone and fears someone who commands him to do so.
If you love your Father, talk to him often, listen to him often, build a good relationship with him, and make sure what you do each day pleases him. For he surely prepared treasures for your inheritance and loved you so much to sacrifice for your sake.
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Life is a training ground
Our earthly experience, this life, can serve as a training ground.
Some of the goals of this training are for us to learn:
To be humble, considerate, respectful, merciful, gentle, and kind, to admit faults, to repent, to forgive, to love, to tolerate, to be patient, and the list goes on…
Each of these words will mean a lot more once you experience the process. For example, in order to learn to forgive someone, that person has to hurt you somehow first. Life will provide each one of us plenty of opportunities to learn these things if we were not born with these abilities.
To admit faults and to repent, one has to be truly humble. A merciful heart will bring one to repentance. To truly forgive, you have to disregard anything someone did to you and tolerate anything that’s being done to you. You have to repent if you were not able to forgive before, and show respect, consideration, kindness, and love to whoever offended you. The impossible will become possible.
These things can not be learned without life experience. That’s why we were born.
Repentance:
In relationships, repentance is a result of merciful heart.
Love:
Only when you are able to love others, you’ll be truly happy. If you have people whom you don’t love in your life, you can not be happy. When you don’t love others, you won’t receive love in return. Thus you’ll feel unloved, lonely, being left out, and self pitiful. One’s ability to love has a lot to do with one’s ability to tolerate. If a person is not able to tolerate much, s/he cannot love and cannot be happy.
Humility:
You have to be really humble, give up your pride, to be able to communicate an apology after repentance.
Respect:
Everyone deserves respect.
Forgiving:
You have to be able to love in order to truly forgive. Try to forget how people treated you in the past. Just ignore how bad people treat you at the present time. Just stop thinking about all the bad experiences.
Communication:
You have to be really humble to communicate an apology. You need to express yourself so others know you are sincere about your apology. Communication is also very important in relationships that you must master in order to have good relationships.
Attitude:
Watch your attitude. Don’t be tempted to be cold, irrespectful, cruel, judgemental, prideful. Pride creeps in without notice. Everyone has pride. When your pride thinks you are better than others, it will cause trouble. So just stop thinking about how much you are better than others. And start thinking about how others are better than you.
If you can’t forgive and start being cold, just think that the person who offended you still deserves respect and kindness. Be merciful and be kind. Let your heart be merciful and not cruel. Treat each one as a person who deserves love and kindness. Be considerate of others’ feelings.
If you think that others need to change themselves, but you have not successfully changed them, it’s time to think about how to change yourself, the way you think, your attitude when you talk, the way you communicate, how sincere you are. If you want to criticise or blame someone, you’d better stop because most likely it won’t work as you expected. You need to love them and help them to change in a loving way.
Anger/mood management:
There are two categories: one is related to people, one is related to things. The previous paragraphs deal with people. For the second category, it’s for our own benefit not to let things that happen to bother us. It’s easy to say. When you are facing cancer, or have lost everything like a Job, and you couldn’t go back in time to change things that have happened, all there is left is just to pray for peaceful mind.