Removing The Barriers

Excerpt from Staying in Love For A Lifetime by Ed Wheat

Love cannot grow in the same heart with negative attitudes and bad feelings. Concentrate on your attitudes not those of your partner. Two basic principles to be remembered are; first, you do not have to be controlled by your feelings and secondly you are not the helpless prisoner of your past. So, begin by realizing that you are in control of your behaviour. It is a proven fact that feelings change as behaviour changes. Make a choice to forgive your partner.

Forgiveness involves three steps;

1. Using your free will to make a choice to forgive
2. Deliberately behaving in the manner that the Lord has shown in the Bible to be right
3. Trusting Him to do His part by renewing your mind and giving you new, transformed attitudes.

STEP ONE: CHOOSING TO FORGIVE

• "Make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men, lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiles" (Heb 12:13-15)
• You will indeed suffer by your own choice until you decide to fully and completely forgive any wrongs done to you.

STEP TWO: CHANGING YOUR BEHAVIOUR

• "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."(Eph 4:31-32)
• The essence of kind treatment of your partner is to treat him or her precisely as you want to be treated.

STEP THREE: RENEWING YOUR MIND

• "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth those things which are before... "(Phil 3:13)
• Forgetting..reaching forth. This is the way to continue beyond the moment of forgiveness into the kingdom of love to live there for the rest of your life.