YWMJ - Part 2

Firstly, need to apologize for being late in posting this.

Love…
As mentioned in my earlier submission, the 2nd part of this book talks about the “endangered” character of love that we ought to display as Christ followers.
There is tender love, tough love, sacrificial love and radical love.

Tender and Tough
I remembered that Pastor Jeff preached about what makes a real man on 22 August 2010. It stayed with me because it taught me that a real man must display tender love and tough love at the appropriate time, just as Jesus did in his ministry. I liked that sermon so much that I blogged it so that I can be reminded about it constantly. (http://the-first-garden.blogspot.com/2010/08/lion-and-lamb.html)

In this book, Hybels wrote about the same thing. That it is important, as Christ followers, to display tender love so that we can have compassion and feel for a person/situation. And also to display tough love so that we can be firm and do what is best for a person even though it meant there may be some immediate or short term pain for both parties.

Being someone who is non confrontational, and generally peace loving. I found myself having difficulties all the time in practicing “tough love”, I never really grasp the concept and its importance before. For me, if there is a situation that calls for correction I will avoid it and run away from it. To others, I may seem like a pastoral person because my approach tends to be softer but in actual fact, many times I am just choosing the easy way out to avoid a difficult task.

Sometimes I will ask myself “who am I to correct?”, “am I doing this out of self righteousness?” “by doing this, will I bring further hurt to the person?” after asking myself so many questions I will end up doubting my motives and avoiding to take any actions.

A Truth
During a mentoring session many years ago before I entered into marriage, my then CL spoke into my life. About being a leader in my relationship. In marriage, it is very important that a husband knows how to display both tender and tough love. If not, marriage will suffer.

It makes me understood that in deciding what to do, the key question I need to ask myself is “do I care enough to speak truth into the person’s life, even at the expense of incurring his/her anger?” If I am doing it out of love, God will give me the confidence; the other party will some day realize that I meant no harm and come to appreciate what I did.

Truth telling, is, very often tough love.