Forgiveness.

Distrust, mistrust and lack of trust are all a recipe for doom in relationships. We must encourage people to trust by trusting others ourselves.

The fear of rejection can only cease to hold sway over us when we look to God's love, acceptance and faithfulness above all else. We will always disappoint one or two people in our lives, sometimes thee, but we must choose to remember those we have blessed and those who have blessed us.

God is to be All for everyone. We are not to play God in each other's lives.

We must learn to forgive when hurts seem overwhelming and, sometimes, permanent. We must learn to accept God's forgiveness when our mistakes loom over us like infinite dark clouds. We must learn to forgive ourselves, even if and when others won't forgive us. We must learn to see past what we have done wrong, on purpose and not, and we must walk in God's great grace.

We must choose and learn to believe God's love and righteousness over and above our wilful acts of stubbornness, our rebellion, our lies, our successes and our opinions. Over and above all them that matter in our lives, we MUST believe God's love. Why? Because it is that love that wins.

God loves us dearly.

Clichés.

Go for clichés. I think clichés are great. Everyone is trying to run away from cliches, to create a new trend or a new thing to believe. Children think their parents are clichés. People think pastors are cliches who live clichéd lives preaching clichés as messages.

We couldn't be more wrong!

There are some clichés I'll gladly live for the rest of my days. One of such is this: Jesus loves you. Another is this: I love you.

The truth within these clichés are so profound and simple that it requires all of our complexity to make them misunderstood. Jesus does love you, and so much. It's not even so much a cliché as much as it is the Bible. His love made Him foolish for us. He left all the cool stuff He had going in heaven and came down because of us. Jesus became human-wrapper (for all of you that feel that a man who loves his wife is woman-wrapper) because He wanted to show me how much He loves me. If that's a cliché, I'll take it.

And, I'm opening my heart to love that God is bringing my way. Knowing the love of God, when my precious spouse speaks those precious words, I LOVE YOU, to me, I will receive them with all the faith and grace in my heart. It won't be a cliché to me because Jesus has shown me true love and I'll know it when it comes.

And, the love I have for others is not in any way any kind of cliché. It is love being birthed of the love my Father has shown me.

So, please, when it comes to love, if the cliché is that Jesus loves you, then by all means, go with the cliché. You don't need anything new.

God loves you very much.