5:101 – Many rooms. Go where you are loved.

#faithbites #faithjourney rooms

Intro

Be it our jobs, our relationships, our churches, or any other association we have, there are times when we don’t feel supported, loved, or cherished. For most of us, myself included, it may just be a bad day or a bad situation. After talking with the person, or looking at it through a different lens, you come to an understanding and things are ok once again. But what happens when this is a constant state of being? When you constantly don’t feel respected or appreciated. or connected? How do you choose when to stay or when to Go?

Questions

• Have you left a place because you didn’t feel supported, loved, and cherished?
• Have you left a church because you didn’t feel supported, loved, and cherished?
• How do you find the rooms where you feel supported, loved and cherished?

Scripture

• Titus 3:10-11 – As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.
• Proverbs 22:24-25 – Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.
• John 14:2-3 – ² My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Reflection

Jesus tells us that we are loved. He also says that there are many rooms in his father’s house for us. We need to seek out those places. It does us no good to be in a place that we dread. How many of you dread going to work in the morning? Not the, “I don’t feel like going to work”, but the “I dread it”. This is similar to being anxious vs having anxiety. A little anxiousness can be healthy whereas having anxiety can be debilitating. We need to go where we are loved, appreciated, and respected.

God wants this for us. He doesn’t want us to be in situations where the skills, that he gives us, aren’t being used. He doesn’t want to get entangled in a snare by living every day in denial or worse, where we are actively put down. God wants us to be loved. He wants an environment where the skills he gives us are used, where we are able to grow.

As we close, remember, that you are not stuck where you are at. God has provided many rooms and opportunities where people will love you for who you are. Turn it to God, listen to him, and make the jump. He will catch you.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you tell us that we are loved, created in your father’s image, and special. Often we want to feel accepted and needed. We settle for jobs, relationships, and situations where we are not supported, loved or cherished. We feel either we can’t do any better than this, that we don’t deserve any better than this, or there isn’t any place better than this. You tell us that your father’s house has many rooms. You are even making a place for us. Help us to embody that. Help us to break free from those situations where we are not receiving what we need. Lord, we love you and know that we should feel love at all times. Help us to break away from places and move to the rooms that you create. We pray this in your name, Amen.