Cultivate Tenderness in the Home

[Thompson, Darryl]

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Ellen G. White Estate, Devotional for September 19
Visit us at http://www.whiteestate.org
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Cultivate Tenderness in the Home

And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity
shall cover the multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8. 

The young man who came to Jesus asked what he should do that he might
inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to keep the commandments, and
enumerated several of the precepts of the law. The young man said, "All
these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?" (Matt.
19:20). The first four commandments enjoin upon man the duty of loving
God supremely and the last six present the requirement of loving our
neighbors as ourselves. How many are truly, sincerely, and
wholeheartedly doing this?

The Lord is coming in a little while, and are we performing the duties
that result from righteousness? Love is the basis of godliness. No man
has love to God, no matter what his profession may be, unless he has
unselfish love for his brother. As we love God because He first loved
us, we shall love all for whom Christ died. We shall not feel like
letting the soul who is in the greatest peril, and in the greatest need,
go unwarned, unlabored for, and uncared for. We shall not feel like
holding the erring off, and being critical and exacting, or letting them
alone to plunge into further unhappiness and discouragement, and to fall
on Satan's battleground, for God will deal with us as He deals with our
brethren or the younger members of the Lord's family.

Cultivate tenderness of heart; surround yourselves in your home life
with the atmosphere of love. But the spirit that has largely pervaded
the church is an offense to God. Everyone who has been free to condemn,
to dishearten, and to discourage, who has failed to give tender
kindness, sympathy, and compassion to the tempted and the tried, will in
his own experience be brought over the ground which others have passed
over, and suffered with their hardheartedness, and will feel what others
have suffered because of his want of sympathy, until he shall abhor his
hardness of heart and open the door for Jesus to come in.

The converting power of God must come to every soul who has any
connection with the work and cause of God that each one may be filled
with the love and compassion of Christ or many will never see the
kingdom of heaven.

>From Devotional: Our Father Cares, p. 241.