Rooted: 30 Days to Strengthen Your Faith Through Struggleنموونە

WEEK 4: Bearing Fruit in Every Season

Focus: Living as a rooted child of God—steady, fruitful, and resilient in every season.

Day 26: Loving Others When You’re Wounded

"Therefore, as God’s chosen people… clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another… And over all these virtues put on love." Colossians 3:12–14

Loving people is hard when you’re still healing. Especially the people that caused our wounding to begin with.

When you're carrying wounds, it can be easy to put up walls to try to protect yourself. To shut others out and hold out to anger and unforgiveness.

But God calls us to something more. Because He knows that staying behind our walls and living with bitterness will rot us from the inside out.

God doesn’t wait for us to be healed to call us to love. But he does empower us to love from our place of dependence on Him. A love that comes through us from Him and does not rely on our own strength to produce it.

Loving others doesn’t mean ignoring your own pain. It means inviting God to move through you even while He works in you.

The compassion you extend might come from the very places where you’ve needed compassion. The gentleness you show may be shaped by your own experience of God's gentleness in your life. The forgiveness you extend to others could come from the place of having been forgiven yourself.

And love? It’s not a feeling. It's not butterflies in your stomach or a warm glow in your heart. It’s a choice. One you put on daily like a garment. One that reflects the One who first loved you in your own mess.

You’re not loving from your own strength. You’re loving from the overflow of God’s grace. And when you do, healing multiplies - in you and through you.

Reflection Questions:

• Who is God calling you to love, even in your pain?
• How does God's love empower you to love?
• What boundary or support might you need to love from a healthy place?