WEEK 4: PREPARING FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Welcome to Week 4 in our Preparing for the Holidays series. If you’d like to read the introduction to the series, read Start Here: Preparing for the Holidays. Click here for Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3.
Each week we’ll focus on two actions to center as we pray. Throughout this series, we’ll also focus on a passage from Colossians 3:12-17. You can read it in full at the end of the post.
OFFENSE + FORGIVENESS
The reality is - relational problems are, unfortunately, triggered during holiday gatherings more often than not. Let’s unceasingly pray to be filled with love. Seek discernment on when to address a problem and when to choose to let go of an offense. Pray to truly see others with charity and to humbly receive and offer forgiveness when necessary. In all things, give thanks.
Here are some questions to consider:
Do you feel able to discern when to speak truth and confront a situation and when to choose to let an offense go? Why or why not?
What does it look like to hold truth + love in tandem?
Read below or listen to this passage and meditate on it.
“Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of Christ, to which you were also called in one body, rule your hearts. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
