Your Morning Coffee 04/08/2025

Good morning!

Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father keep us from slipping into the sour horror of hatred. May He make us mindful not only ourselves, but of each other as well. May we be brothers and sister who work hard to bring peace and stillness into each other's lives. Father, we need your help. In the powerful name of Jesus, please help us to keep anger from turning to hatred. Help us instead to humble ourselves before you Father, and choose to love one another as you first loved us. Amen!

Your Morning Song: "If I Stand" by Rich Mullins

Your Morning Scripture: 1 John 3:15

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer,

and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

...

I remember touching the cast-iron stove, even though I was told not to. Like hearing the too-quick jumble of another language, "it will burn you" didn't make any sense to me. Until I touched that stove.

Now I know.

I've lived enough life and known enough people to have had the chance to hate someone. I've been betrayed, neglected, and hurt, just as you have (details may differ but sinful people in a sin-broken world will do this to each other).

I've been angry. I've been bitter. I've been right up to the very edge of hatred. But there was something about it that scared me. Something wasn't right. It was as if the fear of the cast-iron stove that burned me had somehow made it's way into how I saw hating someone. Not to my credit, but to the grace of God over my life, I chose not to let anger and frustration turn to outright hatred.

I wish you were dead. I wish you were never born. I hope you go to hell...

Even typing those phrases out as an example give me chills.

If you hate someone, you have murdered them. But unlike the physical act, the spiritual murder we can actually commit happens again and again as we continue to drink the poison and hope that the other person dies.

Human hatred is a terrible thing.

It would be better to hug a hot, cast-iron stove, than to hate someone.

So, what do we do then, if the Spirit opens our eyes in a sudden moment and we see that we have been hating someone? Are we not saved anymore? Have we lost God as our Father? Have we been thrown out of His kingdom?

God's sons and daughters, when confronted by the sin of hatred, the soul-deep murdering of another, will repent. They will emotionally regret the action and functionally turn from the repeating of that action.

They will be sorry and change.

The unsaved, the fakers, the liars and the pretenders, in their heart of hearts, will ignore the Holy Spirit's conviction of their hatred and murder. And they will continue to do it.

We who are full of God's abundant life, now and forever, cannot also be full of hatred. There is grace over our struggles, but we must struggle. We must reject our self-worshipping desire to hate. We must run to God for help in not letting our anger and bitterness turn into something deeply horrifying and awful.

We must daily depend on our Father, on Jesus His son, and on the Holy Spirit our comforting teacher, to keep in right relationship with Him and with each other. Not only with hatred, but in all ways.

If you are murdering someone right now, please stop. Repent to God. Repent to the person. And rest and rejoice in the abundant life available only to God's children.