Take a moment to read Colossians 3:18-25 before reading the devotional below.
Everything comes back to just you and God. Whether you are single, married, a free spirit or enslaved to your boss, everything you do is about your relationship with God. Passages in the Bible like today’s often lead us to finger pointing or elbowing our spouse or neighbor. If only he/she would act differently… And yet if we all just followed the way of Jesus we would have no need for blame.
Our heavenly Father has an eternal reward for us. So what if we spend at most 80-90 years toiling away on this earth, putting others ahead of ourselves? We have all of eternity to live in a sin-free home where none of this will be hard at all. Submitting to each other will be the obvious and natural choice. Being gentle with each other will be automatic. The more you read the Bible, the more you realize that anything hard here is relatively incomparable to how good our eternal home will be.
Here’s your freedom for today: you can make it a little while longer. If your spouse or your boss or your parent is absolutely exasperating, keep on living like Jesus. Whatever you choose to do in those relationships will be a choice for God, not for that person. That doesn’t mean you let them do whatever they want to you, but it means that even in establishing boundaries in the relationship you do it with gentleness and love. And no matter what, an eternity without these challenges awaits you. Sometimes God will give you a glimpse of home along the way as you seek to serve.