Loving Well (Even If You Haven’t Been)
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Distance. Resentment. Avoidance. You want to love your family, your neighbors, and your coworkers well. But something goes wrong when you reach out to them, and you find yourself tearing down the relationships you wanted to build. Are you doomed to repeat this cycle forever?
For most of us, certain unhealthy reactions feel natural and even inevitable. Unconsciously, we cling to what 1 Peter 1:18 calls the '‘empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers.’ But you are not doomed to repeat this cycle, according to William P. Smith, since Jesus came to redeem his people from such things. The destructive relationship patterns you learned before you met Christ no longer need to control how you live and interact with others. Instead, you can exchange the empty ways for new ones that promote deep unity and peacefulness - patterns that create satisfying and God-honoring relationships. A rich, practical relationship with Jesus enables you to develop rich, practical relationships with others in spite of your brokenness and theirs. Through Christ, you no longer have to do what you have always done. In short, you can learn to love well.
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- Discusses how readers can help others be all God ever meant them to be
- Teaches how we can move toward friends as they experience sin or suffering
- Explores how a rich, practical relationship with Jesus can transform relationships with others
- Comforting Love: Running to Those Who Are Suffering
- Sympathetic Love: Taking on Each Other’s Sorrows
- Struggling Love: Confessing Our Temptations to Each Other
- Forgiving Love: Covering a Multitude of Sins
- Longsuffering Love: Patiently Bearing with Each Other
- Partnering Love: Working Together to Care for Each Other
- Pursuing Love: Shepherding Each Other
- Communicating Love: Talking with Each Other
- Serving Love: Helping Each Other
- Providing Love: Meeting Physical Needs
- Welcoming Love: Greeting Each Other
- Humble Love: Submitting to Each Other
- Celebrating Love: Rejoicing with Each Other
- Peaceful Love: Living Harmoniously with Each Other
- Hospitable Love: Showing Kindness without Grumbling
Part I: Love That Responds to a Broken World
Part II: Love That Reaches Out to Build Others Up
Part III: Love That Enjoys Heaven on Earth
Bill Smith’s Loving Well is blessedly startling. Some people offer us devotional books about Jesus. Others give us practical tips for life. Seldom does anyone do this—giving us Jesus and his love and then showing us how we can live him out in all the hard places. Every page pushes you to live a life much bigger than yourself. I love books about Revival, when the fire finally comes down. This one blazes right now.
—D. Clair Davis, DrThéol, Professor of Church History and Chaplain, Redeemer Seminary, Dallas
Bill is the kind of Bible teacher we all need to spend more time inhabiting Scripture with—profound, but accessible; sophisticated, but humble; theologically rich, but practically oriented—and this book captures all of that. Bill consistently delivers Bible teaching and pastoral application at its very best.
—The Rev. Dr. Ray Cannata, Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New Orleans
Good Dr. Smith’s book laid open my conscience with a scalpel, yet an IV of anesthesia dripped soothingly throughout. By the end, he had sewed me up and left no scar. Will you agree with every word? Maybe not . . . I didn’t. But these chapters changed me. They’re brilliant.
Steven Estes, Pastor; author of Called to Die; coauthor with Joni Eareckson Tada of A Step Further and When God Weeps
- Title: Loving Well (Even If You Haven't Been)
- Author: William P. Smith
- Publisher: William Smith Ministries
- Print Publication Date: 2012
- Pages: 288
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9780998702636, 0998702633
- Resource ID: LLS:LVNGWLLVNHVNTBN
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-19T00:09:09Z