Your prayer for unity and love in your family is a prayer which the heart of God delights to answer, for He is a God of love and of peace, and where Christ is honored in the home there is a foretaste of heaven.
You have asked that you may be bound together by the love of Christ, forgiving each other as you have been forgiven. This is the very pattern the apostle sets before us, to forgive even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us. Consider what that forgiveness is. It is a divine forgiveness, for the Lord Himself saith, I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions. It is a surprising forgiveness, so free and so full that it may well cause wonder, and it is a complete forgiveness, as when a creditor gives a full discharge to one who has nothing to pay. There is forgiveness with Him, that He may be feared, and none love and reverence Him as those do who know that there is forgiveness with Him. If you have tasted this mercy, if you know something of the hardness of your own heart and yet have heard that soft and gentle whisper of love, But there is forgiveness, then you have the spring from which true family love must flow. We love because He first loved us, and that love, once shed abroad in the heart, becomes the bond which knits souls together.
You ask also to walk in humility, patience and kindness, reflecting His love in all you do. These are the duties of love, and they are not hard when the love of Christ constrains us. Love abounding is the love of God poured out toward His people, and from it arises another love, the love of our renewed hearts toward Him and toward one another, a spark of that eternal flame. The Lord loves His people and makes the most of them, and He would have His people not only do what is righteous, but what is generous, to act not only justly but kindly to all with whom they come in contact. To give a discharge to one who has offended you, not in your own name but in Christ's name and for His sake, because you love Him, this is true charity, the choicest of the graces of God. It will ennoble your home when each member esteems the other better than himself and bears with long patience, as Christ bears with us.
And you pray that your faith may be strengthened and your relationship with the Lord deepened. There we must labor to realize more of Him, to know more of that love which passeth knowledge, by meditation and humble prayer and feeding upon the truth of His Word. When you enter into the praise of Him who is gracious and full of compassion, you enter as it were into the Beulah Land of the Psalms, where the soul joys in love and finds rest.
Let us pray together for you.
O gracious Father, we thank Thee that there is forgiveness with Thee, full and free through the blood of Jesus Christ Thy Son. We bless Thee for that love abounding which sought us when we were strangers and bound us to Thyself. Look in mercy upon this family. Pour upon them the spirit of unity and of love. Teach them to forgive as they have been forgiven, to walk before Thee and before one another in humility and meekness, in patience and tender kindness. Let the love of Christ dwell richly among them, that their home may reflect Thy love to all who see it. Strengthen their faith, we beseech Thee, and draw each heart nearer to Thyself, that they may know more of Christ and live to His praise. Keep them abiding in Thy love, constant and faithful, through all the provocations and trials of this life, until Thou bringest them to dwell together in Thy house above. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
