Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Mother Teresa
Loving With Words
Our words can either build up or they can tear down. Mother Teresa never tore down people with words but always built them up. Solomon wrote that “gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (Proverbs 16:24). The Apostle Paul’s suggestion is to “therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18), and the words that Paul had been writing were “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). Try to encourage someone today with those words.
Loving With Deeds
The Apostle Paul gives us a great description of love in action in Ephesians 4:1-2 where he writes, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.” Love is not just a feeling or an expression of words but is a verb. It is action-oriented by serving one another but doing so in love because “if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1).
Loving Our Enemies
Jesus emphasized the love of God so much that He told His disciples to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45) and to “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28). We are never more like God than when we love our enemies because Christ died for us while we were still His enemies (Romans 5:10).
Conclusion
Mother Teresa’s life is a supreme example of being used by God in words, in action, and in serving where few others would ever serve. She never saw an enemy; she only saw someone in need and spent her life in the service of others. She lived out her saying: “I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.”
