Once again I am challenged

Wow has God been speaking to me lately about so many things. Especially though the sermons at church. Today larry taught on 1 peter 1:1-25. That's alot of verse and normally my mind would be zoning after the first few sentences, but he has been so on point lately it's been nuts. Or maybe i have just been listening more intently. Whatever it is, it's getting to me. The first thing that hit me like a ton of bricks was the scripture. Obviously, scripture is suppose to speak to your heart, but i felt like it was on loudspeaker to me. Verses 6- 9 were talking about going through hardships and troubles ut it also reminds you that it is only for a time. It then goes on to talk about why these hardships are occuring, and it is to prove your faith is the real thing. I feel like i have never read these verses and that it was like God telling me directly, heather, i know that your faith is the real thing. Because i have had many "good" reasons to walk away from the church. And i'm sure if i sat here and thought about it i could come up with a million more reasons. But i haven't walked away, as easy as other people sometimes have made it easy for me to do so. Then to top it off it talks about how when your faith still remians strong it will be glory to God. SoOOO amazing. I felt as though it was totally God encouraging me to keep going, to keep trusting Him and not to let others discourage me in doing so. It's so easy to want to give up when the fire seems to hot, when it seems as though your being scarred and scorched rather then healed and renewed. But when we come out of the fire, we are refined, and more beautiful then we could ever have been without going through it. God truly blessed me this morning, through larry. Then as larry went on in his teaching he was talking about how we are to love each other, as Christ loved us. And me, i'm all about the love factor. I love feeling loved, seeing smiles on the faces of people in my life, who are happy to see me, but how often am i happy to give love. I mean not when it's easy but when it's hard? When someone has just totally crushed my joy, how easy is it for me to run up to them and tell them i love them? It's not easy for me. It's so much easier for me to back off and be like you hurt me, you don't deserve to be a part of my life. It's so much easier to stop calling people because they don't always call me back, its much easier to completely avoid and ignore the people who have hurt me. But as i took self inventory of myself today, i realized something hard to swallow, i'm not very loving at all. And if Christ is love, and i claim to love Him and yet i can't be loving to my brothers and sisters, then i need to get with the program and ask God to teach me to love the very ones who tear me down most. And so.. Here i am, broken over my own sin.. Lord, please..teach me to love them, and to be able to show them that i love them. So not only was church challenging but it was also greatly convicting. Wow...