Hi, and welcome to Five Word Prayers Daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the word,

prayers, and our heart. I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me,

which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent. I heard this phrase once, and I have never

forgotten it. Don't let the compliments go to your head and don't let the critiques

go to your heart. Man, this is a tough one, right? Especially the latter part about the critiques,

not going to your heart. I admit I have a hard time with that one at times. And one of the hardest

things in that is not letting critiques make us harden to people and therefore not able to love them or love anyone.

Some of us have some serious baggage when it comes to love, and I want to talk about what to do about that today.

Ooh, ooh.

Ooh. I remember after going through all I did with my pastor father and some of the subsequent church hurts that followed for a time, I became jaded and hardened to people, especially church people. In fact, some of my hardest time

actually came years later when I thought I was over it and something would happen in a church

I was a part of way down the road and it was like it would push on this invisible bruise and it

would hurt all over again. I'd be in church and I'd have a visceral reaction to something said

or done. It would remind me of something in the past and I just became sort of hardened to people

and it bled over into every area of life, really. It was interesting. My husband and I worked with a young

worship leader once, really talented

young man, and he'd been through a lot. He'd gotten far away from God for a time, been on drugs,

then we'd been raised in a good Christian home and church and all, and he'd spent some time out

on the streets, living homeless, actually. And he told us about how the group he had the

hardest time loving was actually church people.

That loving and serving the homeless was not hard for him, but loving and serving church people was far more difficult.

I'm sure someone listening can relate.

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