Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Tom Felton and I titled today's devotion, Confronting in Love.

He did many things well, but there was a problem.

Everyone saw it. Yet because he was so effective in accomplishing most of his role, his anger issue wasn't adequately addressed.

He was never truly confronted.

Sadly, this resulted in many people being hurt over the years.

And in the end, it led to the premature close of a career that could have been something

so much more for this brother in Christ. If only I'd chosen to confront him in love long ago.

In Genesis 4, God provides the perfect picture of what it means to confront someone's sin in love.

Kane was infuriated.

Being a farmer, he'd presented some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.

But God made it clear that what he brought him wasn't acceptable.

Kane's offering was rejected, and he was very angry, and his face was downcast. So God confronted him and said,

Why are you angry? He then told Kane to turn from his sin and pursue what was good and right.

Sadly, Kane ignored God's words and committed a horrific act. While we can't force others to turn from sinful behaviors,

we can compassionately confront them.

We can speak the truth in love

so that we both become more and more like Christ.

And as God gives us ears to listen,

we can also receive hard words of truth from others.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Genesis chapter 4, verses 1 through 12.

Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.

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