Welcome to today's encouragement from our daily bread.

Today's reading titled Talk, Trust, Feel, was written by Monica LaRose.

Don't talk, don't trust, don't feel, was the law we lived by, says Frederick Buechner in his powerful memoir,

telling secrets. And woe to the one who broke it. Buechner is describing his experience of what

he calls the unwritten law of families who for one reason or another have gone out of whack.

In his own family, that law,

meant Buchner was not allowed to talk about or grieve his father's suicide, leaving him

with no one he could trust with his pain. Can you relate? Many of us in one way or another

have learned to live with a warped version of love, one that demands dishonesty or

silence about what's harmed us. That kind of love relies on fear for control and is a kind of slavery.

We can't afford to forget just how different Jesus' invitation to love is from the kind of conditional love we

often experience. A kind of love we're always afraid we could lose. As Paul explains,

through Christ's love, we can finally understand what it means to not live in fear and to start

to understand the kind of glorious freedom that's possible

when we know we're deeply, truly, and unconditionally loved. We're free to talk, to trust,

and to feel once more to learn what it means to live unafraid.

Today's our daily bread devotional scripture reading is from Romans chapter 8,

verses 14 through 21.

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

The Spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again.

Rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.

And by Him we cry, Abba, Father.

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