An engineer living in a large city in the West left his homeland for the Far East. He was away for two of three years, and during his absence his wife was unfaithful to him and went off with one of his best friends. On his return home he found he had lost his wife, his two children, and his best friend. At the close of a meeting which I was addressing, this grief-stricken man unburdened himself to me. 

“Day and night for two solid years my heart has been full of hatred,” he said. 

“I am a Christian, and I know I ought to forgive my wife and my friend, but though I try to forgive them, I simply cannot. Every day I resolve to love them and every day I fail. What can I do about it?”

“Do nothing at all,” I replied. 

“What do you mean?” he asked, startled. “Am I to continue to hate them?”

So I explained: “The solution of your problem lies here, that when the Lord Jesus died on the Cross he not only bore your sins away but he bore you away too. When he was crucified, your old man was crucified in him, so that unforgiving you who simply cannot love those who have wronged you, has been taken right out of the way in his death. God has dealt with the whole situation in the cross and there is nothing left for you to deal with. Just say to him, “Lord I cannot love and I give up trying, but I count on thy perfect love. I cannot forgive, but I trust thee to forgive instead of me, and to do so henceforth in me.”

The man sat there amazed and said, “That’s all so new, I feel I must do something about it.” Then a moment later he added again, “But what can I do?” 

“God is waiting for you to cease to do,” I said. When you cease doing, then God will begin.”

(Excerpted from Sit, Walk, Stand by Watchman Nee, Tyndale House Publishers 1957, p 10.) 

So, what do you think? Is it possible to love more by doing less? Could this apply to more tangible things like home and work? If not, then what does that say about the gap between the claims made by the faith and the lived reality of it?