She Is Strong and Courageous 30-Day DevotionalSample

Choose to Love – Corrie Ten Boom

No matter what, you can choose love! In today’s devotional, learn about Corrie Ten Boom, a survivor of the Holocaust, and her life of unconditional love and forgiveness even towards her enemies.

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7)

Pray: Lord, give me a deeper understanding of you and your Word. 

Observe: Love is an attitude of the heart—it’s choosing to love in spite of faults and failures, hurts, and hardships. It’s standing by someone’s side to help that person navigate the ups and downs of life in spite of his or her actions or attitude. It’s getting past hurtful words, actions, and behaviors. 

It’s realizing we are all human, fallible, and totally capable of hurting one another, letting one another down, and breaking one another’s heart. Love is tested by time, patience, and endurance.

In Corrie ten Boom’s famous book, The Hiding Place, she describes how she and her family protected many Jews from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. Corrie and her sister were arrested, along with many other family members, and sent to a woman’s labor camp, where she narrowly escaped death. 

She considered her life a gift from God and shared with the world the truth she and her sister learned from their experiences: “So I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” 

Having truly grasped God’s never-ending love, Corrie ten Boom made it her life’s pursuit to travel the world teaching others about God’s unconditional love and forgiveness.

Courageously choose to love by exercising the following principles: 

1. Determine to love in spite of circumstances, situations, or responses from others. 

2. Take into consideration the difficulties and challenges others might be facing. 

3. Set aside bitterness and unforgiveness and replace them with understanding and love. 

4. Search for ways to outwardly and intentionally show unconditional love toward others. 

Interpret: Love is the never-ending ability to see past the faults of others, and God commands his followers to love in the same way he graciously loves us. 

Apply: Do you truly grasp God’s love for you, and are you willing to share that love with others, even those who have offended you? Ask God to bring one person to mind and share God’s love with that individual today. 

Pray: Father, thank you for unconditionally and always loving me in spite of my faults and failures. Help me forgive those who have wounded me; show them the same love you so mercifully show me.