Month: February 2023

ON LOVE

1 John 4:8-10 MSG  The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know Him if you don’t love. This is how God showed His love for us: God sent His only Son into the world so we might live through Him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

1 Corinthians 13:1-8a PhillipsIf I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.

4 This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

5-6 Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.

7-8a Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.

Observation

Both of these passages are familiar.  The first one is part of a lesson in Sunday School at the earliest ages, so that our children know “the first thing about God … God is love” and “He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.”  This is all grace and mercy toward us and, in our gratitude, we set ourselves to increase in the knowledge of God.  The Pharisees were diligent in this pursuit.  So, how did they miss recognizing the God incarnate in Jesus?  The second passage speaks to what they were missing.   They had substituted knowledge and achievement for the grace and mercy of God’s love.

I think today we still forget to emphasize John’s stated condition to knowing God – “so you can’t know Him if you don’t love.”  This love of which he speaks goes far beyond loving those who love us.  “Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.”  If we want to be like Christ, this love includes our willingness to sacrificially suffer, give up our rights, and be humbled for the sake of the guilty, the angry, the godless, our enemies, hoping that the love extended will bring repentance and a relationship with God.  This is God’s kind of love in action.

Impact on Me

At every wedding where 1 Corinthians 13 is read, I am struck by the amount of self-control, humility and sacrifice this kind of love demands.   Like the Pharisees, I can get swept up into chasing the church culture standards of achievements that prove my spirituality.  In doing so, I forget the first thing about God, the glue for our relationship, is love God and love others as He does.  All the gifts and talents I possess, all the knowledge I gain, all the sacrifices I make, all the appearances of spirituality that are not based in and flow from the God kind of love “achieve precisely nothing.”   

This does not mean that I stop using my gifts and talents, or seek knowledge about God, or make sacrifices, or seek to increase my foundation in spirituality, but it does mean that I need to make sure always that His love is my motive and I let my rewards come from Him, not others.  This is where the self-control, humility, and sacrifice come in.

Prayer

God, my Father, Savior, Teacher and Power to be what You have called me to be, I want to never forget that Your kind of love is my only motive, the foundation of and reason for all I do, have and speak.  May I live out the love of 1 Corinthians 13. May my heart be moved with the compassion of Jesus that held Him on the Cross when I am confronted by challenges to be Your love to my enemies.  Never, never, never let me forget that it is Your kind of love that never fails.  Make it so in Jesus’ name.

1 Cor 13:4-8a NIV  “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  8a Love never fails.”

On By Faith, Not By Works

Galatians 3:1-5PHILLIPS  O you dear idiots of Galatia, who saw Jesus Christ the crucified so plainly, who has been casting a spell over you? I will ask you one simple question: did you receive the Spirit of God by trying to keep the Law or by believing the message of the Gospel? Surely you can’t be so idiotic as to think that a man begins his spiritual life in the Spirit and then completes it by reverting to outward observances? Has all your painful experience brought you nowhere? I simply cannot believe it of you! Does God, who gives you his Spirit and works miracles among you, do these things because you have obeyed the Law or because you have believed the Gospel? Ask yourselves that.

Observation

Jewish legalists in the church were teaching that belief in Jesus had to be combined with obedience to the Law in matters such as circumcision.  After all, they reasoned that God’s promises were made to God’s people, so new Christians had to become more like Jews to be acceptable to God.  This was in direct opposition to Paul’s teaching that salvation is free, available to all humankind, and by grace through faith.  He insists that it is through God’s Spirit working in them – not any performance-based standard – that salvation, justification and sanctification occur. 

This is not the only instance where Paul wrote about the free gift of salvation for Gentiles and Jews alike, separate from the observance of Jewish Law, tradition and works.  We are redeemed and remodeled “not by any works lest they should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-10 MSG) and God works in His own way to do it using “the foolish things of the world to shame those considered wise” (1 Cor 1:26-30).   God chose to provide – free to us – salvation (our repositioning from existing in the world to living in Christ) through the humiliation, shame and suffering of the Cross because it was the price only God Himself could pay.  Jesus was the only sinless sacrifice ever born as a human. 

Impact on Me

So, I tell people that I am a recovering over-achieving perfectionist and some days I am not recovering.  I was raised in a high-performing family and a denomination with a heavy weight of rules to follow to be acceptable to God.  As a rule follower and striving to be perfectionist, I rated myself always not quite good enough in both areas.  When I surrendered my life to Christ and began to read the Bible for myself, I discovered that obedience to Christ was not necessarily the same as living up or obedience to the rules and traditions I had learned growing up.  I realized that God has a different standard of perfection and achievement than the culture of this world.  “I will ask you one simple question: did you receive the Spirit of God by trying to keep the Law or by believing the message of the Gospel?”

“Does God, who gives you his Spirit and works miracles among you, do these things because you have obeyed the Law or because you have believed the Gospel?”  So, on the days I am not recovering from the drive for perfectionism, I fall into the unbelief of doing something to look good to others when it is either not what God is asking of me or just for show.  Thankfully, the Holy Spirit is quick to convict me of my display of pride so that I can repent and seek God’s will and purpose for me – visible or invisible, doorman or doormat, blessing or sacrifice – so I can walk in obedience to Him regardless of what others may think. I am so glad that God created repentance because I need it often!

Prayer

Father God, You are Love past understanding.  Sending Jesus, Your Son, Love Incarnate, to provide for us salvation, restoration and true life through faith alone.  Never allow me to forget that only by Your work in me am I ever who You dream for me to be.  May my obedience to you be my act of love in return.   Keep me mindful of the virtues that make me more like You and mark true achievement in Heaven – love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, meekness, faithfulness and self-control, mercy, grace, compassion and justice.  Let me see with the eyes and love with the heart of Jesus.  In Jesus’ name I pray.

On Choices

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 (MSG) I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live. And love God, your God, listening obediently to him, firmly embracing him. Oh yes, he is life itself, a long life settled on the soil that God, your God, promised to give your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Observation

I know that God is All-Wise, All-Knowing, perfect in every way, incapable of making an error, and never blind-sided or surprised by unforeseen twists and turns, but at times like this, I wonder if He didn’t regret making us human. He’s our Creator, so He could have chosen to make us something more consistent/less fickle, less driven by emotions and passions, not so free to make all of our own choices – in other words, a less aggravating and worrisome child, one who listens and learns from experience.  Instead, He gave us free wills, completely in charge of the choices we make, good or bad, beneficial or harmful, wise or foolish.   

As I reach the end of Deuteronomy (the “again I say unto you” of the First 5 books), Father God is saying that He has demonstrated to this people over and over again His commitment to them and proven His ability to deliver what He has promised.  This same offer (choosing between life and death) is before me today and what I receive is based on the choices I make.  Just as these people have experienced His faithfulness, His miraculous deliverance, His power, His protection, His promises fulfilled, so have I.  The choice is theirs as well as mine today – to choose life or death by whom they/I choose to trust and serve.  I pray that I will be better at obedience than they were. 

Impact on Me

Each time I come again to repent for some bad choice (trusting more in what the world or I can do than in Him), I often ask why He made me human. Like Paul in Romans 7, I struggle even with following through when I do make good choices:

Romans 7:21-25 PHILLIPS When I come up against the Law I want to do good, but in practice I do evil. My conscious mind whole-heartedly endorses the Law, yet I observe an entirely different principle at work in my nature. This is in continual conflict with my conscious attitude, and makes me an unwilling prisoner to the law of sin and death. In my mind I am God’s willing servant, but in my own nature I am bound fast, as I say, to the law of sin and death. It is an agonising situation, and who on earth can set me free from the clutches of my sinful nature? I thank God there is a way out through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It is then that the still small voice reminds me that He made me human so I would need Him, so that my heart would ache passionately over my unfaithfulness in response to His perfect love, grace and mercy, that I would repent and return and, in His embrace, provide an opportunity for Him to pour out His love for me once again.  What an amazing love, what a wondrous God we serve! 

Prayer

Dear, dear Jesus, what a wonder You are.  You suffered and died so I would have a choice and the Holy Spirit power to sustain it.  I thank You that You give grace along with forgiveness, second chances with repentance, encouragement with conviction, and stick with me when I fail again and again.  Work in me Your holiness, Your peace, Your wisdom so I may consistently choose to live in Your life and blessing.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

On A World at Cross Purposes with God

Isaiah 3:8-11 (MSG) “Jerusalem’s on its last legs.  Judah is soon down for the count.  Everything people say and do is at cross-purposes with God, a slap in my face.  Brazen in their depravity, they flaunt their sins like degenerate Sodom.  Doom to their eternal souls! They’ve made their bed; now they’ll sleep in it. Reassure the righteous that their good living will pay off.  But doom to the wicked!  Disaster!  Everything they did will be done to them.”

Observation

Apparently, Isaiah thinks things have gotten entirely out of hand. In chapter 2, Isaiah describes the situation as a world “full of hokey religion, Philistine witchcraft, and pagan hocus-pocus, a world rolling in wealth, stuffed with things, no end to its machines and gadgets and gods—gods of all sorts and sizes.” Those standing up for God in his day seem to be fewer and fewer, and their admonitions and protestations are drowned out by the noise of those rushing to fulfill their own desires, pleasures and prideful pursuits. 

Isaiah says that all these pursuits that lead away from God will end in destruction not only for themselves but also the society in which they live. The devil knew then and knows now how to break God’s heart, how to hurt Him by luring His creation into self-destruction and eternal life separate from God.  Some of the Enemy’s great weapons are distraction, misdirection and deception.  Our Enemy says again to the rest of mankind as he did to Eve, “Surely God has not said…- surely He does not want to deny you what you know you deserve, desire or believe you have a right to have – surely He is withholding this from you so that you will not become equal to Him.”  This was an outright lie, a vicious attack on God’s character and an invitation to become our own judge of what is right and wrong.

Impact on Me

So, this sounds eerily like the present with our scandalous and greedy leaders, so much division both on the street and in political arenas, upside down morality, the rights of the guilty outweighing the rights of the innocent, the dilution of Christianity by mixing in compromise in the name of mercy, defining “our own truth”, and wealth and time squandered on endless fruitless pursuits and devices. Any voice raised for righteousness, to speak for Biblical values, seems to be ridiculed and dismissed by the great majority who have been swept up in “doing what seems right in their own eyes”. 

Nonetheless, our hope must rest in God’s encouragement – “Reassure the righteous that their good living will pay off”.  Our day is certainly not the first time God has dealt with a faithless and Godless society and world.  He knows how to shine His light in every dark circumstance. Even if we feel that our light is only a pinprick, He can use it to become a beacon of rescue for someone in that darkness. I am convinced that, as we are faithful to let His light shine in and through who we are and what we do, His light will continue to shine through us to rescue those wandering in the dark.  He will amaze us with those who will emerge from the darkness into His glorious light.

Prayer

Lord of All, Father of Mercy, Light, Life and Redemption, the One Who Never Fails, never let me lose heart in Your power, anointing, and plan.  Remind me that You are with me when dark circumstances arise, or people oppose me.  Keep my eyes on You in the difficult situations in which I find myself, or when the Enemy whispers that these hurdles are just too high to overcome. Let me never give up on You, Your Word, Your power and ability to do all things to bring about Your will and purpose in my own life and in the world.  Fill me with boldness and courage to shine Your light into the blackest darkness. In Jesus’ Name, I pray.