Remaking Love

By Jarrod Spencer  –

Valentine’s Day – A day set aside for love and romance. However, love is not just “soft”, “pink”, and feminine as Valentine’s Day often depicts. Love is about giving ourselves, just like Christ gave of Himself. Love is about staying committed through pain.

The church is also called to love–to love one another. Love is about action, which brings us to this quote about love by Ursula Le Guin, “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it had to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.”

As I previously mentioned, love is an action. Love that sits is not love at all. Love is about forgiving those that wrong you. Love is about going to someone you have a problem with. Love is to be made new every morning (Lamentations 3:3). Love that remains the same will become hardened and lack elasticity. Love must be able to stretch, so you can forgive those who wrong you. If you won’t stretch to give grace to your transgressor, then love no longer is love. Christians are called to love each other. The church should be modeling love to each other and those in the world. How will you model love?

Have a great rest of your week! May you have many opportunities to model what it means to love others in a Christ-like way today, tomorrow, this weekend, and so on.

Because of His Love ~

PRAYER: Thank You for Your love! Thank you for sending Your Son and lavishing us with Your mercy be allowing us to be forgiven, despite our worthiness!

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life” (John 3:16 MSG).

Got Nothing?

By Robin J. Steinweg –

Sometimes I’ve got nothing. I might have overextended my energy or been sick, or had little sleep due to tending to others. Whatever the cause, sometimes I’ve got nothing left.

In the Bible, “nothing” is a void for God to fill. He created all that exists out of what was not.

God excels at taking little and making much. Israelites without food? Manna falls from the sky. No water? A touch of the rock and water flows. Gideon with only three hundred soldiers? The enemy— routed. Jars of oil and flour that never run out; a virgin’s womb carries the Son of God; water becomes fine wine at a wedding feast; a few fishes and loaves feed over five thousand—with leftovers. Broken, empty lives—like mine—made whole and filled with God’s Holy Spirit.

So when my emotions tell me I’m like a balloon with pinpricks at both ends, let me contrast how I feel with what God does with my nothing:

From depleted—to completed and replete.
From exhausted—to recharged and teeming with energy.
From drained—to supplied and satisfied.
From emptied—to filled and overflowing.
From spent—to infused and content.

Got nothing? God can do something with that!

AUTHOR QUOTE: God can do more with my nothing than I can with all my somethings. With God, “nothing” is possible!

“And I pray that you…may have power…to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17b, 18a,c, 19 NIV).

Unswerving Hope

By Rosemary Flaaten –

The rain pelted against my windshield with such force that the wipers could not keep it clear. The overwhelming volume of rain pooling on the roadway created a slick covering. As I crept along, hands tensely gripping the steering wheel, I feared that at any moment my car, with its bald tires, would be caught by a gust of wind and skid across the sea of water. Suddenly from behind, a large pick-up truck approached and passed with confidence and precision. This heavy bodied vehicle enabled the driver to manoeuvre the treacherous highways without fear of swerving or hydroplaning.

There is a phrase in scripture that reminds me of my stormy driving experience. Numerous times when we are admonished to hope, the adverb unswervingly is added. Hope by definition is having a desire for something and a reasonable confidence that it is going to happen. As Christians we say that our hope and confidence is in God. But, is it really?

When the torrents of life strike – teenage children go astray, a scary diagnosis is received, a spouse betrays, a parent dies, a friend ridicules, loneliness looms dark – does our hope hydroplane? Battered by the wind and rain, do we skid from one side of the road to another, perhaps even ending up in a wreck? Or, do we have an unswerving hope in God?

I surmise that my fellow driver in the large pick-up truck, who cut through the storm without fear, knew the capacity of his vehicle and was accustomed to driving in the present formidable circumstances. This leads me to ponder how well I know God? Have I studied His character and trustworthiness? Have I prepared for the storms of life by going deep into God’s word and fostering an intimate relationship with Him? Can I recount the storms I have weathered with Him remembering that He has proven faithful?

When our hope is placed in God’s faithful presence in our life, then we will have the confidence to go through any storm knowing that God is carrying us in the palm of His hand and nothing will overcome us. God is trustworthy. He will make our paths straight. God alone is our Rock.

QUOTE: “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, achieves the impossible.” Anonymous

BIBLE VERSE: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23 NIV)

Obituaries and Eternity

By Peter Lundell –

For a brief time I read obituaries in the newspaper—just for fun. It didn’t last long, because they got repetitious. Besides, reading about dead people can get morbid. Yet I learned something.

All the deceased were good people and were missed. Of course they were; people don’t spend money on obituaries for people they don’t like. I didn’t see any for jerks—no one missed them. Or if anyone really was bad, the description was whitewashed.

Each obituary listed the career highlights and accomplishments of the deceased. Some were impressive: degrees, important jobs, civic activities, and contributions. Most folks appeared to have been nice people, good people, ones we’d like if we met them. I found myself being impressed. I imagined meeting them during their lifetime and being impressed—even envious and wishing I had accomplished the things they had.

But there was always one catch: They were dead. This single fact changed everything. After reading all the impressive things they did, I found myself oddly unimpressed. I kept thinking, So what? Their life achievements are over, and now they’re in eternity.

I scoured each obituary for indications of whether they had prepared themselves for eternity. I can’t say whether they or not they did, but nothing was ever said about it. I’m sure some did and some didn’t. Some knew God and some had positively influenced others, but most centered their activities and accomplishments on themselves.

Crossing the line into eternity changes everything—everything that on this earth is impressive or important or worthwhile.

Someday people will read my obituary. Yours too. What if we live our brief lives in ways that reflect and prepare for eternity? After all, that’s where we’re all going. And besides, we’ll almost certainly end up living better lives.

PRAYER: “Lord, teach me to live with eternity in my heart, eternity in my thinking, eternity in my actions, and as I do to change the world I live in.”

BIBLE VERSE: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV).

Pride in Our Humility

By Rosemary Flaaten –

How do you describe humility? Doormat…subservient…inferior?

I grew up being taught to never think too highly of myself. The attached interpretation was that I best not consider myself good at something. The only acceptable pride was the extent of my humility.

Jesus’ life and words give evidence that the humble are blessed when we have an accurate perspective of who we truly are. Humility is not abasement or self-ridicule anymore than it is elevated and cocky. Humility is seeing ourselves as God sees us – nothing added and nothing subtracted.

Humility does not allow us to hold on to our past sins and failures, thus defining ourselves by them, which deflates our character. Christ has forgiven our sins and in His sight we are righteous. Humility accepts the clean slate offered and prompts us to move forward from our mistakes. We become blessed when we see ourselves as God sees us.

Conversely, humility does not allow us to revel in our accomplishments thus hoping to receive significance from them. God has not chosen to love us because of our excellent works. Rather, He loves us and proclaims esteem on us because we are His creation. He loved us enough to have His Son die in order for us to be in relationship with Him. We are blessed because of Christ.

Seeing ourselves as God sees us – nothing more or less – is humility. When we accept God’s view, we truly do inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5). We inherit the opportunity to let go of our past mistakes and move into the possibilities of today. We inherit a freedom that was previously stifled by perfectionism or shame. We inherit a glorious future of acceptance and esteem. We inherit hope.

PRAYER: Lord, help me to take off my glasses of both inferiority and arrogance and instead put on the glasses of humility so I might see myself as You do.

BIBLE VERSE: Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place…” (Philippians 2:5 – 11 NIV)

« Previous Page — Next Page »