“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:7, ESV)
There are certain chapters and verses in scripture that are often quoted and used more than others. 1 Corinthians 13 is on of those chapters. It is often referred to as the way of love. Love is a word so overused in life that it has lost meaning, power, and usefulness.
If we are to recover love in our life and culture we must first understand the ways of love. First love is not an emotion, emotions change and to endure we need more than feelings. To believe, hope, and endure through this life we must understand the ways of love.
Love is about commitment and responsibility. Let’s first commit to learn the ways of love from God’s word.
“He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”” (Luke 19:40, ESV)
There is an insult that is often used “dumber than a box of rocks.” None of us would consider ourselves to be that devoid of life or of thought. After all, in God’s created order we are the higher beings. Able to think and create, to use tools, and to learn new things. That is true for every human, depending on gifting and education we all have intelligence in a variety of ways. Of course, we are not dumber than a box of rocks. But are we spiritually as void of life as a rock?
Jesus said if the people were to be silenced there is spiritual life in creation and God would have the stones sing the praises of Jesus. I do not believe this to be symbolic or metaphor. If Jesus willed as God the rocks would be given the voice to sing.
It is Christmas a time when there is more singing than at any other time of the year. Hymns and carols of Christmas are some of our favorite memories. Isaac Watts wrote the song Joy to the World in the mid-18th century. Watts was inspired to write, “And Heaven and nature sing” as words of this song from Psalm 98 because all of creature sings the glory of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord! Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together” (Psalm 98:4–8, ESV)
A song today may be what you need to revive your heart. Make a joyful noise and be smarter than a box of rocks because Jesus is worthy of our praise.
“The servant girl at the door said to Peter, “You also are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.”” (John 18:17, ESV)
I am comforted in my failings as a disciple when I consider men far greater than I that have struggled with their own commitment to Jesus. Consider Peter’s direct denial of being a disciple. When confronted by people, when fear overcame, when he became uneasy with being identified as a follower of Jesus he denied Him not just once but three times. In Luke’s Gospel we read, “And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.”” (Luke 22:61, ESV).
From this if I want to be a disciple a follower of Jesus I need to learn these things and work at them every day.
I should never be comforted by the failings of others. My relationship with Jesus and God is personal and should not be judged by how others relate to Jesus. Peter cared nothing about the other disciples but only about His Lord.
I have Holy Spirit as my counselor and guide and if I allow Him to work in my life I will be a better disciple of Jesus. After the coming of Holy Spirit at Pentecost Peter still was learning but he never denied the Lord again.
I am never beyond the sight of God. He sees my every action and He knows my every thought. Even if Peter had never spoken the words Jesus would have known the denial.
Will I draw near to the Lord today even if the world through ridicule and mocking tries to instill fear in my heart and cause me to deny Jesus. Peter entered the court at the risk of being discovered.
Consider your life today the Lord has turned His eyes on you. What does He see? Will you commit to change the heart issues that would lead you to denying Jesus?
“I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:15–18, ESV)
As we start this week, and the midday hour approaches you may know of the challenges that you will face this week. Some may be large, and others may be small and of course we often pray that God would deliver so that we do not face these challenges. That is not God’s way. God wants us to have a deeper and more meaningful relationship with Him. We relate to God through faith and trust and God will not deny his grace he will deliver us through this week.
Jesus when he prayed this prayer knew what the disciples would face as they took His message to the world and all He asked was that God protect them from the evil one, Satan. That is all that is needed this week from us is to believe, that God is near, that God will provide all that is needed, and that God can be trusted to bring us through this week.
Be blessed in the knowledge that God loves you not matter how challenging this week may be God is with you. You are not of this world you are a child of God.
““You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” (Exodus 20:7, ESV)
There is a phrase coined several years ago for advertising to sell recreational activities for the weekend. The phrase was abbreviated TGIF, for Thank God It’s Friday. Those who truly love the Father cringe when we hear the Lord’s name being taken in vain. Most of the time when we think of breaking this commandment, we think of the profanity uttered by many.
Taking God’s name is vain is so much more than just the profanity. It is using God trivially, without respect, to no purpose, or using God as a slang term frivolously. We can be thankful today that it is Friday and God has delivered us through another week. Let us come before God not vainly but in a respectful and reverent way and truly Thank God It’s Friday.
What has God delivered you from in the past week be thankful? What joy and happiness have you experienced in the past week then be thankful? How has God shown you His love in the past week then give thanks. What has God let you go though in the past week then be thankful? Do not be disrespectful of God by throwing His name around without respect. Revere His name and be truly thankful.
““If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:15–18, ESV)
There is no question about God’s love for us when we examine the sacrifice made by Jesus. When we examine the patience of God in dealing with wayward children, and when we see that God wants to be near to us and our lives matter to Him.
The question that remains is how much love we have for Jesus. There is a condition to the ongoing presence of God in our life and the Helper we so desperately need. Jesus states if we love Him and obey Him then will He abide with us and never leave us.
Love takes practice, commitment, and desire. Many have experienced what it is like when we are not loved. We must work at it every day because sin is so close at hand. Everyday practice ways to feel the love God and to return God’s love to Him. Love is a commitment. We must be committed to the relationship and that is the foundation of God’s love for sinful humanity and must be our foundation to love Jesus. Commitment. Desire is the motivation to love. We love what we desire, and we must work at putting off the old desires and replacing them with new desires.
“How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” (Psalm 119:9–11, ESV)
Being prepared for the spiritual winters is the way of being a disciple. They come to us as given and are determined by God to bring about a good work in our life. There are no snowbird disciples among God’s children. We can not simply avoid the winter as many avoid the physical winters by moving to Florida during the winter. A child of God must spend time preparing for the spiritual winters that will come.
Back in the old days when I was a kid we worked all spring and summer preparing for winter. Raising a garden, raising and preparing chickens to be frozen, butchering a hog, cutting wood for the winter fire, and many times a new quilt was made to keep warm at night.
The mark of a true disciple is one who prepares for those winters as this Psalm explains.
Guard our ways with the word
Seeking God and not straying from His word.
Storing up God’s word for the winter to come.
Are you preparing for the spiritual winter to come? We cannot be sluggards about this or else we will sin against God and wander from Him in these times.
“Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.” (Proverbs 6:6–8, ESV)
Be prepared and store up God’s word for the winters of life. In this you will find shelter with God.
“You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter.” (Psalm 74:17, ESV)
Well looks like winter is upon us. The first snow covers the ground. Most know I am no fan of winter. The lazy days of summer are over. I guess I like being lazy. Winter means we must have prepared our food for winter; we must work to keep warm; winter means things will need to be done to prepare for spring. The days are short, and time must be used wisely. Living with the conveniences of our age we often will never need to prepare for winter. Prepping for the different seasons is not a skill we should let go so easily. In the prepping we learn spiritual lessons for life. I want to share with you today for a lunch bite words from C.H. Spurgeon.
My soul begin this wintry month with thy God. The cold snows and the piercing winds all remind thee that he keeps his covenant with day and night, and tend to assure thee that he will also keep that glorious covenant which he has made with thee in the person of Christ Jesus. He who is true to his Word in the revolutions of the seasons of this poor sin-polluted world, will not prove unfaithful in his dealings with his own well-beloved Son.
Winter in the soul is by no means a comfortable season, and if it be upon thee just now it will be very painful to thee: but there is this comfort, namely, that the Lord makes it. He sends the sharp blasts of adversity to nip the buds of expectation: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes over the once verdant meadows of our joy: he casteth forth his ice like morsels freezing the streams of our delight. He does it all, he is the great Winter King, and rules in the realms of frost, and therefore thou canst not murmur. Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness, poverty, and a thousand other ills, are of the Lord’s sending, and come to us with wise design. Frosts kill noxious insects, and put a bound to raging diseases; they break up the clods, and sweeten the soul. O that such good results would always follow our winters of affliction!
How we prize the fire just now! how pleasant is its cheerful glow! Let us in the same manner prize our Lord, who is the constant source of warmth and comfort in every time of trouble. Let us draw nigh to him, and in him find joy and peace in believing. Let us wrap ourselves in the warm garments of his promises, and go forth to labours which befit the season, for it were ill to be as the sluggard who will not plough by reason of the cold; for he shall beg in summer and have nothing.
Spurgeon, C. H. (1896). Morning and evening: Daily readings. London: Passmore & Alabaster.
“ … having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” (2 Peter 1:4, ESV)
Once we begin to know God, we come to know the depravity of our sin. Even as a child who comes to know Christ at an early age if they are discipled, they will know from what they have been delivered. Our greatest thanks to God should come from the knowledge of what we have been delivered from.
For many our thanks to God lacks sincerity, emotion, and gratitude because they are simply focused on what God has blessed them with. Be careful that you do not fall into this thinking. As scripture says God makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust. Simply because we are living a blessed life does not mean we have been delivered from sin and death.
For our thanks to have power we must be able to say with the apostle Paul
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ….” (Romans 7:24–25a, ESV)
Give thanks that by the Lamb of God you have be delivered from you sin. You have been redeemed. If tomorrow all things of this life are gone you will still be eternally grateful to God because you are alive in Jesus.
Don’t let your thanks to God be watered down by focusing on the blessing of this world. Bring power to your worship of God in gratitude that you have been chosen by God to become a child of God. Then maybe we can have the sweetest gift of all our freedom from sin.
“… so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature … .” (2 Peter 1:4, ESV)
Partakers of the divine nature. God has shared of himself. Unlike other creatures in creation man has been created in the image of God. We have been given a soul, a spirit. In Ecclesiastes, “God has set eternity in the hearts of man.” We can only understand what this means to us personally if we are truly thankful for God’s grace in bringing His power to bear on our life to transform us, that we may have the eyes of our hearts opened to truly know God, and we experience joy and hope from the eternal promises of God. Then we can feast on the gift of God’s nature that has been given to us.
God has not and will never make us like Him because we are not God and will never be God. But because of His great love for us and the redemption in Christ Jesus God gives us in our new life as a believer his nature. Some parts of that nature that are shared:
Wisdom, to know God and to live a life applying this knowledge in our journey home.
Joy, to have an unshakeable sense of well-being no matter the circumstances or the obstacles we face on our journey home.
Peace, to be at rest, free from worry, and anxiety trusting in God and to know his care and protection over us as we travel on our journey home.
Happiness, to experience the pleasure of happiness in life moments and to long for the day when our journey ends and we will have happiness forever with God.
Love, to be loved in such a perfect way by God, to know the sacrifice of His love in Jesus, and to share that love with others we meet on our journey home.
In this journey we often overlook the gifts of God’s divine nature that are given to people, that are transformed and shaped when we believe in Jesus as our Savior, and that continue to grow and shape us day by day. We see these things now, but we will understand and know them more fully when enter eternity.
One of the natures of God that he has given to all is immortality. Eternity will happen for all. Some who have rejected God will enter eternity without God and will never know the fullness of God’s nature and how he as given Himself to those who believe.
Others who have believed in Jesus will enter eternity seeing and knowing the fullness of God’s nature and how they reflect that nature in themselves.
There is an old hymn sung in some churches that captures how We’ll Understand it Better By and By. The refrain goes:
By and by when the morning comes, When the saints of God are gathered home, We will tell the story how we’ve overcome; For we’ll understand it better by and by.
Let your thanks this day equal the magnitude of God’s gift to you.
rockbridgebc.org 