pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: love


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Within AND Without

Are you an ‘innie’ or an ‘outtie’?  Does your faith reside mostly inside of you, like a well-kept secret?  Or is your faith out there to be shared with all you encounter?  Each moment of our lives can either be a God moment or just a moment.  God is everywhere all of the time – try and find Him there!

Is your community of believers more of an innie or an outtie?  Is the community consumed with what’s going on inside the walls?Or does your church look outside to the world some of the time?  A healthy church does both.

Just as the church must focus both within and without, we too as a person of faith must look both within and without.  We each need time reading the Bible, praying, meditating, and fasting to grow in our faith.  As a community of believers we need fellowship and loving and caring relationships between the members of the body.

Personally and as a community of believers we need to also reach outside of our own personal space or the four walls of the church so that others can come to know this mighty and awesome God we love and that loves us.  Not everyone will enter a church to find faith.  Some find it in the experiences they have with us or with our church.  We must be both within and without.  It is not either/or.  It must be both!

Scripture reference: Psalm 133


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How Do You Repsond?

Many times in life we are present in a situation where we have been wronged.  In each case we can offer mercy and forgiveness or we can be self-righteous or maybe offer an ‘I-told-you-so’ type of response.  One response brings healing and another continues the hurt.  So… why does the wrong choice often seem so much easier?

I think at times God places us in situations to test and refine our faith.  Sometimes another needs to see what this love of Christ really looks like.  (Once in a while we are that person too!)  Sometimes it is to refine our faith in God.  Through prayer and the reading of the word, we come to the place where we are ready to offer forgiveness and reconciliation.  It is also through prayer that we can come to love our enemies.

What allows us to make that hard choice?  It is the relationship we form and develop with Jesus Christ.  Through times with Him in prayer and through reading the stories in the gospel, we come to see our call to love all above self more and more.  Through our journey to draw closer to Jesus, we too draw nearer to our fellow man.

Scripture reference: Genesis 45: 1-8


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Even in the Wilderness

After Jesus hears of the death of John the Baptist, He withdraws by boat to a solitary place.  But the people follow Him out into the wilderness.  They are seeking.  As they come to Him, Jesus is filled with compassion and heals many.  At the end of the day, out in the wilderness, some of the people find hope and love.

Out in the wilderness, as night begins to settle in, many are vulnerable.  They all have a basic need for food.  Once again (but after an interesting exchange with the disciples!), Jesus feels compassion for the people.  Again He responds out of love.  The people are seated and, from little, 5000 men plus the women and children all eat their fill.  In the wilderness the people encounter a loving God who meets their need not just with what satisfied but with abundance.

At times we to are in the wilderness.  In these times we often feel alone and vulnerable.  And Jesus comes to us too.  In His compassion and love we find healing and comfort for our souls.  In His presence our strength is renewed.  As He walks with us, our wilderness begins to fade.  We come to know that no matter where we are, His love and compassion will always help us through.  His mercies are new every morning and His love never fails!

Scripture reference: Matthew 14: 13-21


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Faithfulness and Love… and Patience

In Romans 9, Paul is in sorrow over the Israelites not seeing Jesus for who He was  – the Son of God, come to redeem the world.  It is a situation where he sees it, has the same background knowledge as them, and does not understand why they do not see it.  Have you ever been one either side of one of these situations in your life?  Maybe you were in the role of Paul and tried and tried to get someone to understand, but just couldn’t.

In this story it is God who is ultimately in this role.  The story also extends out past this current moment in the Bible.  And in this we see something amazing about God.  We can see God covenantal faithfulness and His steadfast love.  Despite all in the Old Testament and all that Jesus said and did, most of the Israelites do not come to understand who Jesus was and is.  Yet God continues to pursue the people of Israel even to this day!

Often I think it is the same with me.  After all of these years of walking with Christ, I still fall short.  At times my sin is that I think I am the one in charge.  Sometimes I take the credit.  Other times it is a thought or word that holds my sin.  But thank God for His faithfulness and love!  Sometimes I can’t imagine why He chooses to stick it out with me.  But He does.  Thank God for His patience too!

Scripture reference: Romans 9: 1-5


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Confidence Forward

Have you ever taken the time to look back over your life to see God’s fingerprints on it?  Do you see how He guided you to this job instead of that other one and how you were blessed there?  Or maybe there was a challenge there – see how it forced you to grow and mature?

Can you see all the other decisions and event sin your life were God is there too?  Maybe it is the college you went to, the  major you ended up with, the person you dated or married, or the places you lived.  Maybe it was the college you did not go to, the person you did not date, and so on.  Maybe it is in the birth or a child or in that heart-wrenching loss.  Maybe it is that divorce or breakup, in that firing, or in that addiction.  As you take time to look back over your life, can’t you see that God was in each and every one of these points of your life?

As we look back and see how God led, directed, and loved into our lives, we gain a confidence to move forward.  In this reflection we build a reserve to know that He will be there in our next difficulty, decision, or event.  We know God will continue to be a part of our lives because He loves us so.  “The Lord is good to all; He has compassion on all He has made.” (Psalm 145:9)

Scripture reference: Psalm 105: 1-11 and 45b


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Share Abundantly

If you were asked to sum up God in one word, what would it be?  Got it yet?  I’d venture to say that most of us would say ‘love’ but some might also say hings like mercy, forgiveness, or maybe creator.  To me, love is God’s main and dominant characteristic.  Out of His love, many other things flow.

Once we find that love of God in our lives, we realize we have a great gift.  When we come to know just how much He loves us, we are both very grateful and deeply humbled.  It changes our whole world.  We are grateful and humbled because we come to also realize that we are imperfect and sinful, yet God still loves us.  It amazes me that a gift given so freely can be so valuable.  But it is.

Once we come to fully know the gift of the love of God, then we want to always have it.  As we continue on our journey of faith, love become how we see all of life, how we treat our neighbor, how we seek to serve those in need, and how we seek to share the good news so that others may know this gift of love.  The gift is so great that it makes us want to share it.  May we share abundantly today!

Scripture reference: Matthew 13: 44-52


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Love Always There

We are inseparable from God’s love.  His love is so high and wide and deep that we cannot begin to imagine the vastness of His love.  And God’s love will last forever.  Not a few years, a couple millenia, but forever.  His love will never fail.

Paul lists a wide range of extremes that cannot separate us from God’s love – angels or demons, life or death, present or future – to name a few.  He punctuates is by stating that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Pretty amazing love!

There will be times and circumstances in t his life when we do not sense God’s love or do not choose to walk in that love.  Yet it is still there.  There will be times when we are so crushed or hurting so bad that we cannot begin to feel His love.   Yet it is still there, right there, all around us.  When we open our hearts and minds and eyes to God’s love, His love comes flooding in.  It is not forced upon us, but is always just right there, always surrounding us.  Thanks be to God for His great love!!

Scripture reference: Romans 8: 38-39


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Faithful and True

We are called to spread God’s word and love.  Jesus compared the discipling of others to seeds and yeast.  In Matthew 13 the small mustard seed grows into a large plant that is home to many birds.  The ‘yeast’ that we work into the ‘dough’ spreads out and causes all of the dough to rise to new heights.  As we spread God to those in our worlds, we help them to grow in their faith.  It is neat to watch another grow in their faith.

But sometimes we have to wait.  The seed does not sprout overnight and the yeast takes time to work.  Sometimes it is hard to wait.  Although we can see and feel other ways God’s kingdom is being built, at times we can hone in on one person or one situation in our life.   It then becomes hard to see big picture that God is painting.

We must learn to wait patiently and to continue in our labors.  We are only the labors – God and the Holy Spirit are what cause the seed to sprout.  We know that the Father is faithful and true.  He is our hope and our strength.  In Hebrews 10 we find encouragement: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how we may spur on another on toward love and good deeds”.

Scripture reference: Matthew 13: 31-33


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Love and Intercession

Romans 8:28 reads: “We know that all things work together for goof for those who love God”.  Paul’s words are of great comfort when we are dealing with or living in a difficult situation.  Events full of tragedy, heartache, and stress will come our way.  We will hurt.  But we know that God’s love will be there in our darkest hour, because He is a God who desires good for His children.

Not only that, but in times when we are in such despair that we do not know what to pray for, in these times, the Spirit will intercede for us.  When we are so torn and broken that we cannot even form words, God’s Spirit prays for us.

These two great promises remind us that God is always near, and that because of His great love for each of us, He wants the best for us.  We can go through each and every moment with confidence that God and His Spirit are always near, eager to offer love and intercession for us.  Thanks be to God for this great gift!!

Scripture reference: Romans 8: 26-34


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Are You There?

Within our human relationships we often find conflict, a struggle for acceptance, and some competition for attention.  I saw this in my children growing up and sometimes see it in the adult relationships we have with others.  In our adult life we often want to be the ‘best friend’.  And no matter what our age is, we can question our role and whether or not we fit in.

In Genesis 29 Jacob pledges to work for Laban for seven years in order to marry his daughter Rachel.  But on the wedding night, Laban slips in the older daughter Leah instead.  Jacob is upset when he awakens the next morning and finds Leah there.  Yet he works seven more years in exchange for marrying Rachel.  Tension becomes the norm in this dual marriage – no surprise here!

I don’t know if I could do what Jacob did.  He gave 14 years of his life to marry Rachel.  Talk about love!  And within this story we also get a glimpse of what true faithfulness looks like.  I wonder if I would be willing to give 14 years for something or someone.  Would you?  Yet when we think about our pursuit of God, 14 years should just be a beginning of what we offer.

My faith journey is into its fourth decade.  My faithfulness is usually pretty good, but I stumble on the path from time to time.  My pursuit is pretty dogged in general, but it wanes on occasion.  Why continue to work on our faith after we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior?  Because I am not there yet.  Are you?

Scripture reference: Genesis 29: 15-28