Love Quantified

On August 2, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

John 17: 23

I am in them, and you are in me. So they are completely united. In this way the world knows that you have sent me and that you have loved them in the same way you have loved me.

This is one of those verses you may want to read in several translations. Although, the same point is made in all, they have slightly different nuances. As you will have perceived, these are the words of Jesus. This speech is conversation with the Father. The first observation we may make is how normal Jesus’ dialogue with the Father sounds. It is not stilted, formal prayer. He is simply talking.

Then, as we begin looking at his words, we learn that he is in us as the Father is in him. If we stop right there, we have a very powerful concept to meditate on. What does this mean to our lives? Jesus is to us as the Father was to him in his walk on the earth. Everything the Father is resided in Jesus. He is the all in all. Then all that Jesus had, which included the fullness of the Father, came to reside in us. Isn’t that what Jesus says in this passage? He is in us in like manner to the Father in him. This joining of the Father in Jesus and Jesus’ residence in us is supposed to bring us into complete, and even perfect harmony or unity. It does not say that we agree on all doctrine. It does not say we do not have differences of opinion. It does say, though, that we are united in him, completely and totally. If we are not in unity, I hazard to say we are not truly in Christ or allowing him to abide with us. There is no disunity for all who are in Christ and in whom Christ has made his home. I don’t care if you are Catholic, Baptist or even a Messianic Jew. There is only one body and we are either in or out, it is our choice.

This is a crucial message of the times. As we approach the end of this age, we must come into a united purpose in Christ Jesus. Only a united body will reach the world with the good news of Jesus, the risen Christ. As long as we are back biting and disparaging one another, the world will not come to know that God sent Jesus or that He loves us all, even the heathen unsaved, as much as He loves Jesus. Only our love and tolerance of one another will show the world the love of God. The doctrinal and theological points we tear the house apart over are of no importance to God. In fact, I very much believe we will get to heaven, run to Him and argue our case only to find we were all wrong. Those things just don’t matter. What matters is that the world, which is suffering and broken, sees the love of Christ. If we cannot love our brothers, if we constantly fight with one another, then how is the world ever going to believe in the love of God?

Jesus tells us in this passage that the Father loves us all as He loves Jesus. How much larger a revelation do any of us need than that. If you think God loves Jesus, then you must also accept that He loves you that much. He also loves every single non-believer in the same quantity and quality of love. Whatsmore, He even loves those crazy people in the church down the street.

We are not going to gain ground by telling the unsaved what decrepit, wicked people they are. In truth, I can’t think of much the Father despises more than that. They, like all of us, need to hear that God loves them. They also need to see us loving one another. So, regardless of our doctrinal stripes, let us wrap our arms around each other, joining in one united purpose – that is to share (and show) the love of Christ, the love that gives all for the other person. We need to major on love and learn what it means. There is a graduate study for you. It is a subject so rich and so deep that it will take the rest of our lives, here and beyond, to fathom its depths. Let’s just do our best to let a little of Jesus seep out of us today. You will have challenges today, especially if you have to drive anywhere. You will encounter unlovely people whose mind is solely on themselves. Reach in and touch Jesus within you and let him shine on those people. Let the world see for once and for all that God is love and that He loves ever single person.

Christ is in you today.

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Compassionate Grace

On May 22, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Exodus 34: 6 – 7

Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.

How often have you heard about the angry, vengeful God of the Old Testament? Well, here He is full of compassion, grace, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. You know, we’ve got to be careful about what we listen to. Show me the scriptures! Give me evidence! When we actually look at the Old Testament, especially in its entirety, we find a God who was long on patience and whose actions were characterized by lovingkindness.

God is love and He so loved all of us that He sent His only begotten son to the cross for us. No one sends there only son to suffer and die for people He doesn’t love. He gave everything precious to Him so that we could be saved. Is that evidence of a vengeful God. And think about it this way . . . didn’t Jesus come to earth, suffer and die in the Old Testament? The new dispensation and the new covenant could not be ushered in until Jesus went to the cross, died and arose so all that we celebrate in the Christian faith about resurrection, salvation and the new birth is based on the Old Covenant love of God.

Yahweh has always been a full of compassion and lovingkindness. When Moses hid himself so that God could pass before him, what he saw and reported was that this God was full of graciousness, truth and compassion. We learn that God was and is slow to anger. How can we justifiably describe Him as angry when He is slow to anger? Does that make any sense at all?

The truth is that God is as He always was. He has not changed. His love for us has always motivated His actions. The fact that He did not send a lightning storm and strike down the grumbling, complaining Israelites in the desert is proof enough of His long suffering. Not one among us is as patient or as slow to anger as our Divine Father and yet we accuse Him of being impatient and merciless. It is just not true. We’ve been lied to but now we know.

Never be afraid of your heavenly Father. Never fear seeking counsel and communion with Him. He is gentle and kind. In fact, He is the most gentle being that has ever inhabited this universe. His compassion knows no boundaries. I love Jesus and I know you do too but we must remember that Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father. Jesus is the way. The way to what? To the Father. Jesus’ mission was to bring us back into relationship with the Father when we, like the prodigal son, sinned against Him and went astray. All the while, the Father was awaiting us, His eyes searching the horizon, a gold ring and new robe in Hands readied to drape us in the family colors and crest. He is the one who was deprived yet He longingly awaited our return, every day searching the road in the anticipation of our appearance. He never lost faith. He put the sacrificial lamb on the alter so that we would be able to approach Him with a clean conscience. This is the act of love, not anger.

The God of the Old Testament is a loving God, full of grace and mercy, abounding in compassionate concern.

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Saved from Wrath

On May 1, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   1 Comment

1 Thessalonians 5: 9

For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It surprises me that there is still confusion over God’s feelings towards us. Even people who have John 3: 16 memorized still talk about God’s wrath and about how He is going to pour out His wrath upon us. Well, this verse would seem to lay aside that perspective in favor of a God who loves us and intended to save us, even to save us from Wrath.

God is love (1 John 4: 8) and everything He does is from the vantage of love. Our crimes demanded punishment but because He wanted to spare us from our just due, He sent Jesus to take all of the punishment, all of the wrath upon himself. We have been pardoned. The jail cell doors are thrown open wide. We are free. We are excused from the prison cell and invited into the throne room. God saved us from the sentence levied against us by condemning Jesus. Therefore, we are no longer destined to or for wrath but rather our destinies are salvation, love, hope and peace through the grace of our Father and the triumph of Jesus’ sacrifice.

Love is in the house. Love demands kindness, not wrath. Love demands gentleness. Let’s get a revelation of our Father. He is gentle and kind, not angry. Any anger He had, He poured out on Jesus. Sometimes I think we do “Him” a disfavor by attributing the male pronoun to Him because the Bible reveals that He is male and female. Were we able to comprehend Him in His fullness, I think it would be easier for us to attribute His nurturing nature to His every thought and gesture. He is the strong warrior who protects us from the storm but He is every bit the tender soul who cuddles us in warmth and affection. He is the most emotionally expressive person you will ever meet. In fact, He is so effusive with His declarations of love that He will embarrass you.

You were not destined to endure anger or wrath. You were and are destined for greatness in Christ Jesus through the love and salvation bought for you at the cross and in truth, at the dawn of time. You are destined to sit on your heavenly parent’s knee and receive comfort and the outpouring of incomprehensible love. Receive love and abandon fear of wrath. Receive the fullness of Salvation.

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Banner of Love

On April 19, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Song of Solomon 2: 4

He has brought me to his banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.

Have you ever read the Song of Solomon? Would you believe that in the 2500 Word of the Day devotionals I have written, this is the first time I have chosen a passage from this book? Do you wonder why this is the first time? Me too! Well, frankly, it is a little bit of an awkward book. If you have read it you might have felt the same way. The book is a very intimate dialogue between two lovers. As you read it you may feel that you are violating the lovers’ privacy. I think there may be an additional and deeper reason this book disquiets some of us. As I said, it is very intimate and many of us are uncomfortable with intimacy. Ultimately, this underlies a hindrance we have in developing our relationship with the Father.

Let’s go one step further. Why do you suppose this book is in the Bible? Why did Father choose to include it? This book is a love letter from the Father to you, from Jesus to his bride. It is an expression of God’s deep, deep affection for you. Knowing that may make the book harder to read instead of easier. All of the expressions of adoration, affection and longing are the Father’s feelings towards you. He sees you as beautiful and flawless. Sometimes I wonder why He loves us so but reading this book moves you beyond denial.

As I said, many of us are uncomfortable with such outspoken endearments. We are challenged by such intimacy. It embarrasses us. Because intimate thoughts, feelings and expressions are awkward for us, we find it very arduous to allow our heavenly Father to express the intensity of his devotion to us. Subsequently, we never really develop a true love relationship with Him. Most of us just walk in some sort of religious construct with Him. We are lost somewhere between God and Father. We know He is more than a far removed deity and thus we move our thoughts towards relating to Him in a more personal manner. However, most of us cannot reach into our hearts and receive the relationship He has designed for us. We labor to believe we are worthy of His love and so we stretch our minds to a picture of us in a close, personal relationship with Him. We reach longingly but reluctantly for the love our hearts crave. Here is where we enter into limbo. We are caught between service to our God and loving our intimate friend. Should we dare engage with this book of Solomon then we are forced to see ourselves so beloved that we shy away like a spooked horse.

In July of 2005 Yahweh interrupted my life with what I call a prophetic dream. This dream was clearly the Father speaking to me. I now find it interesting to note the topic of this dream. If God is going to completely arrest your life for a day what would you expect Him to want to show you or talk with you about. I would think perhaps His plan for our lives or a new calling on your life. Interestingly, He used that whole dream, which was pages long when I wrote it out, to show me how I resist intimacy with Him. All I wanted to do was serve Him but He wanted to bless and honor me. In the dream, I couldn’t and wouldn’t let Him. He commandeered my sleep to communicate with me because I could not hear Him in my waking life. This message was so important to Him that He insinuated Himself into my dream so we could connect on a level which I was consistently foreclosing to Him. Now He wants to speak to you.

He has brought you to His banquet hall so He can honor you. The sign hanging above the head table has your name on it and the message is love. You have been designated as the one He loves. What will you do with His outpouring of affection? What will you say in return? Will you receive the adoration from His heart? I hope so.

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Freedom

On March 22, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Galatians 5: 1

It was for freedom that Christ set us free.

I recently read How to Stop the Pain by Dr. Jim Richards. Though my copy of this book is highlighted throughout and hand-written notes garnish every chapter, there was one page, one paragraph that was so loud to my Pastor’s heart that I determined I must share it with you.

It is from this premise that Jesus came to set us free that Dr. Richards writes, “Following Him (Jesus) wholeheartedly is the safest life in the world. It has the greatest peace; it has the emotional freedom we all desire. To follow Him wholeheartedly, though, requires that we trust Him enough to apply His truth to our lives” (P. 94). Therein lies the rub. The freedom Jesus bought for us on Calvary is wrapped in the cloak of trust. If we put on this cloak and enfold ourselves in it we will absolutely be protected from the storms but how do we trust Jesus to the extent that we are willing to take those first tentative steps? For some people it comes from desperation. When we get ourselves in a deep enough mess, sometimes that is enough to allow us to make that leap of faith. Dr. Richards continues, “We must walk in love. We must discard our former way of finding safety and happiness and follow His teachings.” This requires us to do things differently and that can be a challenge.

Truthfully, most of us are not making cognitive choices about our interaction with the world. We just do what we have always done or what we were taught to do. This freedom in Jesus requires us to abandon our ways and live according to his ways. Even if we know the difference rarely do we make contemplative choices. We live according to reactionary patterns. It is possible, though, for his ways to become so ingrained in us that they surface without cognitive thought. In order for that to become our reality, though, we must spend quiet, meditative time with Jesus and with his word. It is not enough for us to merely read a chapter a day. That is good and fine but what we are talking about here is that word getting down in your heart. Whatever is in your heart will come out when faced with a situation. Many times we do not even have the luxury of thinking about our choices. Sometimes we just react and those reactions come from whatever we have sown in our hearts.

Truly the freedom that Dr. Richards encourages is from following Jesus wholeheartedly. As we spend time with Jesus, talking with him and listening to him, and as we observe him through the scriptures we gain a new reality in him. His ways become our ways and the chains that he came to set us free from fall away. There is freedom in Jesus. It is in trusting him and following him. It is in putting our feet in his footsteps instead of following the ways we have learned in the world. Knowing Jesus, not just knowing about him but knowing him is to know freedom. Trust him and be free.

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Longing, Yearning and Seeking

On March 21, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 63: 1

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

Here are the words of someone who loves God, I mean who really, really loves God. Who do you think wrote these words? If you said, “David” you are right. One of the things I love about David is his passion for the Lord. He inspires me but also shames me a little. Another thing I appreciate about him is his willingness to express his love and devotion to the Father. I also am impressed with his ability to express these ardent emotions.

For those of us living in the western world, the expression of emotions is almost a lost art. We have learned to spurn emotions themselves, how much more the expression of them? God, though, is emotional. He is love which is more than an emotion but certainly involves the emotions. He also hates. Did you know that? Run a search on that and you will see. He and David had a love relationship with each other and neither was afraid to admit or express it. David was so demonstrative of his love for God that he made his wife mad. Maybe she was a bit jealous.

I admit that David embarrasses me a little with his confessions of love. Here is today’s verse as it appears in the Amplified version, “O God, You are my God; with deepest longing I will seek You; My soul [my life, my very self] thirsts for You, my flesh longs and sighs for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water.” His longing for God is palpable. You can feel the deep yearning in his soul for the touch of God, for God’s presence. I find David’s desperate need for communion challenging but God says of David that he, “is a man after my own heart” (Acts 13: 22). David longed for the Father, trusted Him and sought to follow His ways. Some people talk about David’s sins but until God recognizes me as one after His heart then I will refrain from judging David. In fact, I look forward to meeting him and telling him how much his songs inspired me. Oh that I might be like David and yearn for the Father will all my being as he did; with a desire so strong for fellowship with the Father that he ached in his emotions and even in his body.

We are blessed that David shared his emotions and his relationship with God with us. We, like peeping Tom’s, get to peer inside and gain a new perspective on the depth of relationship we can enjoy with the Father even while we are here in the earth. “Bless the Lord oh my soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name” (Psalm 103: 1) and teach me to seek Him as fervently as did David.

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The Unbreakable Contract

On March 15, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 89: 34

My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter the utterance of My lips.

The most important message in the whole Bible is that God loves you. That is the height of God’s missive to you. Today’s message is important too though. We need to grasp that God is not a man that He can lie (Numbers 23: 19). In fact, I would say that it is one of the foundational ideas, one of the keystones for your personal theology. If you don’t understand this you will have a very difficult time understanding who you are in Christ and who God is.

You may often hear pastors talk about the letters of Paul. Well, our Father God sent us a letter too. This is true. The entire Bible is a love letter to you from God and this is an important revelation for you to integrate. You are never going to see it for its true value though if you don’t first fully embrace that God cannot lie to you. Likewise, He will not, cannot even, break His word to you. His covenant to you is every word He has ever spoken to His kids. His words are promises and they cannot be broken. I want you to really meditate on this and let it sink down into your inner person. You’ve got to understand that the Bible is not a textbook that some random author wrote with whom you have no relationship. It is more like a “How To Manual.” It is the culmination of God’s wisdom for you.

Imagine for a moment that you have the time to write down, for your children, every piece of wisdom you have ever gleaned. Take all of those life-giving messages and put them together in one place for your kids. Better still, what if you got me to write a letter for your book and some other writers as well. Maybe you heard a message preached by your pastor that has the power to alter a person’s life. Record it in the pages of your opus. Now, here is my question for you. If you were going to create a tome meant to guide your beloved children, would you lie in it? Would you take care that the messages presented were correct? If you made a promise in it, would you keep your word?

God has not changed His mind nor has He changed the utterance of His lips. He has not changed His mind about wanting you, specifically you, to be His child forever and ever. He wants you safe and whole. He longs to lead you in right and productive paths. When you can look at the Bible and mine from it God’s heart and His nurturing care for you then you will begin to build your personal understanding, your personal theology, if you will, on the cornerstone of His love. You will find encouragement and protection. You will begin to read the words of the Bible and holdfast to them as a personal promise to you. You will understand and believe down to your bones that when God said He sent His word and healed them (Psalm 107: 20) He meant exactly that and He meant you. When you read Proverb 10: 22 you will have a hallelujah breakdown because you know He sent that good word to you and that He has never changed His mind about it.

God has not changed His mind and He has no need to change the utterance of His lips. If He said it, He will do it (Numbers 23: 19). Let Him minister His truths to you today.

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