Tag: love

Priorities

Reflection

What is really important in life? What do you really want to accomplish? God has allowed me to see that what He wants from me are two things: love, and love.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ time were a nasty lot of hypocrites, who used religion to further their own interests. Hoping to discredit Christ, they once asked Him which of the Ten Commandments was the greatest. Jesus answered that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord God with all of one’s heart, soul, mind and strength; and that the second was like the first: to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Jesus went on to say that on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

What an amazing statement! The Law and the Prophets were the entirety of Scripture at that time, and Jesus so boldly summed all of it up in two basic commands: love God, and love others.

If there were ever words to live by, let these be the ones. I’m constantly praying for strength to allow these to be the ruling principles of my life.

What true love is

Reflection

Love is not a feeling. The noun form of the word would not exist without the verb form, and a verb connotes action. Love without action is empty rhetoric. Love in word only is actually hatred, and a lie. There is no truth in it unless it is manifested in selfless action toward its object.

1 John 3:18-20 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

Problem, or Opportunity?

Reflection

These hard times, characterized by fear and uncertainty, grant us an extraordinary blessing that most Americans may have rarely been afforded in our lifetimes. We are offered a glimpse of what it might be like to be faced with fear and uncertainty every day of our lives. This is reality for untold millions within our sphere of influence. What will we do with this blessing of information we’ve now received?

What will you do, and what will I do? Will we just try to “get through it”, shutting out the light we’re seeing, or will we turn this experience into empathy, compassion and action, and strive to make a difference in the lives of others through the love of God?

By His grace, let’s turn this problem into an opportunity, and change the world through the power of the love of God.

Does God Love Us?

Reflection

An acquaintance relayed to me that he had been in the hospital for 10 hours due to an infection.  He said that, during his stay, several religious people had told him that he was going to hell.  He laughed, saying “Their god must only love some people if he’s sending others to hell.”

I urged him, and urge you now, to consider this: If man has by his own actions condemned himself, and God provides a way for man to be redeemed, which man then rejects, how can it be reasoned that God has not demonstrated love?

What is your relationship to God?  Are you certain that you are in good stead with Him?  If not, what could be more important than searching for the answer to that question?  If you believe God is real, all-powerful and all-knowing, pray with a pure heart, asking Him to show you the truth.  If He truly loves you, He will show you the way.

Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”