Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law.
Romans 8:13
In a society crippled by debt, followers of Jesus have a different mandate. The debt we owe one another is LOVE. Sounds simple, right? But some days it feels like it would be easier to give the guy $50 and walk away.
Who can you “pay off” today with an act of love? Let’s be debt free people!
Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.
1 John 4:7-11
This is a tough verse! It says quite plainly that if I am not loving others, I don’t know God. Ouch!
Good news! I don’t need to contrive or work up love for others. It is a gift from God. If I’m feeling a little short on love, I need to plug into the source. Allowing him to fill my heart, I can again reach out in love for others.
It sounds a bit too simple, but scripture affirms over and over that it is the Spirit of God who fills my heart with God’s love. When I am connected and receiving God’s love, he overflows onto others.
What keeps you from overflowing? Do you need a fresh perspective of God’s deep love for you, in all your imperfection and messiness? You see, if he loves me in all my weirdness and imperfection, I can love others in their messes. And I bet you can too!
Fear is a liar. It doesn’t know how to discern truth from lie. It overwhelms and immobilizes. It creates chaos.
As with all automatic responses of the brain, fear has it’s place. It keeps me from walking too close to the edge. It keeps me out of the street. It makes me cautious at night in unfamiliar places. It has it’s place.
It also keeps me from vulnerability. It pushes me to believe that I am not safe with others. Worse of all, it convinces me to believe that I am not secure in the love of Jesus.
We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.
1 John 4:16-18
When I first became aware of this verse, I didn’t like it. You see, I knew I was afraid, afraid of not being good enough – of punishment. I couldn’t even experience God’s love correctly. And I tried harder. Exactly the opposite of what I needed to do. But fear has a way of doing that.
God doesn’t love me because I am good enough. He loves me because I am his daughter. He declares me perfect. He delights in who I am, after all, he put me together this way. I am enough because he said I am.
I still experience the tremor of fear at times. But I recognize it’s voice and am quicker to shut it down. I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m moving in the right direction.
How about you? Ready for something different? Read the verse again. It’s a process – just like any kind of growth. The first step: put your trust in his love and let him grow it in you. He died for you and took the punishment that was yours on himself. It’s already been taken care of – you are free to relax into him.
Darkness. Terrifying to some due to the unknown. What might be lurking in the shadows? Will I be safe in the dark?
To others, it is a place of safety. In the dark, I can’t be seen. In the dark, I can hide. In the dark, I can let down the walls and facades, even if just for a minute or two. To some, darkness feels like safety.
It is not physical darkness that I speak of. It is the darkness inside. The place we hide because we fear being discovered for who we truly are.
This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.
1 John 1:5
Perhaps it is this all encompassing light that keeps you and me from vulnerability. It is frightening to expose the darkness. What if no one gets it? What if I am the only one? What if I am meant to be this way?
My mind keeps going back to Jesus. Read Mark 10:17-22 for the full story, but a rich man came to Jesus and asked what he needed to do to spend eternity in heaven. Jesus told him to obey the commandments and named six of them. The man did a little skip and replied that he had always done those. And then scripture says this:
Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him.
Mark 10:21
Jesus is about to expose the darkness in the man; the one thing that keeps him from living life to the fullest. And his heart toward him was LOVE!
Are you afraid to come into the light of Jesus’ love? Afraid that something might be exposed that you try so hard to hide?
Come, he’s reaching for you with a heart overflowing with genuine love!
Parking in Sarasota, Florida is outrageous at this time of year. It helps me to be more patient when I remind myself that I am a part of the problem.
Depending on the time of day, I can feasibly circle the lot at the beach, mall or restaurant for fifteen minutes waiting for someone to leave and grab the vacated parking space before someone else. It can be quite a mess.
I admit, I pray for parking. I don’t pray for the closest spot or the shadiest spot or the most convenient spot. I just pray for any spot. I am grateful when I find one. But sometimes I don’t.
Do I feel “loved” when I find one? Is God’s love for me predicated on a parking space? I cannot begin to recount the number of times I have heard someone say, “God is so loving! He gave us this great parking spot!” Or “God loves us. Look how sunny it is today!”
Is God a genie in a bottle? What about when I don’t find parking or it rains all day? Is God not loving then? Is he not good? Or even more importantly, what if the break through I am praying for doesn’t come? What if waiting for healing takes weeks, months or years?
When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.
Romans 5:6-11
Paul’s words highlight a completely different picture of God’s love for us. It is undeserved and predicated on Jesus’ death. There is no guarantee parking will open up or that the sun will shine or that the break through will be here tomorrow. But we can be guaranteed that we are deeply loved by a Father who initiated the greatest act of love. And he did it before we deserved it.
Remember…Jesus loves you!
God’s love…it’s been on my mind. How do I know that I am loved? Am I really seeing what he wants me to see? Am I experiencing his love in the deepest possible way?
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
1 John 4:9-10
There is no better way to start the week than by meditating on the reminder that God went the distance for us. He initiated the most dramatic interruption into human history ever experienced. And it cost him everything.
Because I need to hear this every day, I will include this link to the most powerful three words you can hear today!
Jesus Loves Me!
Then he added, “Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given—and you will receive even more. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them.”
Mark 4:24-25
It is a fact that muscles atrophy when not used. Perhaps an illness prevents a person from walking or using their muscles. Or maybe, a person just doesn’t want to exercise or even use their muscles. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
Is it surprising that if we don’t use our spiritual muscles, we will also lose them. Listening increases our understanding; the more we listen, the more we understand.
If we don’t listen, even what we have will be taken from us. Our spiritual muscles will atrophy.
How are our spiritual muscles?
The place my light is most likely to dim is with people who I see on a regular basis – my friends, family and neighbors. So what does scripture have to say about neighbors?
The first parable that pops into my head is the story of the Good Samaritan. But what about the people who live right next door to me? What if I don’t like them?
Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.
1 Peter 2:12
It’s important to be careful how we live, especially if our neighbors do not know Jesus. It isn’t difficult to imagine that neighbors ruffle feathers and consequently, accuse you of wrong behavior. But if we are careful to live honorably, in the end it will all work itself out.
I like what Peter adds a couple chapters later…
If you are insulted because you bear the name of Christ, you will be blessed, for the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you. If you suffer, however, it must not be for murder, stealing, making trouble, or prying into other people’s affairs. But it is no shame to suffer for being a Christian. Praise God for the privilege of being called by his name! …So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you.
1 Peter 4:15-16, 19
There is no honor in suffering because you are a busy body or for making trouble. But if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, he is going to take care of it. And that’s a promise!
So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.
Colossians 1:9-10
Knowledge of God’s will, along with spiritual wisdom and understanding, is necessary to live as bright lights in a dark world. But how do I get that?
When I met my husband, I often misunderstood his humor. He said things I took seriously and he was just being funny. It took me awhile to discern his nuances and that only happened as I spent time with him. For us, most of our relationship was long distance, so we communicated through letters. And I needed to read them in order to know his heart. (Yes, we really sent letters through the postal service. There was no email, texting or FaceTime.)
And that’s how it is with God. As we spend time with him we begin to understand his ways. Reading his letter to us, interacting with him through the Spirit, and walking in obedience to what we understand – all help us grow in our knowledge of who he is and how he wants us to live. And it enables us to live as bright lights, representing him well.
And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.
Colossians 3:17
What keeps you from spending time with the Father? From reading his letter to you? From sitting to listen as he speaks?
Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.
Philippians 2:14-16
Darkness does not exist. It cannot move, spread, be produced or measured. It is the absence of light. The absence of light (darkness) grows or spreads at the speed of the light disappearing.
We are called to shine like bright lights in a world that seems very dark. And yet that darkness is simply the absence of light.
In order to shine brightly, we need to hold firmly to the Word of Truth. How firm is your hold on Truth?
One light standing alone casts a small amount of light. Many lights together illuminate even the darkest corners. How can you team with other lights to brighten your corner and dispel the darkness?
Out of the Chaos 