Tag: Love

Digging in Deeper: John 21:17

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“He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’  Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’  Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Have you ever told someone you love them?  I suspect you have.  I suspect you’ve even meant it.  But, how deeply did you mean it?  Were they merely sincere words, or was there more behind them?  Were they primarily emotional words, or was there a conviction that ran deeper?  Saying, “I love you,” is easy.  Loving someone is entirely more difficult. Read the rest…

Morning Musing: 2 Peter 1:5-8

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“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Do you want to be effective?  We all do, don’t we?  We want to be able to have an impact on the people and environment around us.  Not only that, but we want to do so in a way that will last and have meaning.  The question, then, becomes: How do we do this?  How can we have an effective impact on our situations? Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Isaiah 53:5-6

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“But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned–every one–to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Here, some 700 years before it would happen, Isaiah declares what is perhaps the deepest wonder of the cross.  On the cross, Jesus bore our sins.  All the things we have done wrong were placed on His shoulders.  He took the punishment that should have been ours.  And by ours, I mean everybody’s.  The sins of the whole world living at the time, of those who had died before He did, and of those who have lived in the years of human history since were credited to His account. Read the rest…

Love Flows Out

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Yesterday morning in our journey through 1 John we finally got to the point of defining love.  What is love and what are the five implications for getting it right in our lives that John outlines?  Keep reading to find out.

 

Love Flows Out

Near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus looked at the crowd gathered around Him and said this: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.  And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Psalm 103:8-12

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“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.  He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

For anyone who would argue that the God of the Old Testament is somehow different from the God of the New Testament by being much angrier and more focused on judgment, you have to explain away passages like this one.  And this is not the only time this characterization appears in the Old Testament.   Read the rest…