Tag: Love

Digging in Deeper: 1 John 4:9-10

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“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

All throughout this season of Advent we have been talking about its virtues. We started out with hope. Advent is nothing if not an injection of hope into our lives. From there came peace. When hope comes into our heart, peace is going to be the result. Then followed joy. Hope and peace together will give us the confidence in our God to lay hold of that incorrigible contentment that makes up the foundation of real joy. But right at the heart of the season is another virtue. This one Paul identified as the greatest of them all. What is it? Love. This week, as we prepare to land with both feet on the day itself, we are going to be talking about love.

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Love Done Right

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In this final part of our series, I Do, we talk about the secret sauce that makes marriage work. You will perhaps be completely unsurprised to find out it’s love. But, love only works if we know what it is and how to use it. As we wrap up the last few weeks of work, that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about. Keep reading to learn more.

Love Done Right

How many of you have seen the movie Michael with John Travolta? Leaving aside the terrible theology for a moment, the movie itself is great. John Travolta plays the archangel Michael who has come to earth apparently to have a great time, do a lot of sinning, and help William Hurt and Andie McDowell fall in love. Again, as I said, terrible theology. In any event, Hurt works for a tabloid magazine in New York and McDowell is a dog walker who convinces the magazine’s editor, Bob Hoskins, that she is an angel expert. The two are dispatched to Iowa where Michael is staying with an old woman in her hotel, in order to see if the reports they’ve heard about the angel living in Iowa are true. If they are, the pair are to convince him to come back to New York City with them for an interview. He refuses to fly (get it?) and instead insists that they drive across the country through rural America in order to get back to the big city. Along the way they have all kinds of misadventures including obscure tourist stops, bar fights, and great pie. About halfway through the movie, just before the group crosses the border into Illinois, Michael starts singing a pretty well-known song and encourages everybody else to join him.

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Uncomplicated Relationships

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In this final part of our series, Simplicity: Finding Contentment in a Busy Life, we tackle one last area where we all struggle with finding contentment: Our relationships. Relationships can be hard. They can be so complicated. What causes that and how can we fix it? With some wise words from Paul as our guide, we wrap up our journey by answering those very two questions. Thanks for reading.

Uncomplicated Relationships

Around about the time that I was coming through my early teenage years, schools were just beginning to transition from having junior high schools to having middle schools.  My own school district followed the trend pretty closely.  When I was a freshman in high school, they passed a huge bond issue to fund some badly needed new school buildings.  The initial plan was to build three single-grade schools for all the students in the district.  So, they opened Pioneer Ridge Sixth Grade Center, George Caleb Bingham Seventh Grade Center, and they converted my junior high building into the James Bridger Eighth Grade Center.  The first class of those students came in as freshmen during my senior year of high school.  Imagine that—an entire grade who had been entirely on their own for three years.  And the year before that, they were all the last class of fifth graders at their various elementary schools.  Forget about not knowing how the standard school pecking order worked; they didn’t even remember what a pecking order was! 

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Digging in Deeper: Hosea 7:13

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“Woe to them, for they fled from me; destruction to them, for they rebelled against me! Though I want to redeem them, they speak lies against me.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

This verse starts out the way most folks expect the prophets to go. There goes God judging the people again, promising doom and destruction on them. It ends the way we would expect something from the prophets to end. There goes God again, accusing the people of wrongdoing. It’s that thing in the middle that catches us off guard. God wants to redeem them? Wait, what? Let’s look into that one a bit more.

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Morning Musing: Hosea 6:6

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“For I desire faithful love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter) 

What does God want? Do you ever find yourself asking that question? Sometimes it’s a question. Sometimes it can be more of an accusation. We feel like we’re constantly running around trying to please Him and never quite managing to hit that mark. It can be pretty discouraging to feel that way for long. Fortunately, God tells us what He wants in the Scriptures. Frequently. We’ve only got to listen to what He says.

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