Safetypinlove

Consider this, long before Zacchaeus needed to see Jesus…God planted that tree along the roadside near Jericho. Now the story in Luke 19:1-10 tells us that Zacchaeus was a despised chief tax collector for the Roman Empire…but yet, he longed to see this man called Jesus. So he climbed a tree to see over the gathered crowd. This symbolized on his part the deep humility and willingness to overcome all obstacles in order to seek out spiritual truth. And Jesus met him where he was, stressing His Gospel Mission to seek and save the lost. We need to remember then that God actively goes before us… clearing obstacles and guiding our steps. (Deuteronomy 31:8, Isaiah 45:2, John 10:4) For everything is under His watchful care and has been prepared for us before the beginning of time.

If you hear the word love today, most times it’s used like a noun. But in the Bible, love is more of a verb. It’s a duty…an action word we’re obligated to perform. God commands us to love one another, love our neighbor, love our spouses, and even to love our enemies. The best place to read about this Agape love is in I Corinthians 13, where the Apostle Paul carefully lays out the type of unconditional, sacrificial, and selfless love we are to imitate. That’s because, as he wrote, Christian love is the ultimate fruit of the Spirit.

There will be Seasons of your life that are about trusting God more than understanding what’s happening. King David called them, “wonderful and too lofty for me to attain.” (Psalm 139:6) Neither did he fool himself, thinking he knew more than God, instead renouncing pride and arrogance, and admitting to God’s all-encompassing omniscience. The scope of God’s knowledge is boundless…it’s both majestic and mysterious…therefore reminding us of our limitations and the need to trust in Him.

In the Book of Psalms there are 58 laments…they are the most numerous type among the 150 Psalms in the Bible. But yet we’ve built a Church culture where expressing sorrow, distress, doubts, fears, exhaustion, or grief feels more like a lack of faith than a cry for mercy. Our performance driven Church culture instead wants us to reply to any inquiry with a quick, “I’m Okay!” We only need to look at Hannah’s heartfelt cry to God from the depths of her despair and the priest’s reply to see how this could be incorrectly judged. From I Samuel 1: 10-15 we find Hannah…barren for years and struggling with the deep sorrow of being childless. Her private & very personal prayer in the Tabernacle that day was earnest, brutally honest, and intentional. It was a faith-filled cry to God affirming her trust in Him in the midst of her anguish. But Eli, the priest, just saw a drunk and “worthless” woman muttering in the pew…of which, she was neither. Thus, laments are a model for our prayers, showing that they are a legitimate and vital expression of honesty, faith, and worship.

This is one of seven “I am” statements in John that demonstrate the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Just like calling Lazarus from the grave, Jesus’ voice brings the dead to life. All the while reinforcing the Gospel Message in the very person of Jesus and by His saving work…that we may be saved and forgiven. And in this we have hope that life for us doesn’t have to end at the deathbed, but continue as an endless life of fellowship with God. That’s because Jesus is the Source of both of our resurrection and eternal life, and belief in Him and in Him alone, ensures life beyond our physical demise.

Suffering is never wasted energy in the hands of a good God. He uses it to deepen our faith, conform us more to Him, and develop a compassion that the world doesn’t understand. In the self-absorbed world today, showing empathetic compassion beyond a few kind words is rare. I Peter 3:8 reminds us to live in harmony with one another in authentic, practical care and emotional understanding. So as the world shakes its head in confusion, take the attributes of God and mirror them to others…or as Psalm 86:15 says, “But You, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”

This is the Apostle Paul’s short letter to Philemon, a fellow Christian and slave-owner to Onesimus…a slave that had run away and had somehow met Paul in Rome, where he converted to Christianity. In this letter, Paul carefully selects his words of fellowship and love one to another… now that the slave and the slave-owner are both Believers. Paul even capitalizes on the meaning of Onesimus’s name, “useful” to prove his now serviceable gifts for the kingdom. The point of his letter is to show gratitude for God’s work of grace , expressing his prayerful desire for all Believers to have spiritual usefulness, unity, and fellowship. And that Philemon, (and us) should demonstrate Christian love as the first rule of human action…transcending all boundaries.

Our natural inclination is to be always trying to forecast what will happen next. To quote Oswald Chambers, “Certainty is the mark of commonsense, but gracious uncertainty is the mark of the Spiritual life.” But we have to admit that this is scary, and for the most part, that our future is real, but still veiled. (I Corinthians 2:9) So as Jesus taught in Matthew 18:3, we must then take on the trusting faith and humble spiritual life of a tiny child who is dependent on others for what they can’t provide for themselves. Thereby, blessed certainty can replace our human guesswork as we trust that God is preparing unimageable blessings for those who love Him.

God is called the husband of Israel, (Jeremiah 3:14 & 31:32) denoting the covenantal tie of love and loyalty between the Lord and His people. He is committed and unwavering in His love…which we see in Jesus Christ’s Spiritual husband relationship with His Church under the New Covenant. (Ephesians 5:25-27) The entire Chapter 54 of Isaiah is a metaphor of rejected women. It speaks of the reproach of barrenness, the grief of being a cast off wife, and the stigma of widowhood. But there in God’s promise is the assurance that when all others had forsaken them, He would be their Creator, Redeemer, and faithful husband. He comforted them with His pledge that He’d meet all their needs and not leave them in a place of “second best”.

There is only one thing we can give to God, and that is the right to ourself. The Apostle Paul here exhorts his readers to respond to God’s undeserved mercy and grace by becoming a living sacrifice. Now instead of the Old Testament dead animal sacrifices, we are to offer ourselves fully – body, mind, and will to God…making every aspect of our life an act of worship. What this means is a continual, active commitment rather than an one time personal ritual. Another way to look at this term living sacrifice is that our individual desire dies as our surrendered sanctification lives.. also known as dying to self while living for God.