We are Saved so that we can Love God and Love Each Other
We come to Christ for salvation so that we can love God and love others. The essential outworking of our faith is love.
We come to Christ for salvation so that we can love God and love others. The essential outworking of our faith is love.
His holy fingers made the bough
which grew the thorns that crowned His brow.
The nails that pierced His hands were mined
in secret places He designed.
You listen to my prayers;
You hear my every plea;
I’m safe because I know
You’re always there for me.
At this time, the Church is beset by easy “believism”: whereby we confess faith in a God of our own making. Some believe in a God that does not judge sin. Others believe God exists to give them whatever their lust desires. Still, others believe Jehovah is just one God of many.
Real salvation is available only from the real God of the Bible, not of our imaginations and idiosyncrasies.
God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower–strewn pathways all our lives through;
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.
God’s judgments, God’s corrective disciplinary actions, are not a terror to His children. When we are disciplined, we don’t lose our salvation: we don’t stop being children in the family of God, joint heirs with Jesus.
And when in love and wisdom
[God] withholds my heart’s request
His “no” means “something better”.
He will give me what is best.
Sing to Him your songs of praises
Bring to Him your gifts of love
Give to Him your very finest
All the King is worthy of
Our problem is that we trust our senses more than we trust God. Our tendency is to walk by sight, i.e., to live by our senses and our own human logic. When our sensory experiences tell us that things are out of the norm, our minds conclude, based on that limited information, that we are in danger, that we should react in fear.
At Christmas time, and all the time, Believers (“men and women of God”) are appointed to deliver God’s message, to announce God’s truth, to those whom we are sent; just like Gabriel did.