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Agape

February 14, 2013

Agape is not a feeling you get when you encounter someone you find lovable; instead, it involves choosing to express love even—or perhaps especially—when you encounter someone unlovable. It is all about self-denial rather than self-fulfillment; it’s focused on giving rather than on receiving.

I don’t know about you, but I feel hopelessly incapable of that kind of love. It seems an almost impossible thing for anyone but God to love in this way, and yet He makes no small thing of calling us to do just that. Jesus said, “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (John 13:35, nlt). What a high calling! Agape is the number one evidence to this world that we are His! No wonder He planted in our hearts a longing for such a love.

Excerpted from [ … ]

Quotes on Love

February 13, 2013

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one [ … ]

Free to Love

February 12, 2013

“We would love others without first demanding that they conform to our requirements or somehow become acceptable to us. We would not be in competition with anyone else, feeling pressure to look better than we are or hurrying so we’ll be first in line to get a reward. God has plenty of blessings for all his children, and he will still have blessings left to give away whenever we get there. God’s being good to someone else doesn’t mean he will have nothing left to give us later on.

When we learn this, we can love God with everything we are; we can love ourselves and love our neighbors the way we love God. When this happens, we keep the Great Commandments. We are then living in the “yes” of Christ, and we can freely share his “yes” with everyone [ … ]

The Rope of Acceptance

February 8, 2013

“The Bible reveals strategies for keeping relational mountains small and manageable. In order to persevere and improve our relationships, we first must connect with the rope of acceptance. Rock climbers use a technique with ropes called belaying. It involves securing a climber to a rope so he doesn’t fall too far if he slips off the rock. Similarly, we can’t climb to new heights safely if we don’t connect with a rope of acceptance. “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7). One of our greatest problems in relationships is that we’re always trying to change the people we’re relating to. To accept others means that we stop trying to change them and we start trying to understand them.”

Excerpted from One Month to Live by Kerry and Chris [ … ]

In Him, I Am

February 7, 2013

“The Bible has a lot to say about our identity. For example, Peter wrote, ‘You are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. ‘Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy.’’

Peter was talking about our collective identity as Christians, but this also is a message to us as individuals. Before it dawned on us that Jesus Christ is real and is willing to live in our hearts, many of us were lost in our personal identity crises. But as we become followers of Jesus, the Bible says, we take on a new identity [ … ]

Finding Your Calling

February 6, 2013

“Some questions we have about finding our calling and vocation are what questions. What God-given gifts do I have? What can I do? What is being asked of me?

And some of them are where questions. Where is the right place for me? Do I still want to work here? Is this school the right one for me? Has the time come to move away or to move home?

There is at least one other set of questions—the who questions.”

“Our search for our calling leads us to listen deep within ourselves, hoping to hear the echo within, hoping to ungarble and understand the incarnate word spoken into us, hoping to discover how to live into and out of the echo of that word as it resounds within. But we are not meant to stay within ourselves forever. We [ … ]

Wanting People

February 6, 2013

“God did not create people out of need but because He wanted to, just for the love of it. Strictly speaking, I do not know that I am needed in this world. But as God’s child I do know that I am wanted. It seems to me that the world could carry on quite well without me. Would it make any difference if there were one less star in the heavens? No, that extra star is not there because it is needed, but because it is wanted. It is there because Someone wanted it.

Knowing I am wanted, both by God and by other people, is more mysterious and freeing than being needed. Similarly, it is better for me to want God and to want people than to relate out of need. Want is a purer and a higher [ … ]

Heal Through His Love

February 5, 2013

“I plead with you. Let love uncover your past, and let the balm of grace heal it. God, in His omniscience and sovereignty, allowed you to experience what you experienced. His intent was not to destroy you because His thoughts toward you are precious. Rather, His purpose was to use it all to mold and to make you into His child, a child upon whom He would delight to pour out His love. A child who would serve Him in the fullness of His grace.”

Excerpted from Lord, I Need Grace to Make it Today by Kay Arthur

Daily Reflection: How can you accept God’s grace today?

Fear & Hope

February 4, 2013

From the pages of Embrace Grace…

From the moment we’re born, we’re afraid: of loud noises, of cold air, of falling. While trust begins to build as the months go by, new fears surface: of dark rooms, of meeting strangers, of being alone.

We conquer those fears as we mature, but at the deepest level we never forget them. Old fears continue to color our emotional responses and produce feelings of doubt and uncertainty.

For all those dark times, here’s a word of hope: God meets us where we are. Even if we aren’t looking in his direction, he is always looking in ours.

“From his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth—he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.” Psalm 33:14-15

Daily Reflection: How might it comfort and encourage you today [ … ]

It Belongs to You

February 1, 2013

How can any of us hate and devalue ourselves when God “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all”? (Romans 8:32). I hope and pray that you can come to accept this divine mystery of how much God loves you just as you are, unworthy, yet deeply valued.
Unable to earn the love but knowing there is no need to earn it.

All you have to do is accept it. Don’t be like those who know of God’s love but have never experienced it. Experience it!

For it belongs to you.

Excerpted fromMore Jesus, Less Religion by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton

Daily Reflection: Have you truly accepted God’s love and grace?