SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/11/2019
8:33 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Loves Abundance”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
3:17b-19a
Message of the verses: “and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able
to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and
depth, 19 and to know the
love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,”
We
have been studying about being made strong inwardly by God’s Spirit and this
will lead to Christ being at home in our hearts, which will then lead to love
that is incomprehensible. MacArthur
writes “The result of our yielding to the Spirit’s power and submitting to
Christ’s lordship in our hearts is ‘love.’
When Christ settles down in our lives He begins to display His own love
in us and through us. When He freely
indwells our hearts, we become rooted and ‘grounded in love,’ that is, settled
on a strong foundation of love.”
In
John’s gospel chapter 13 and verse 34 we read “A new commandment I give you
that you love one another, even as I have loved you.” Peter writes “Since you have in obedience to
the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently
love one another from the heart (1 Pet. 1:22).
We realize, especially from our study in Ephesians, that it is the great
desire of God that His children sincerely and fully love each other, in the
same way that He loves us, and that is unconditional. When we look at the fruit of the Spirit found
in Galatians 5:22-23 we find that love is listed first, and then the rest of
the fruit is then listed. Think of the
fruit of the Spirit as an orange and when one thinks of an orange they perhaps
think of all the different aspects as a part of the orange, like the outer
skin, and then the other parts under that like the white part and then the
different slices that are found under the skin.
However all is actually an orange, and so when we look at the fruit of
the Spirit it is only one fruit and not the fruits of the spirit with love at
the beginning, and then we find joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self control and they are essentially subcategories
of love.
I
have a little book written by David Jeremiah entitled “Love in Action,” and
what my plans are is to quote different sections of this book once we run out
of quotes and the verses that go along with the quotes. At the beginning of this little book we see a
quote from C. Neil Strait which reads “Love is the one ingredient of which our
world never tires and of which there is never an abundance. The world will never outgrow its need for
love.”
I
will close this rather short SD with a quote from this little book: “Agape
is love that comes from a God who is love.
It is love lavished upon others without a thought of whether they are
worthy to receive it. It is this kind of
love that is to characterize the Christian.
This is totally selfless love that comes from God. Agape
is te power that moves us to respond to someone’s needs with no expectation of
reward. At least fifty-five times in the
New Testament we are commanded to love.
It is one of Scripture’s most repeated, inescapable directives for the
believer. It touches us in all of our
relationships and affects us in each of the many roles we play as parents,
spouses, children, friends, and fellow believers. It even defines the way we are to respond to
our enemies.”
I
think this quote goes well with what we are now studying from Ephesians.
Quote for Today: “If thou thinkest twice, before thou speakest
once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it.”
(William Penn)
Scripture verse that goes along with
this quote in our next SD.
2/11/2019 8:59 AM
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