SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/8/2025 9:07 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-3
“A Pure Heart”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
2 Timothy 2:22
Message
of the verse: “22 Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and
peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”
Yesterday’s
SD was very short, but it had a quote in it that I have since posted onto my FB
page, something that spoke to my heart ““A believer who does not run
from sin and toward righteousness will
be overtaken by sin.” Now I move onto a quote from John MacArthur’s
commentary. “The godly believer also
will pursue…faith. In this context, pistis (faith) is better rendered ‘faithfulness,’
as it of God in Romans 3:3, and of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians
5:22. The supreme purpose of a believer
with a pure heart is to please and glorify God by pursuing integrity, loyalty,
and trustworthiness. It was for lack of
such ‘weightier provisions of the law—‘justice and mercy and faithfulness’ –that
Jesus excoriated the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23:23). The truly faithful Christian will be loyal to
God, to God’s Word, to God’s work, and to God’s people.”
Next he will also pursue…love, which
is the first and foremost fruit of the Spirit as seen in Galatians 5:22. Now there are several words in the Greek that
are translated love but agape is the
one that is the noblest, because it is the word of choice, not of feeling or sentiment,
as fine as those sometimes may be. Agape
is the love of the mind and the will, not of emotion or affection even of the highest
sort. It is the love of conscious
determination, not impulse. It is the
love that focuses on the welfare of the one loved, not on self-gratification or
self-fulfillment. Agape love is not based on the attractiveness or worthiness of
those who are loved, but on their needs, even when they are most unattractive and
unworthy. It is selfless and self-giving. As one thinks about agape love one has to go
to the cross to see that Jesus Christ loved us even though we certainly were
not attractive to Him, and also we were undeserving of that agape (love), but
that did not matter to Him as He surely loved us, and proved it by dying in our
place on the cross in order that we could be saved from our sins and one day
live in glory with Him. For that I
praise the Lord for the great agape love that He has for me, and surely look
forward to living in eternity with my Savior and my Lord one day.
MacArthur goes on to write “Agape love is used countless times of
God Himself. It is that love which God the Father has for His own Son by faith
(John 24:21). It is the love which our
gracious Lord has for even fallen, sinful mankind (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8). Agape love is so characteristic of God
that John twice tells us that He is love
(1 John 4:8, 16).”
Spiritual Meaning for My Life Today: I desire to
trust the Lord to give me the grace that I can love others as He loves me. To love my wife as He loves her and knows the
trials that she is going through at this time, and to be with her in a special
way. To fill me with His love so that I
can love her like He loves her.
3/8/2025
9:34 AM
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