Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father reveal us to ourselves today. Father, lead us gently through our very thoughts and feelings. Show us the ways in which we obey you, and let us share in your joy, in your delight. But also Father, show us how we have disobeyed you, especially by delaying obedience, especially in loving one another. Heavenly Father, remind us that delayed obedience is disobedience, and that you call us not just to hear you, but to do as you say! In the name of Jesus and by the power of the Spirit, help us to love each other as you have first loved us!
Your Morning Song: "Rescue" by Acapella
Your Morning Scripture: 1 John 4:19-21
We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
If you read these verses and are instantly convicted of your hatred for someone, then by all means, repent to God and that person and come back into the presence of our Father where your prayers will be heard and your worship accepted.
But maybe there of some of us who can claim a false innocence here. We read these verses and then walk amidst the garden of our thought-life, we stir up the waters of our well-spring hearts and then we quickly say, "look God! No hatred!" But we've missed something.
Just as those who are for Jesus are not against him and those who are not for Jesus are against him, it is not enough to not hate, but we must also love. And hatred is more than what it is, it also is what it isn't. If you aren't loving, you're hating. Hatred can be open, active evil, but it can also be simply choosing not to love.
God is gracious and merciful to us, his imperfect, but loved, children. Let us be mindful of these verses today, and of how they reveal us to ourselves. Not only what might be open, active hatred, but also the hatred of un-love, of choosing not to love, of letting God's command to love lie fallow and barren. Do we love? Do we know God? Or have we forgotten the face of our Father? Let those of us who need to repent, repent. And then rejoice! And then let us each and all love each other as God calls us to, makes us able to, and delights in us as we do.
How precious it is to receive God's loving discipline in the garden of our thoughts as we quietly learn to guard our wellspring-hearts! Better than to learn the hard way out in life in front of others.
Comments