Tag: Love

2 Corinthians 13:14 New International Version (NIV)

¹⁴ May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

1 John 3:1 New International Version (NIV)

3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

God loves his creation both human and animal.  Though we think his love is fickle at times, it is not.  He never changes, he always loves us! It is our choice to believe in his love.  He wants to love on you today.  Will you let him?

Ephesians 5:25-27  (NKJV)  

^“25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, ²⁶ that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, ²⁷ that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.”

The part of this Scripture passage that has been resonating in my heart this past two weeks is “the washing of water by the Word”.  That phrase kept going through my mind and heart.  The Word of God can wash my heart and soul to become more like Jesus.  I decided to look that passage up to get the whole picture of what the Lord was telling us.  To my surprise, I had forgotten it was dealing with family relationships.

Biblical Marriage Attitudes

To break it down to where we live now, Paul was telling the husbands to love their wives in the same way Jesus loves us.  He then lists some of the things Jesus did to show that love:

1. He love the Church
2. He gave Himself for her
3. He sanctifies and cleans her by the Word of God
4. He is planning to present her to Himself all gloriously clean, without any sins, faults or blemishes.
5. His work in our lives cause us to become holy without blemish

This makes loving a wife a big deal.  Men are to love their wives with a pure heart of love like Jesus has.  They are to give themselves to God for her sake.  They are for live a sanctified life before her to help her become clean and pure before God.

Kind of a long list for mere mortal men.  Yet, with Holy Spirit on his side, a man can become that kind of husband.  He can become centered in his acceptance by God, his foundation built on the Word of God in order to not be reactive instead of proactive in his marriage.  Unfortunately, men in the world today are shown as idiots on TV, failures in cartoons and most comedies are a total mockery of true manhood.  Compared to Biblical manhood what we see in media platforms are pitiful, worn down men or total brutes.  Neither is a man after Jesus’ lifestyle.  Though he never married, he treated women with respect and kindness.

The Scripture before this one tells the wife to submit to her husband, as to the Lord.  What makes it hard for most of us women, is a lot of men don’t act much like the Lord Jesus.  God’s best plan is for a unified marriage.  Each partner having strengths the other doesn’t have making a stronger union.  When we marry thinking we have to fight for our position, we miss the whole point.  All of us are to live a life submitted to God the Father, in the Name of Jesus by the power of Holy Spirit.  We are not in this union alone, when we ask God to be our partner.  He created us and knows where each of us are coming from and how to make us truly become one in Him.

My prayer this week is for all of us who have a husband or wife to ask the Lord to reveal areas that need His healing touch and help to change.  He is the Waymaker, Peace Giver and Healer.

God’s Loved Revealed

1 John 4:9-10 J.B. Phillips New Testament 

^“9-10 To us, the greatest demonstration of God’s love for us has been his sending his only Son into the world to give us life through him. We see real love, not in that fact that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to make personal atonement for our sins.”

We find God’s love for the world revealed through the giving of His son Jesus to save us from eternal damnation.  Jesus came by His own free will, died on the cross of Calvary in our place to make the Atonement for sin, thereby releasing the forgive of the Father God unto all mankind.

It is our faith in those actions that releases Salvation into our lives.  The moment we say yes to Jesus, accept Him as Lord and Savior, we are now forgiven and accepted by God as sons and daughters.  Our faith in Him, is our pathway to God.

John 3:14-21 NKJV

^“14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in Him should ^[c]not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. ¹⁷ For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

¹⁸ “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. ¹⁹ And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. ²¹ But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”