Category: Love

9/16/2023 1 Comment

No Love for His Brother

Meditation
Luke 15:28-30—"Then he became angry and didn’t want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him. But he replied to his father, ‘Look, I have been slaving many years for you, and I have never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’”

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7/3/2023 1 Comment

"The Sparkle Creed"

Edina Community Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in Edina, Minnesota, celebrated Pride Sunday led by their female pastor in reciting the sparkle creed whose words state:
I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads, and who saw everyone as a sibling child of God. I believe in the rainbow Spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity.[1]
This creed is a gross perversion of theology. It represents the misguided attempts of a congregation to fit God into their inclusive agenda that will spare no expense to accommodate a world fully intent on making sexual sin something to celebrate and force upon all those who take God’s warnings seriously and strive to obey Him.

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5/28/2023 1 Comment

Listening When We Don't Want To

Mike and Robbie boarded the light rail on their way to a Seattle Mariners game. A few feet from their seats sat a dirty, smelly man suffering from an addiction, mental health challenge, or both. Mike was repulsed and cautious toward this man conversing with an imaginary person. Mike noted, “He rearranged his clothing and belongings continuously and removed and replaced a fake mustache.” Mike prayed that he would not attack them or be a problem. The Holy Spirit had another plan. He whispered in Mike’s ear that this was a man with a name, a man loved by Him, and that Mike should approach and talk to him. But that was not something Mike wanted to do, and for most of the train ride, he resisted listening to persistent promptings.

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2/28/2023 0 Comments

From a Deeper Place

Hannah suffered from three places. First was the place of torment. She had a rival—a woman who taunted her severely to provoke her, often reducing her to tears and enflamed resentment. Second was the place of pain. She could not bear a child, which ate at her soul as she felt God’s withholding hand. Not even the encouragement of her loving husband could ease the ache she carried. Third was the place of misunderstanding. Eli, the priest, mistook Hannah’s silent prayer in her anguished worship. He saw her moving lips and thought she was drunk. Instead of investigating, he scolded her and told her to stop drinking.

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1/25/2023 0 Comments

The Unhindered Way

Meditation
John 14:9—Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip? The one who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’

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12/16/2022 0 Comments

Grief

Grief is a day shrouded in fog and icy rain fed by a howling wind. It is spoiled fruit no longer fit to be savored. Grief makes its exhausted bed in a hidden cave on a barren mountain ridge called Sorrow. It rests in rare moments of silence and grows weary amidst mindless laughter. Its tears leave furrows unfilled by platitudes. When its memories are roused, new rivers flow, and expectation is uprooted, torn, and damaged.

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9/7/2022 1 Comment

The Long Walk

Meditation
Romans 8:3-4--What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be accomplished in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

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7/22/2022 0 Comments

Revisiting Grace

There is a thoughtful piece on grace circulating on Facebook that I have amplified and maximized with apologies to the unknown author.

Grace constitutes unearned or unmerited favor. She is seen throughout the Bible. Grace means promotion, not based on qualifications. When she speaks, protocols are suspended. So, King Ahasuerus extends the scepter to his Queen Esther. With Grace at work, laws are set aside for a higher purpose. A hungry David understood this when he ate consecrated bread (1 Samuel 21:6). Jesus commended his insight because “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). A Samaritan woman with five different husbands was blessed by a thirsty grace-giving Savior. An adulteress experienced no stones from a sin-convicted crowd. When Grace acts, pedigrees and ethnic background are irrelevant, so Joseph, the Hebrew prisoner, became Egypt’s second most powerful leader. When Grace operates, educational qualifications are thrown out. Fishermen become disciples, to the dismay of the religious elite. Grace instills hope in the hopeless, joy in the forlorn, and peace in the agitated. She has your back while she holds your heart. She transforms lament into a dancing melody. She is the warmth that accompanies light, and she is God’s gift to you forever.

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7/1/2022 0 Comments

Inability to See

Meditation
John 8:25-27—“Who are You?” they questioned. “Precisely what I’ve been telling you from the very beginning,” Jesus told them. I have many things to say and to judge about you, but the One who sent Me is true, and what I have heard from Him—these things I tell the world.” They did not know He was speaking to them about the Father.

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4/25/2022 1 Comment

The Problem with Religion

Did you know that God is offended by meaningless, false-hearted chanting?

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12/7/2021 1 Comment

A Faith of Equal Privilege

The antidote to discrimination and racism is Jesus Christ. Pastor E.V. Hill once shared his response to Black Panthers threatening his life for preaching about “that white Jesus.”
I don’t know anything about a white Christ—I know about Christ, a Savior named Jesus. I don’t know what color He is. He was born in brown Asia, He fled to black Africa, and He was in heaven before the gospel got to white Europe . . . I do know one thing: if you bow at the altar with color on your mind, and get up with color on your mind, go back again and keep going back until you no longer look at His color, but at his greatness and His power—His power to save![1]

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12/1/2021 1 Comment

Fire

When was the last time you sat beside a fire, alone, and able to think and meditate? The previous home owners left me a gift of numerous piles of dead branches all over the property. I guess they didn’t have time to burn anything but I still would label their actions a gift because they gave me plenty of reason to clear away brush piles and, in the process, burn. There is something mesmerizing (and therapeutic) about sitting next to a fire and watching it reduce large masses to smoldering ashes. No branch escapes. All that feel the hot fury of flame are engulfed and reduced to residue.

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10/20/2021 0 Comments

Virtue Above Values

Dr. Gary Bredfeldt, author of Great Leader, Great Teacher, has some poignant observations to share about the character of leaders.[1] He notes that values are valuable as principles, qualities or standards. Values represent leader beliefs that come from heartfelt commitment—that indicate emotional investment. They can be morally neutral and subjective and, as society increasingly becomes relativistic, values (which are not moral absolutes) gain greater favor. Values can be personalized and tied to race, gender or class.

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6/25/2021 0 Comments

I Identify As . . .

While at a golf fundraising event I saw a marine veteran wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed, “I Identify As Vaccinated.” It radiated humor but was actually rather brilliant. It subtly broadcast with absurdity the politically-correct notion that someone can identify as whatever gender they desire. As the federal government moves to require schools to accommodate transgender students not surprisingly there is an immediate push back. College of the Ozarks is suing President Joe Biden because his executive order on “gender identity” violates the school’s religious freedom by compelling it to force their students to share dorms and shower facilities with members of the opposite sex.[1] So let’s take a closer, deeper look at the whole issue of identity.

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6/15/2021 0 Comments

Suubi House

West Point classmate Bill Bowman shared his story with the Long Eternal Line team who gather each Tuesday night for prayer. Bill suffered a bad car accident that crushed his back and should have left him permanently paralyzed. While in the hospital Bill shared how Jesus held him and comforted him. Bill apologized for not walking the right path and the Lord shared with him that his story was not over yet. Miraculously, Bill and his wife were able to have a baby girl they named Sarah. Bill nicknamed her Suubi—a name that stuck.

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12/26/2020 1 Comment

Preserving Unity

Meditation
Acts 4:32—Now the large group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one said that any of his possessions was his own, but instead they held everything in common.

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12/24/2019 1 Comment

Johnny's Christmas

Silently a small figure sat shivering on the soft pine-covered earth tucked away from the wind in a grove of blue spruce. His tear-filled eyes gazed out across a small meadow where remnants of snow from the last storm lingered. He opened his knapsack and took out the curved white candle and remembered the last words of his frail mother. “Johnny, I love you so much. I’m proud of you. I want you to take this candle and keep it and remember—you are to be a light. No matter what happens, you keep shining? Promise?”

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8/13/2018 0 Comments

Proper Authority

Meditation
1 Timothy 1:3,5—As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, continue to remain at Ephesus so that you might command some to teach no other doctrine . . . Now the goal of this command is love from a pure heart, and from a good conscience, and from sincere faith. (Modern English Version)

The word, “command” in verses three and five is a military term which means “to give strict orders.”

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5/21/2017 0 Comments

More Willpower

Meditation
2 John 6—And this is love: that we walk according to His commands. This is the command as you have heard it from the beginning: you must walk in love.

The first Biblical reference to love God is recorded in Exodus 20:6. Moses teaches the Israelites to keep God’s commands and thereby demonstrate their love for Him. So, when John defines love in his letter to his readers, he is not sharing with them a new concept. But, as we all know, it is hard to walk in love with God. How do we strengthen willpower to be better God-lovers and, in the process, improve loving others and ourselves?

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12/7/2016 0 Comments

Making a Difference

Meditation
Zechariah 7:9—“The LORD of Hosts says this: Make fair decisions. Show faithful love and compassion to one another.”

It is cold outside—twelve degrees above zero. Snow is on the ground and from inside my office window it looks beautiful. It’s a matter of perspective. December can be a wonderful time of warmth for many people; a chance to be with family, to take a break from work and to enjoy each other’s company. But I could equally write that this month is a frozen, depressing period for many people; the reminder that loved ones are gone, unemployment a reality, and a feeling that few care or understand.

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Photo used under Creative Commons from Rachel Maxey Miles