Expressing Real Love for One Another

1 Peter 1:22

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.

Can any of us remember the first time we used the word love? I can’t remember the first time – because – like my grandchildren – it was probably to a relative – like my mom or dad – when I was a wee lad. I love it when my grandchildren say – I love you Pop. I tell them I love them every time I see them. I want them to know they are loved. But like I said in the sermon yesterday – actions speak louder than words – so I try to show them love as well.

Continue: https://raymcdonald.wordpress.com/2019/06/10/expressing-real-love-for-one-another/

Advertisements

Christians need to love the church

Pastor Rick Warren believes that the church remains the greatest force for good on earth yet Christians don’t love it.

“One of the greatest crimes I see in our society today is a lot of Christians use the church but don’t love it,” he said on May 17 during Wilberforce Weekend at the Crystal Gateway Marriott.

“If you want to be like Jesus Christ, you must learn to love the Bride of Christ. If I were to say to you ‘I like you I just don’t like your body,’ you’d be offended. So is Jesus.”

Read more: https://www.christianpost.com/news/rick-warren-christians-need-to-love-the-church.html?uid=2ad8c0f778

How we we love

Why Church Leaders And Members Are Responsible For Each Other

http://chucklawless.com/2019/05/why-church-leaders-and-members-are-responsible-for-each-other/

Kissing the Son

Kisses are so close-up and personal, so intimate. Kisses are reserved for those special people in my life—people I know and trust—people I love.

Continue reading: https://godinterest.com/2019/05/29/kissing-the-son/

Learning to Love

“We love Him because He first loved us.”¹

While we are encouraged and even commanded by God to love one another, it isn’t always easy to do. Loving actually needs to be learned.

As the Bible teaches, we love God because He loved us first. He modeled it for us. The same principle is true with human love. We love people because someone first loved us and modeled love for us.

We didn’t come into the world knowing how to love, only with the ability to learn how to love. If we didn’t receive healthy loving or if we didn’t feel adequately loved when we were growing up, chances are as adults we will suffer from love deprivation and not know how to love properly—only how “to make” love which may or may not have anything at all to do with love!

In other words, to learn to love we need to be loved first—for what we didn’t receive in our early developmental years, we need to receive now.

We do this by having at least one or two safe, loving, non-judgmental, and accepting people to love us as we really are—by allowing them see our total dark side—secrets, failures, sins, weaknesses, faults … warts and all. As these people love and accept us for who we are (not for what we have or haven’t done), we learn little by little to love and accept ourselves. Remember, too, that we can only be loved to the degree that we are known, and we can only love and accept others to the degree that we have learned to love and accept ourselves. Admittedly this can be very scary but it is profoundly healing.

This is another reason why the Bible teaches us the importance of confessing our sins and faults to one another.² Doing this is crucial for the healing of our human hurts and damaged emotions.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me a few friends with whom I can feel safe to let them know me fully and love me still. Through their love and your love please help me to learn to love and accept myself in a healthy way. In so doing teach me to love others who also need to be loved in the same way I do. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 John 4:19 (NKJV).
2. James 5:16.

Comment at: http://www.actsweb.org/daily.php?id=1297

Loving Our Neighbor Through Church Discipline

Satan is crafty and sin is deceptive. The book of Proverbs teaches that “there is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way to death” (14:12, 16:25). Like putting makeup on a pig, sin disguises itself so we don’t see its true nature. It slowly lures us to its desired end while making sure the dark path looks clean and pretty. As far as we can tell, everything looks right so we continue moving forward not realizing the trap is laid and we will soon be caught.

The blinding nature of sin is one of the many reasons God has given us the local church. As we do life together, we have an obligation to look out for our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Someone may not be able to see the trap ahead, but it’s clear to those around them. Do we love them enough to warn them?

We continue look at marks of a healthy church that are seldom emphasized today. Using 9 Marks of a Healthy Church as our guide, we’ve examined expository preaching, biblical theology, the gospel, a Biblical understanding of conversion, evangelism, and the value of church membership. Today, we’ll look at the next mark: biblical church discipline.

Read it at: http://growingingrace.blog/2019/04/15/loving-our-neighbor-through-church-discipline/