Dear Church Family –
We’ve decided to cancel Wednesday activities at church today and tonight. It seems like accepting realities. We'll miss being together to help each other grow in the Lord. I hope you’ll use the time to have a special prayer time privately, or with your family.
Since we’re talking about the fruit of the Spirit on Sunday mornings, today or tonight might be a good time to sit down with a Bible and slowly think through the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Ask yourself, and God, “Am I showing any works of the flesh? Are there fruits of the Spirit that I’m not showing and need to work on?
Since love is the first fruit of the Spirit, and February is a month when our culture emphasizes love, let’s think together today about “Holy Carefreeness in Love.” This is an intriguing and challenging entry from W. Glyn Evans’ devotional book, “Daily With the King.” I had to look up at least one word, and I’m not sure we want to think about swimming when it’s below zero outside! But use Evans’ thoughts to help you think about your love for God.
“Lord, I promise to love You with a holy carefreeness. I promise it will not be a measured, dosed-out thing…. The Pharisees’ rigid rules-and-regulations devotion was not love of You; it was love of themselves.
“Love is not love unless it results in abandon. That is why Jesus highly praised Mary’s offering of perfume that she poured over His feet. A waste? Never! An abandonment. If Mary had calculated her offering to an exact dose, it would not have been love; it would have been ostentation.
“’Perfect love casts out fear’ (1 John 4:18). If I am afraid of God, I do not love Him. When I am afraid to offend God, I am thinking of myself, not Him; therefore, my love has evaporated. Lovers of God have a characteristic childlike boldness that is all innocency. A stranger approaches a king with timid deference, while the king’s son strides into his presence.
“I see now what Ezekiel’s river was (Ezekiel 47). The river flowed from the Temple with increasing depth—ankle-deep, knee-deep, loin-deep, then deep enough to swim. Lord, You want me to be a swimming Christian, abandoned to You in love so that I am carried away by it. Only twice in His earthly ministry did Jesus call attention to giving—once when the widow gave her two mites, and again when Mary emptied her jar over His feet.
“…I want to love You with abandon, Lord, and thus show how completely worthy You are of my love. I want to love You to shamelessness, the same kind of shamelessness that put You on a tree for me.
“’And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment’ (Philippians 1:9).”
Love – Pastor Tim