Hope Comes from Being Loved: Love Models
Devotions this week based on the Message: “Hope Comes with Being Loved”.
This past Sunday we celebrated Mothers’ Day. Since the early 1900s it has been a day set aside in our country to honor and appreciate the work that mom’s do to love and care for their children.
We can’t underestimate the importance of love a mother shows. It is the first expression of love a child encounters. It also the first place a child learns how to love. A mother’s love is a pattern that a child is likely to follow through out their life time. How they were loved becomes how they love.
Usually we don’t have college courses on “How to love” (maybe it would be helpful!). Love as an emotion and an expression is more “caught than taught.” We experience love (or the lack of it). We observe what is loving. Because love becomes a model for others to follow. But the question is, who is our model of love?
The model for love originates in God the Father. Jesus said in John 15:9, “As the Father has loved me, so have I love you…”
The Father modeled love to his Son. How? We have a few examples. At Jesus’ baptism, the Father affirms publicly his love: “This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). The Father trusted his Son. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) They were inseparable. At the end of his life, his Father received his soul (Luke 23:46).
This love Jesus models to his disciples. He affirmed them. He was there for them. He cared for them. He taught them. He trusted them with the message of his kingdom. He would be ready for them in heaven one day.
But it doesn’t stop there. Jesus said, (John 15:12) “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” Jesus wants us to take the love he has shown to us and show it to others. Love as we have been loved.
So we get the opportunity to be the model of Jesus’ love to those around us. Serving selflessly. Listening carefully. Giving generously. Leading humbly. Loving our enemies and more.
Having trouble loving others…or certain people in your life? I do too. I call them “extra love opportunities.” Where I get encouragement to love, even when it’s not reciprocated and infact at times scorned is to go back to Jesus. He loved his enemies. He loved those that crucified him. He loved … me when I gave him more reasons not to love me than to love me.
With this tremendous model of love given to me…I can, with God’s help, love in the same way.
Apply: Do you have someone in your life you are struggling to love? Review Jesus’ love for you and ask the Spirit for guidance on how to love the person who is challenging to you.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for the wonderful reality and example of your love for me! AMEN.
Hope Comes with Being Loved: A Prayer for our Moms!
Devotions this week based on the Message: “Hope Comes with Being Loved”.
Happy “day-after” Mother’s Day to all the mom’s reading this devotion! We are grateful that God has put you in our lives and this week we will reflect on seven key aspects of love as we experience it from God and from our mom’s who love and follow him. For an overview, listen to this week’s message. For reflections read this week’s devotions. For this morning, would you pray this prayer we used in worship yesterday? I give credit to https://danieldarling.com/2013/05/a-prayer-for-moms-on-mothers-day/ for providing the text of the prayer. I give thanks to God for the gift of my mom and the many who faithfully embrace the calling to be a mom. God bless and keep you!
PRAYER:
Dear Father, we approach your throne on behalf of the mothers whom you have entrusted with the care of your most precious little ones. We thank you for creating each mom with a unique combination of gifts and talents. We thank you for the sacrifice of self each mom gives for her children. For the late nights spent rocking a colicky infant. For the hands calloused from washing, wiping, scrubbing, mixing, backing, stirring, hugging, patting, disciplining, holding, writing, erasing, painting, and pouring.
We thank you for the gift of time moms give for their kids, whether it’s stay-at-home moms, working moms, and moms who have some combination of the two. We thank you for the flexibility of moms, for their tirelessness, their perseverance, and their devotion.
We pray you give each mom strength. Help her to see in every mundane task the eternal, cosmic significance that you place on motherhood. Help her to understand that the most radical, world-changing events may be happening anonymously in her home. Help her to forgive those who undermine her significance.
We especially pray for single moms, who must lean solely on you for the fathering of their children. We thank you that you’re big arms surround children who may never know their earthly father. We also pray for mothers who never had the honor of bearing children, but whose nurturing extends to the many poor and needy who cross the threshold of their lives.
We ask you to be the daily bread of tired mothers. We ask you to be their living water. We ask you to be their source of spiritual and physical strength. We pray that the same grace that flowed from Father to Son to us in salvation will flow from mothers to their children. We pray that each mother rejects perfectionism and instead embraces the goodness of the gospel. We pray the rhythms of repentance and forgiveness shape every home.
Lord, give each mother a worshipful reverence of you, the Creator and Sustainer of life. Help each mother to rest in the knowledge that they are but stewards of your children and that only your Spirit can produce change into the hearts of each boy and girl. May each mother find rest in you.
Most of all, Lord, on this day in which we honor mothers, may we love and cherish the special women who have born us, who have nurtured us, and who have prayed for our well-being. May our hearts overflow with gratitude to you, who formed and knitted each of us in a mother’s womb.
Amen.
Hope Comes with Life Purpose: Produce the Fruit of the Spirit
Devotions this week based on the Message: “Hope Comes with Life Purpose”.
There’s nothing like biting into a fresh piece of fruit picked from the tree. It’s full of all the goodness and sweetness that you’ve been waiting for. It’s the result of effort to prune, fertilize and ensure the best you can nothing threatens the ripening of the fruit.
Bad fruit is disgusting. It’s rotten, mushy, bug-infested and no one wants to eat it.
We can easily tell this when it comes to fruit that we eat.
What about the activities that we do?
The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians made it very obvious for us what good and bad fruit look like:
Bad fruit…the things we do to glorify self and gratify our sinful nature:
Galatians 5:19 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Good fruit…the things we do to glorify God and give evidence of the Spirit of God at work in us:
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
Planted in Jesus…pruned by the Father leads to the fruit of the Spirit. Jesus wants us to produce fruit…a lot of it!
John 15:8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Like a juicy piece of fresh fruit, you can just sense the difference of the sinful nature at work and the fruit of the Spirit at work. The fruit of the Spirit is delightful. It impacts people in a positive way. It gives glory to God in every way.
Notice…the fruit of the Spirit is not specifics. It doesn’t identify what we DO, it identifies the heart behind ALL we do.
The fruit of the Spirit is the transforming of our minds and hearts to be like God’s heart. The fruit of the Spirit is a reflection of the love that we have experienced in Christ. It is fruit that can only come from a close connection to Jesus Christ. It is fruit that benefits others and helps them see Jesus in a small way.
This is what our Father enjoys seeing and is delightful to all who encounter it.
So, what is our life purpose? Give glory to God by bearing much fruit. It’s not the occupation we have, the relationships that we have or the people we impact, our life purpose is to do ALL to the glory of God. When we do it WILL affect our occupation, relationships, and the people around us. All of them will be blessed by the good fruit the Spirit of God is producing in you.
Apply: What benefits have you seen when you experience the fruit of the Spirit in someone else? What blessings have you experienced as God allows you to produce that fruit in your interactions with others?
Prayer: Father, thank you for planting us in Jesus and taking the time to prune us to be more fruitful. Spirit of God work in us that we produce MUCH fruit, to the glory of our heavenly Father. AMEN.
Hope comes with Life Purpose: Pruned by the Father.
Devotions this week based on the Message: “Hope Comes with Life Purpose”.
Some of you know I like to tinker with a vegetable garden as well as try to get some fruit trees to grow and produce fruit for our family.
The hardest thing? Pruning.
Not because the physical labor is so difficult, but because the emotional angst is so great (It gets less, but is still there.)
I struggle to feel good about cutting off perfectly healthy branches. My logic says, “the more branches, the more fruit.” The “laws” of Horticulture say, “The more branches, the less fruit.” So it pains me to cut off good branches, but I have to trust that in pruning some branches, those that remain WILL be more fruitful.
John 15:1-2 Jesus says: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
I’ve learned that the purpose of pruning and why it works. Pruning does three things:
- Allows more light to get throughout the tree.
- Allows more air to flow through the tree.
- Allows more nutrition to go to fruit production than leaf and branch production.
Fruit needs all three of these to form and flourish.
Often times we think of the pruning the Father does as the “hardships and difficulties of life” we endure. We focus on the “cut” of the branch that is painful and sometimes leaves scars. True enough. But could it also be possible that the Gardner, our Father, cuts off the things in our life that are preventing the fruit from forming and flourishing?
Maybe the pruning in your life is removing the ability to engage in some recreation activity because your Father knows that it will cloud out time the Light of the World. Maybe pruning in your life is your heavenly Father refocusing time to spend with the Spirit of God. Maybe pruning in your life are situations that drive you back to the nourishment of the Word of God.
The more we have the Light of the World, the Spirit of God and the Word of God at work in our hearts the more abundant and significant the fruit is we will produce.
I’m not sure how the Father “feels” about “pruning” our lives, but I am sure he does it with full conviction that removing the things in our life that hinder the production of fruit will lead to more nutrition, light and air getting to our soul and when our soul is fed, fruit WILL BE produced! Your Father, the gardener, loves you too much to do what it takes to make you more fruitful.
Apply: What might God be pruning out of your life that perhaps you are upset at, but is a way for him to refocus your heart and life more fully on him?
Prayer: Father, thank you for your tender loving care that is willing to prune our branch from the things that get in the way of producing fruit for you. Lead us to see what you are pruning so we may produce the fruit for which you are looking! AMEN.
Hope Comes with Life Purpose: Planted in Jesus
Devotions this week based on the Message: “Hope Comes with Life Purpose”.
The root determines the fruit.
For two reasons…it is the indicator of the type of plant it is and therefore the fruit it produces and is the source of the nutrients the plant needs.
If the base of the vine or tree is bad, it is certain the branches will not produce the fruit the Gardener intends.
Jesus said, (John 15:1,5 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. …4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
To produce the fruit the Father desires one must remain planted in Jesus…and his words. Being connected to Jesus is our grounding, our strength, and our nutrition that allows us to produce fruit the Father desires.
But how do I know if I am planted in Jesus?
Consider these verses from Hosea 10:1-2:
Israel was a spreading vine; he brought forth fruit for himself. As his fruit increased, he built more altars; as his land prospered, he adorned his sacred stones. 2 Their heart is deceitful, and now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will demolish their altars and destroy their sacred stones.
Hosea points out two things that were happening to God’s people…that indicated they WERE NOT planted in the Lord.
First, they “brought forth fruit for himself.” All the activities of Israel were NOT being done for the name of the LORD and the following of his Word. They were being done for the self interest and promotion of themselves. Ironically the fruit looked good the “land prospered.” But this leads to the second indicator that we aren’t planted in the LORD…”their heart is deceitful.” Their hearts were believing the lie of the false gods that outward success and accumulation of stuff was the fruit their Father desired. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
The result? The Lord demolished their altars and destroyed their sacred stones.
We may not have altars and stones set up to false gods, but our hearts can be deceived to think that outward gain, notoriety or possessions are indicators of a noble purpose. They are not. In fact the outward things can be deceptive of an inner problem…a heart NOT planted in the Lord.
This is why Jesus teaches, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Sure, we can have a career, have success and even impact people…but without a grounding in Jesus, the fruit will not be to the Father’s liking or glory, because the planting of the heart was in self, not Jesus.
On the other hand, we know our purpose is being found in the right place when our hearts are rooted in Jesus and his truth. John 15:7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.
When we are planted in Jesus, it means his life-giving words of Jesus are flowing through us and molding our minds, guiding our hearts, and directing our actions. Only when we are planted in Jesus, can we discover our life purpose, since at the heart of our life’s purpose is simply producing fruit the Father enjoys. The root does determine the fruit!
Apply: Check those things that you have connected to your purpose. Are they rooted in self or rooted in Jesus?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for calling out the deception of our hearts that loves to attach our purpose to worldly fame and fortune. Forgive us for Jesus sake and reorient our hearts to ALWAYS be planted in Jesus. AMEN.