Living Life for Christ Alone

 “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loves us…” 1 John 4:10 Love is NOT defined as us loving God.  Why?  It’s no miracle for imperfect ones to love One so perfect as He is -even if it is only in an admiring sort of way.  If love is us loving, the best we give is our leftovers, for we are always self-preserving. And that love amazes no one.  Don’t look at humanity to see what love is. You’ll never learn love there. At least, not in the fullest sense.  No, the best ways we love are when we live fully in the way God created us, but even then it falls way short.  Fatherhood, motherhood, marriage, friendship, etc. -these are only dim pictures of the love of God.  Love is THIS: God loving us.  One so perfect should not love ones so unlike Him -but He does.  He set His love on humanity and chased her all the way to the grave. He traded His life for hers. His perfection for her filth.  We are the ones who should have hung o...

I hope that I have begun to convey to you just how incredible the love of God is, and just how staggering it can be for God to love other human beings through us.  The love of God alone is powerful enough to break down barriers that human logic, wisdom, money, or power can never penetrate.   But what if we are gazing at the world through a lens that is incompatible with this love?  What if we are trying to mix our own perspectives with God's? You see, my natural human nature coldly recoils when asked to suffer loss of any kind on the behalf of another human being.  From birth, selfishness reigns.  We love ourselves too much to care about others.  We fight for the best things. We cry when our needs aren't met, or our wants aren't given. We only think of ourselves -and others are barely on our radar unless we can gain something from them. When it comes right down to it, we will save our own skin before laying down our own lives for someone else. We ...

"No, Lord, not them..."  There has been a truth that God has been bringing me back to over and over in the course of this past year, and it's simple:  Yes, them.  Let me explain. Sometimes I wonder why it is that we who are in Christ struggle to feel God's love for us...  Could it be in part because we are not willing to be His hands and feet of love to the unlovable? In motherhood, I have tasted God's love in laying down my sleep, my own nourishment, my own emotional stability, and almost every other basic need, for the needs of a baby. Could it be that in laying down our lives for the people we don't want to love, we will discover more depths to God's love than we ever dreamed possible? It is our human tendency to love to a limit, but no farther. Believe me, motherhood helps me discover my own limits fast. But what if God's desire were to give us a taste of the limitlessness of His love by calling us beyond our comfort zones and set boundaries?   Wha...

Every day after lunch, we have a little routine. Ellie gets on the couch with some books while I get Avi ready for her nap, and then when she's ready, we stop by the living room where Ellie sits.  "Say, 'Nite-Nite,' Avi," I coax. "Ni-ni!" She says in her little squeaky voice. "Say, 'I love you, Ellie.'" "I da-du!" Avi says. Ellie looks up from her books, sometimes without my prompting and says, "Nite-Nite, I love you!"  This scene has special meaning to me and melts my heart. Doesn't it do that for you too? I want them to love each other. I want love to be what is pulsating through everything that happens in this home. I want our home to be where love is tasted, touched, seen...  So, we take baby steps in the learning process. We practice saying it to each other. We practice showing it to each other with kindness and sharing. And then there are those rare moments when my two-year-old, Ellie, voluntarily tells me,...

Our world is so complicated, isn't it? And as a result, our thinking can get complicated, too.  I don't have a lot of say to elaborate on this, but I'm sure every person who reads this feels it to one degree or another. So, I want to introduce some simplicity into your soul, if you will let me. Take a minute to breathe as you read this, and remember we were made for simplicity in Christ. (2 Cor 11:3) If you are a follower of Christ, may the eyes of your heart zero in on Him as you read this, and may your soul settle into His peace. You were made for rest, so find rest in Him. (Psalm 62) And if you are not a follower of Christ, be refreshed by the idea that you, too can have simplicity in Him. It's yours for the taking. He is pursuing you with His relentless love, too. (John 3:16)  . "I love You, Lord; You are my strength." Psalm 18:1 The simplicity of this verse will quiet your soul if you let it. . "I love You, Lord..."  My love only needs to be foc...

"I am the vine, you are the branches..." John 15:5 I've been pondering this whole concept of me being a branch and Jesus being a vine, and since I have, it's become less of a mere concept  and more a reality for me. Since no word that came out of Jesus' mouth is irrelevant, it's worth pondering... He never spoke useless words. He means much by even just the few words I shared above. Let me share some of my most recent thoughts with you. I think they are thoughts from the very throne of heaven. If you read on, you'll see why. Let´s look at those words again: "I am the vine, you are the branches..." John 15:5 Jesus interrupts His whole talk about abiding and fruitfulness (read John 15) to remind His disciples that He  is the Vine, and we are the branches . He  is the source of life that we abide in. If we talk about abiding and forget we are abiding in a Person, we miss the point. The point of John 15, though mentioned a lot, is not ab...

This morning, as I was reading my bible, a verse caught my attention that I hadn’t really given thought to before. Let me share it with you. God speaking: “…I was crushed by their adulterous heart, which has departed from Me, and by their eyes which play the harlot after their idols…” (Ezekiel 6:9) A couple of things struck me… We live in a world that glorifies sin. It calls evil good, and good evil. Much of our culture and media today is based off of little to no morality, and pushes messages that encourage you to step over your moral lines drawn for yourself and try the unthinkable. Pride, selfishness, divorce, sex before marriage, gay marriage, adultery, murder, hate, lying, envy, slander, and on and on –these things are often portrayed as good. Our Christian culture is not left unaffected by this either. How many Christians do you and I know who minimize sin against God? It is hard to find someone who weeps over sin anymore. Most people either push it under a spir...

I saw this message written in the sky one day -a precious reminder of His love. In I am a Fugitive , I felt so selfish talking about God's love for me, but I'm not about to stop! Now I'm going to try to flip your mindset upside down. I think it might be kind of fun. :) Flipping my mindset upside down I always feel that, in order to feel God's love, there must be nothing in the way. I must remove all impurities, all sins that are tainting my view -then, and  only then,  I can see it for what it is. This simply isn't true. -Unconditional love The fact is, God has always loved me first . He showed His love for me when Jesus, His only Son, died on the cross, and the punishment for my sin weighed heavily on Him. He showed it when Jesus asked the Father to forgive me for nailing Him there.  "They don't know what they're doing,"  He says, because in reality,  I had no idea that my sins were giving Him so much pain on that cross.

For more than a week now, I've been thinking about a subject that seems almost selfish to think about. I can't get the topic off my mind! Every time I go to pray, every time I open up my bible, it's there, plain as day... And with it, a little red flag pops up.  Amazing enough, it all began with me failing  to be the kind of Christian I'm supposed  to be. Not loving people, not being kind... in fact, kinda rough in my thinking towards them.  Sure, there were specific and almost "good" reasons to think and be that way... (As in I could of rationalized it away easy as pie.)  There. You just got a glimpse into one of the many ways I'm quite capable of messing up.

The day had been a long one. I had taught all morning, then rushed to a cleaning job, then ran an errand for a ministry at our church. I was so tired that on the way back from the errand, I missed my turn and found that out of habit, I was headed towards the store closest to our house. Oops! I thought to myself, I missed my turn... Oh well... I decided that I would go ahead and go all the way there and do some shopping for my upcoming trip. I walked in to the store, realizing just how messy I must've looked... 

"One of the teachers of religious law... asked, 'Of all the commandments, which is the most important?' Jesus replied, 'The most important commandment is this: "Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength." The second is equally important: "Love your neighbor as yourself." No other commandment is greater than these.'" (Mark 12:28-31) Have you ever wondered what brings God the most pleasure?   The out-flowing desire of a person who has been redeemed is to know what pleases Him. After all that He did for us in saving us from a life of sin and separation from God, and then eternity in hell still separated from God, it only makes sense to have so much gratitude in your heart that you want to do something for Him.

"How can I rest in You and be at peace when storms keep coming my way, God? It seems like every time I settle down another one comes and I'm on my feet again." That question was one that I asked God this morning. Sometimes, I pull out my journal and instead of closing my eyes to pray, I write a prayer to God. Mainly because it is so hard to find the words when I'm just talking. At the end of the prayer, I closed the journal, opened my bible to Jeremiah and began to read. I began in chapter 16 and read through to 17. A passage grabbed my attention that I had underlined in purple and gold on one or two of my previous read-through's.

Your life is only a brief moment. Blink, and it's gone. Some live all of their lives for themselves, knowing it is for themselves, and then the end comes and they realize it is all over. They missed the point. Some live their whole lives for themselves, and think they are living for God, but in reality they do things that appear outwardly good, but inwardly, they want glory, fame, respect -you name it. Then the end comes, and they are just as disappointed as the ones who knew they were living for themselves. They, too, missed the point.

"God doesn't want us to be mere campfires; He wants us to be bonfires, raging infernos for Him." -Mark Cahill Burn brighter, dear Christian! Don't think for a moment that your light has reached its limit. Do you know who the light within you is? Jesus said that He is the light! Do you realize there is no limit to His power? Fear is one great hindrance to His power in our lives, and often we don't know how to stop the inevitable flow of fear... But "God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a sound mind." (2 Tim. 1:7)  First John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love."