But the fruit of the Spirit is love . . .
— Galatians 5:22a
"Love," said Meister Eckhart, "is the will to, the intention." By that definition, it is possible to obey the divine command to love our neighbor. We may not in a thousand years be able to feel a surge of emotion toward certain "neighbors," but we can go before God and solemnly will to love them, and the love will come. By prayer and an application of the inworking power of God, we may set our faces to will the good of our neighbor and not his evil all the days of our lives, and that is love. The emotion may follow, or there may be no appreciable change in our feelings toward him, but the intention is what matters.
We will his peace and prosperity and put ourselves at his disposal to help him in every way possible, even to the laying down of our lives for his sake. Love, then, is a principle of good will and is to a large extent under our control. That it can be fanned into a blazing fire is not denied here. Certainly God's love for us has a mighty charge of feeling in it, but beneath it all is a set principle that wills our peace. Probably the love of God for mankind was never more beautifully stated than by the angel at the birth of Christ: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to man on whom his favor rests."
thought
Loving with agape love is choosing, willing to direct God's love to specific people whether or not they are loveable or responsive. It is loving people because God loves them and it is loving with His love.
prayer
Today, Holy Spirit, I will to love with that God-love You produce in me.
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
— 1 Thessalonians 3:12
Civilized man has brought about this tragic fall by associating love with sex exclusively and then popularizing the error by every means at his command. Millions of young people today are wholly unable to think of love except in terms of the disgraceful promiscuity of Hollywood. Newspapers now report the numerous marriages of the movie crowd by number: "It was the third marriage for her; his fourth." And if it were not so tragic for everyone concerned, it would be hugely comical to read of a movie star being interviewed by the press and solemnly assuring the public that she is not at the moment "in love." Such a use of the word is completely degraded and smacks more of the beasts than of men made in the image of God.
For the millions, love is an emotional attraction, nothing more, as unstable and as unpredictable as sheet lightning. The Bible teaches, on the contrary, that true love is a benevolent principle and is under the control of the will. If love were merely an emotion, how could God command us to love Him, or to love our neighbor? No one can "fall in love" at the command of another, if falling in love means getting seized suddenly with a fit of love as one might be hit with a charge of electricity or caught with a severe spasm of coughing.
thought
There is friendship love, erotic love and family love. Then there is agape love primarily based not on emotion or dependent on reciprocity but on the will ? willing to love.
prayer
I understand, Lord, that I can choose to love or not to love. Often it has been the latter. Forgive me.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
— Romans 5:8
Among the innocent victims of this effete and degenerate age, there is none so pure and so beautiful as love. Next to the word God with its various forms, there is no word so fair in all the language. Yet it may be said without qualification that this beautiful word has so suffered in the house of its friends as now to be scarcely recognizable. For the great mass of mankind, love has lost its divine meaning. The novelist, the playwright, the psychoanalyst, the writer of popular love songs, have abused this fair being too long. For filthy lucre, they have dragged her through the sewers of the human mind until she appears to the world as no more than a blowzy and bloated strumpet for whom no one any longer has the least trace of respect, the mention of whose name brings no more than a wink or an embarrassed simper. By losing the divine content from the concept of love, modern man now has remaining only what we might expect ? a brazen-faced dowd whom he courts at all hours of the day and night with songs that should make a chimpanzee blush.
thought
In common usage love is denigrated. But in its fullest expression love is Christ dying for for us while we were yet sinners!
prayer
O Christ, it would be more comprehensible had You died for me after I was fully transformed into Your image. But You died for me while I was yet a sinner, an enemy. O what love!
Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.
— 1 Peter 5:7
Unnecessary burdens are crushing the life out of people every day. Mental institutions are overflowing and psychiatrists are doing a rushing business because the burden of living is getting to be more than we can bear. Civilization has not made our lot easier except in things pertaining to the body; the burdens of the heart are growing more numerous, and science has found no remedy. The silky voice of the practitioner may soothe the mind for a time, but the disease is too deep to yield itself to such inadequate measures. Surely we could live longer and better and be far happier and more useful if we could learn to cast our burdens upon the Lord. Then it would not matter how heavy they were, for He would carry them for us.
thought
Because He cares for us we can unload upon God all our anxieties ?�heavy or light. He does care for us!
prayer
Your Word assures me that You care for me. Your care, Father, is expressed is so many ways not least of which is bearing my anxieties.
Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.
— Psalm 55:22
"If a burden is laid on my back and another immediately takes it off and carries it himself," said Meister Eckhart, "it can make no difference to me whether it is one or a hundred pounds." In the Scriptures, there would seem to be three kinds of burdens recognized. First, the burden of loving help which we are admonished to give to others: "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). Secondly, the burden of moral responsibility which no one can shift to another: "For each one should carry his own load" (Galatians 6:5).
Thirdly, the burden resulting from our fallen state, consisting of sin, fear, worry, disappointments, sorrows, remorse, bitter memories and self-accusations. The first burden never harmed a soul. The second may even be a source of quiet comfort if our hearts are right. It is the third sort that ages and shrivels and kills. And there is no valid reason for our carrying it (or them, for there are many of this kind). "Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you" (Psalm 55:22). That was what the good Eckhart had in mind when he suggested that no burden would be heavier than any other if the Lord carried it for us.
thought
Casting our cares upon the Lord means casting and leaving them there. Our common practice is to pick them up again after our prayer's "amen."
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for carrying burdens I should be unloading on You. You have invited me to leave them with You.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
— 1 Corinthians 13:4
It might be a shock to some of us if we could know why we are disliked and why our testimony is rejected so violently. Could it be that we are guilty of a deep sinfulness of disposition that we just cannot keep hidden? Arrogance, lack of charity, contempt, self-righteousness, religious snobbery, fault-finding ? and all this kept under careful restraint and disguised by a pious smile and synthetic good humor. This sort of thing is felt rather than understood by those who touch us in everyday life. They do not know why they cannot stand us, but we are sure that the reason is our exalted state of spirituality! Perilous comfort. Deep heart searching and prolonged repentance would be better. Yet let us not assume that if we are persecuted it is because of our faults. The opposite may be the fact. They may hate us because they first hated Christ, and if that is so, then blessed are we indeed. The point is, let us take nothing for granted. We may be better than we think we are, but the likelihood is not overwhelming. Humility is best.
thought
Andrew Murray noted that: "There is nothing so natural to man, nothing so insidious and hidden from our sight, nothing so diffcult and dangerous, as pride." Especially is this true of spiritual pride.
prayer
Lord, am I hurting others by unconsciously communicating spiritual pride? Forgive me. Teach me humility and love, painful though the lessons may be.
The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men ? robbers, evildoers, adulterers ? or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
— Luke 18:11-12
Any act gains in power as it moves inward toward the heart. For this reason, the sins of the spirit are more iniquitous than those of the body. This was illustrated boldly by the attitude of our Lord toward these two kinds of sins and the corresponding two classes of sinners. He was the friend of publicans and harlots and the enemy of the Pharisees. All sin is sinful and will be fatal to the soul if it is not forgiven and cleansed away. But for intensity of iniquity, the sins of the spirit are in a class by themselves. Yet they are the very sins which are most likely to be committed by religious people. The careless sinner expresses himself overtly and so "releases" the moral tension; the religious sinner is not likely so to do. He scorns outward acts of wickedness and drives his sin inward to the sanctuary of his soul where it remains in a state of high compression. The notorious unloveliness of many religious people can be explained in this way.
thought
As Evangelical Christians we can be highly pharisaical in condeming the overt sins of others while refusing to acknowledge our own sins of the spirit. Does God see us as those with telephone poles in our own eyes yet denouncing tiny specks in the eyes of others?
prayer
Father, help me to understand that sin is sin. I may not be committing sin strongly condemned by society. But so-called "inner sins" are just as sinful. Christ had to die to pay the price for "little" sins as well as big ones.
Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
— Colossians 3:12
Sometimes we Christians are opposed and persecuted for reasons other than our godliness. We like to think it is our spirituality that irritates people, when in reality, it may be our personality. True, the spirit of this world is opposed to the Spirit of God; he that is born after the flesh will persecute him that is born of the Spirit. But making all allowances, it is still true that some Christians get into trouble through their faults instead of through their likeness to the character of Christ. We may as well admit this and do something about it. No good can come from trying to hide our unpleasant and annoying dispositional traits behind a verse of Scripture. It is one of the strange facts of life that gross sins are often less offensive and always more attractive than spiritual ones. The world can tolerate a drunkard or a glutton or a smiling braggart but will turn in savage fury against the man of outwardly righteous life who is guilty of those refined sins, which he does not recognize as sins, but which may be more exceeding sinful than the sins of the flesh.
thought
Coldheartedness, unkindness, pride, harshness, impatience in us as believers are dispositional weaknesses that repel many non Christians. Rather than spirituality characterizing our daily living it may be unChristlikeness.
prayer
You want to draw people to Yourself through me but I sometimes repel them by my unChristlikeness. Lord, continue to change me!
Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
— James 1:12
The man whom Christ illuminates with His message has eyes, and that resolves the old difficulty of blindness; but he must use his new eyes in a blind world, and that creates another problem. The world in its blindness resents his claim to sight and will go to any lengths to discredit the claim. The truth of Christ brings assurance and so removes the former problem of fear and uncertainty, but that assurance will be interpreted as bigotry by the fear-ridden multitudes. And sooner or later this misunderstanding will get the man of God into trouble. And so with many other of the blessed benefits of the gospel. As long as we remain in this twisted world, these benefits will create their own problems. We cannot escape them.
But no instructed Christian will complain. He will rather accept his problems as opportunities for the exercise of spiritual virtues. He will turn them into useful disciplines for the purification of his life and will rejoice that he is permitted to suffer with his Lord. For however severe may be a Christian's trials, they cannot last very long, and the blessed fruit they bear will last while the ages endure.
thought
Standing for truth will bring trials. Trials develop perseverance which is essential to spiritual maturity. Trials are painful but only temporary!
prayer
Give me the good sense, Lord, to see joy in trials because of how You use trials to mature me.