Tag Archives: needs

Love is the universal language of the world (John 14:23-34), April 1, 2017

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast


Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

 

  1. Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.
  2. We hear about love a lot. We think we see it everywhere. Jesus commands that we love. So what is it, anyway?
  3. Scripture
    1. John 14:23-34
    2. Jesus:  Anyone who loves Me will listen to My voice and obey. The Father will love him, and We will draw close to him and make a dwelling place within him.  The one who does not love Me ignores My message, which is not from Me, but from the Father who sent Me.
  4. Devotional
    1. I went to everyone’s favorite source of perfect information to find the answer to the question, “What is love?” The Internet, specifically Wikipedia
      1. Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection (“I love my mother”) to pleasure (“I loved that meal”). It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment.[1] Love can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—”the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another”.[2] It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one’s self or animals.[3]
      2. Ancient Greeks identified four forms of love: kinship or familiarity (in Greek, storge), friendship (philia), sexual and/or romantic desire (eros), and self-emptying or divine love (agape). Modern authors have distinguished further varieties of romantic love. Non-Western traditions have also distinguished variants or symbioses of these states.[4][5] Love has additional religious or spiritual meaning—notably in Abrahamic religions. This diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.
      3. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.[6]
      4. Love may be understood as a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.[7
    2. Does that get us any closer to understanding love?
      1. Definition of love is like definition of ice cream
      2. Must experience it to really understand it and even then do you really understand it?
      3. How can you really describe the experience?
      4. Yet when we go through the event, when we eat ice cream for the first time, we know we like it and we want more
      5. When we experience real love, not the mushy fake lust we see advertised, but real love,we know we like it and we need it and we want more
    3. How do we get love?
      1. We get it unconditionally from God
      2. Most of us get it unconditionally from mothers and fathers who try to be good parents no matter how flawed they are
      3. Most of us get love, though sometimes misunderstood and again flawed by the image of what love is from the media and the world in our marriages
      4. But the best way to get love? Give love to others – unconditionally
      5. What kind of love? – that one that says, “Love can be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—”the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another”.[2] It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans,
      6. That’s the love God shows toward us and asks us to give it to others in return
    4. Jesus says if we love Him we will obey Him, His commands usually come in the form of helping others, thinking of others more than we think of ourselves. Doing and giving and lifting others to show them real, genuine love in a world that knows so little about real love today
    5. Love is the universal language, but so few know how to speak it today. Go out and teach them through your actions
  5. If you want to learn more about my church, you can find us at SAF.church. If you like the devotional, share it with someone. If you don’t, tell me. I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow for “A Little Walk with God.”

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Learn the lessons (Luke 11:5-8) November 1, 2016

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – 2 Chronicles 29-32

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Luke 11:5-8
Jesus: Imagine that one of your friends comes over at midnight. He bangs on the door and shouts, “Friend, will you lend me three loaves of bread? A friend of mine just showed up unexpectedly from a journey, and I don’t have anything to feed him.” Would you shout out from your bed, “I’m already in bed, and so are the kids. I already locked the door. I can’t be bothered”? You know this as well as I do: even if you didn’t care that this fellow was your friend, if he keeps knocking long enough, you’ll get up and give him whatever he needs simply because of his brash persistence!

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Well, today the scenario might end a little different. Today, we would call the police and tell them about someone trying to break and enter and have them arrested, friend or not. If they bothered us at midnight we wouldn’t care who they were, we’d just call the cops and that would be it, right? Or maybe we would wait just a little while until they were loud enough to be heard by one of the other neighbors and then invoke the “castle law” and pull out a 12-gauge and end the conversation.

We’re not nearly as hospitable in this country as the middle easterners were in Jesus day. No one wanted to get up in the middle of the night and have their sleep disturbed, but their rules of hospitality led them to get up and help sometimes even when they didn’t feel like it. A lot of people then would have put off the neighbor until morning, asking them to make do until they the city woke up. Then they would be happen to not only provide the bread, but would probably invite them over for a whole meal.

That’s the way of these hospitable people. Their society was much more friendly than ours. Actually, it still is. We hear a lot about ISIS and the radical side of the Muslims that want to kill us, but the typical middle easterner is much more hospitable than the typical American. There, expect to be invited into their home for tea often. It’s just their way. Here, if you’re invite for coffee or tea at all, it will be at Starbucks or some local coffee shop, not in their home. We just don’t make people feel welcome. We say we do, but we don’t.

So what does all of that have to do with Jesus’ words today? Two things. First, we should recognize sometimes we don’t understand His words the same way those He spoke to originally did. They lived that middle eastern hospitality every day. They would have taken the story a little more to heart than we do because sometimes travelers did get stuck on the road later than expected and just dropped in unexpectedly, but their rules of hospitality said you took them in and fed them. The neighbor had to get some bread from somewhere and hoped his friend would provide it. We don’t understand it as well as they did, but we can put ourselves in their culture and understand the parable better.

One of the lessons learned from this and many other stories Jesus tells reminds us we can experience His lessons better when we know more about the culture of those to whom Jesus spoke. It isn’t hard to find out what it was like for the people in first century Judea, but you do need to study a little. Isn’t it worth a little study to get more out of God’s word? I certainly think so.

Second, the simple message of the parable is two fold. The man could never have gotten the three loaves of bread in the middle of the night unless he went next door and asked in the first place. So first, we need to ask God for what we need. He knows what we need, but we need to ask so that we know it is God who provides. It helps us remember that God is the one who gives us what we need day by day. Second, we need to be persistent in our asking when we are asking for something. Sometimes we figure out the thing we are asking for is not in our best interest when we keep on asking and God doesn’t answer the way we want Him to. Sometimes God needs us to mature our thinking about an issue and delays an answer so that we can be better prepared when the answer comes. Sometimes God is working on solutions behind the scenes and wants to work His miracles through other means that what we might think is the most obvious way to answer our prayer. In all these instances, He asks us to be persistent in our asking.

So now, go out and do some study about the culture of Jesus day. Read His parables again and learn the lessons even better than you did before. You’ll be glad you did.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.