Love

the word "trust" written in sand

From Trust Comes Courage

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“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that count.”

– Winston S. Churchill

Few would dare to question the courage of Winston Churchill, but few would guess that one of the 18 books he authored was, “Painting As a Pastime.” So often, we pigeonhole people into tidy mental cubby holes. Each person is quickly analyzed, assessed, and assigned their place in our roster of personalities. Such great loss comes from this method!

When we consider true believers in Christ Jesus, we must include the effect of the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence in a person’s life, such as yours or mine. 

Our Catholic Friends Have it Right

Several years ago, I was a member of a small non-denominational church focused on doing the things Jesus taught. One man that I will never forget was a person who rightly understood that human life begins at conception1. 

If you met this man, he would seem ordinary – middle-aged, slightly overweight, and married. If I had tucked him away in my memory under the heading, “An Average Man” I would have made a terrible error. God had laid on him a costly ministry; he worked to save young women from being pressured into believing that abortion was a “good option.”

Our Catholic friends have it right regarding the sacredness of human life. My friend understood this. When I knew him, he worked tirelessly for the babies who couldn’t protect themselves. He galvanized a right-to-life chain. He helped organize a life chain. On a Saturday, thousands of supporters showed up. We held hands and formed a peaceful, humble chain that lined the main streets of our town. I’ve often wondered how many people were impacted as they drove, possibly for miles, past person after person, praying for the lives of unborn children to be spared.

The courage of this peaceful man, who never once acted or encouraged any form of violence, ended up being arrested because he “cared too much.” Where does courage like this come from? Throughout God’s Word, we see Him use common people to do surprisingly uncommon things, actions that sometimes put them at mortal risk.

We are familiar with the courage of Moses, Gideon, Esther, Daniel, Joshua and Caleb. What do they all have in common? Trust in God. Out of trust comes courage. The Psalmist said it this way:

1 Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!
    …
7 He is not afraid of evil tidings; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.

Psalm 112 RSVCE – Blessings of the Righteous – Bible Gateway

You and I need to grasp how profoundly our lives are affected when we “trust in the Lord.” A great evangelist made this statement:

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

Billy Graham

** No part of this article was produced by artificial intelligence (AI). **

Footnotes

  1. Bible Gateway passage: Luke 1:34-36 – New Living Translation*. (n.d.). Bible Gateway. Retrieved November 4, 2023, from https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%201%3A34-36&version=NLT ↩︎
pumpkin on brown wooden table

Adam’s Fear

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Inside each of us, there is a battle. Some have progressed further than others, but we all have walked on this path. This path is called fear. Fear does terrible things to us. Though the Holy Spirit lives in us, our human nature oozes with fear. Throughout the Bible, we find person after person who made terrible decisions because they were afraid.

Adam’s Fear

Fear began with Adam in the Garden of Eden.

When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”

Genesis 3:8–10 NLT

Adam’s fear became part of the nature of humanity. Abraham gives us a good insight into the damage that fear causes.

He and Sarai (Sarah) went to Egypt to escape a severe famine. Abram was afraid that an Egyptian would kill him to take Sarai because of her beauty. So, because of fear, he told his wife, “Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.1” Fear wrecks our common sense.

I Will Not be Afraid

Before we received Jesus as our Savior, each of us was alone in a wicked world, enslaved by the devil. It’s a wonder that we didn’t do more stupid things than we did! But when Jesus comes in, we are no longer alone. Jesus asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit, and He did. Now, as a believer, the Holy Spirit lives in us and will for all of eternity. But our old nature tries to bring fear back into our lives.

If you are an American, find a dollar bill and look at it. Printed on the back are these words: “In God we trust.” Those words come from Psalms 56:11. The rest of that verse states, “I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” Now consider this verse of Scripture:

But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats.

1 Peter 3:14 NLT

Stop, Drop, and Roll

If Jesus is your Lord, then there is nothing you need to fear. Fear is not part of the new life that Jesus gave you. Whenever you become aware of fear creeping into your thoughts or emotions, treat it like being on fire – stop, drop, and roll!

Stop that fear from growing inside you. Drop the Rock, Jesus Christ, on those fears. And roll on down the road of life with the wind of the Holy Spirit at your back, the Light of Jesus ever before you, and our Father’s eternal care surrounding you. Perfect love, God’s love, drives out fear!

Photo by Monstera Production

** No part of this article was produced by artificial intelligence (AI). **

Footnotes

  1. Genesis 12:13 NIV, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+12%3A13&version=NIV ↩︎

Dusty Old Books

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My wife posts a daily Facebook blog titled, My Daily Treasures. Borrowing from her, I have found that dusty old books often contain treasures just waiting for someone to discover. These old books exist because someone kept them. The Internet has replaced old books, so if an old book is found, somebody likely saw something in the book that made it worth keeping. I have several of these books.

One dusty old book I recently was reading came from my dad. He was an educator, so he kept a book about how to educate people. Its title is “Perceiving, Behaving, Becoming.” Here’s a small excerpt:

It is a common fallacy among many lay people and some teachers that, since the world is a very hard place and people sometimes fail, children should be introduced to failure early…People learn that they are able, not from failure, but from success.

by Arthur W. Combs, et al

Real Success

The author refers to actual successes, not the kind where every child wins a trophy. This focus on success is what Jesus did with His disciples and what He does with us. Jesus didn’t send out His disciples to heal the sick1 until they had heard His Sermon on the Mount2 and seen Jesus feed thousands of people3. And even then, Jesus gave His disciples all they needed to be successful.

For our children and those new in Christ, we must provide more than the “what” and the “why.” For success, people need to experience the “how.” But it’s the “how” that places the most significant cost upon us. Telling is easy; showing, mentoring, and equipping requires time and patience, the very things we have the least of.

But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.

James 1:22 NLT

Doing implies not just doing to be doing but to be successfully doing. If we revisit Christ Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, we find in verse 13 that before Jesus fed the crowd, He told His disciples, “You feed them.” Jesus didn’t say this harshly. He made that statement to get them to understand that He was changing their focus from abstract learning to vocational education!

Good News

As believers, we are all called to teach vocational education. Lecturing is different from educating. Let’s avoid telling people what they should do, but instead, let’s invest our time, talents, and treasures in educating people to succeed.

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

Footnotes

  1. Luke 10:9 NLT ↩︎
  2. Matthew 5-7 NLT ↩︎
  3. Luke 9:10–17 NLT ↩︎

It’s In the Details

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Every Friday at 9:00 AM, a few men from our church meet for breakfast. [Hint: If you want to join us, we meet each week at the Coffee Cup on North Lafayette Ave. in Terre Haute, Indiana] The food is great, and the fellowship is excellent.

Recently, as we were talking, one of the guys made a comment that stuck with me. He said he always wears his “Mickey” hat when he is out in public. The hat is the kind that guys often wear when fishing, and it has a small Mickey Mouse® logo. It is very casual but distinctive.

My friend said, “This hat is genuine. It’s from Disney®. I wear it so people remember me. They “know me.” They see what I do, where I go, and what I buy. Of course, this is a two-edged sword. They’ll know if I mess up.” His comment resonated with me.

Over the years, I’ve written several times about the good and bad of developing brands (The Brand of the Man, Building Our Brands, The Real Deal, etc.). I’m the guy that usually wears an unbuttoned denim shirt over a plain, colored T-shirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes. I learned from my wife that what I wear is called my “life uniform” – they have names for everything now!

We must not forget that Jesus told us what we are to be known for:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 13:34–35 NIV

Unfathomable love is how we must love. Jesus also told His disciples to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves1“. These two truths are not in conflict. We are confident of this because God’s Word states:

“The Lord directs the steps of the godly.
He delights in every detail of their lives.”

Psalm 37:23

The “every detail” brings us back to my friend’s statement. Few people live their lives in the same town, work decades for the same company, and live their adult lives in the same home. So, as followers of Jesus, we need to be noticeable. It may be a brief time that they or we will be in the same community.

As we love people with love coming through us from God, we need to pay attention to the details in our lives. God delights in every detail of a godly person; we need to be those persons.

From people that work in restaurants, service stations, and mail delivery to educators and government workers, all should learn to recognize us and see the consistent, unalterable compassion, humility, and love that is unlike anything they ever witness from the world.

There’s a song that has received a lot of air-play on Christian radio stations. It’s titled, “God is in this story.” Here’s the first part of the chorus.”

God is in this story
God is in the details
Even in the broken parts
He holds my heart, He never fails
– Song by Big Daddy Weave and Katy Nichole, YouTube video

Self-Aware

God is in the details. I love that message. We need to pay attention to how we live, thinking about what we say, what we do, and where we go. The apostle Paul wrote, “So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise.[1]” It is good for people to recognize us. When they see us, they should see us loving in the way that Jesus loves[2]. After a while, we will be known by them for our love.

Photo by On Shot

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1: Ephesians 5:15 NLT – Living by the Spirit’s Power – Bible Gateway
2: John 13:34 NLT – So now I am giving you a new – Bible Gateway

Girl Mud Run Slope Help Challenge Woman Tough

Look After Each Other

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One of the first events in the Bible is when God asks Adam’s son Cain the rhetorical question, “Where is Able, your brother? 1” God knew that Cain had murdered Able, but in God’s grace, He was allowing Cain to confess his sin and seek God’s forgiveness. Instead, Cain’s foolish answer was, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

Cain’s question has a clear answer – yes, you are responsible for your brother. Many mothers and grandmothers have asked similar questions to older siblings: “Where is Andy? You know it’s your job to keep an eye on your younger brother.” The term “keeper” in this context means to act as a protector or guardian.

Look After Each Other.

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

Turning back to the Bible, we find in the book of Hebrews the command, “Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God2.” God’s grace saves us, and it is through His grace that we are productive citizens of His kingdom.

As believers in Christ Jesus our Lord, each of us carries a personal responsibility to be protectors of our brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s easy for us to build a wall around the meaning of this verse. If we narrow down this verse’s significance to solely spiritual aspects, we can claim that we have done everything in our power to safeguard our fellow believers from missing out on the grace of God. But how can others tell if we have? 

It may be difficult for believers to know that we failed God’s command, but we know, just as Cain knew his brother was dead. You and I have the responsibility to help fellow believers from falling back into worldliness; that’s not an easy job. 

Real Faith Produces Real Actions.

A 20th-century Chinese Christian and martyr said, “When two Christians happen to meet, their time together should be a time of mutual refreshing.” We should be a blessing to fellow believers, as they should be to us. When we part company, we both should be strengthened in our relationship with Jesus and in our determination to produce good deeds to show our faith in God to ourselves and others.

“What kind of faith is saving faith? James’s question3 is rhetorical; the obvious answer is that faith without works cannot save. Faith that yields no deeds is not saving faith. The New Testament does not teach justification by the profession of faith or the claim to faith; it teaches justification by the possession of true faith.”

R.C. Sproul

What Are Good Deeds?

You may ask, “What good deeds can I do to show true faith in Jesus?” This starts with encouraging fellow believers to stay faithful to their calling. Remind Christians that are going through a rough patch in their lives what Peter wrote: “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you4.”

We should be more generous than any unbeliever and love more sincerely than all nonbelievers. In our conversations, we should have the mindset of elevating Jesus instead of ourselves. We need to speak about the mercy and grace that God has made available to humanity through Jesus, the only true Savior. 

Don’t Come Empty Handed.

When our day comes to stand before Jesus and explain what we did with the life He gave us5, we should be ready to tell of things Jesus did through our faith in Him. “Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works6.” Therefore, in this life, we give by faith, help by faith, pray by faith, suffer by faith, encourage by faith, defend the Gospel by faith, do the impossible by faith. 

Our Calling

Jesus, God’s Messiah, calls us to do what Cain failed to do. We must be our brothers and sisters’ keepers.

Image by madsmith33 from Pixabay

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[1]: Genesis 4:9 ESV
[2]:Hebrews 12:15 NLT
[3]: James 2:14 NLT
[4]: 1 Peter 5:10 ESV
[5]: Romans 14:12
[6]: James 2:26 NLT

A picture of a sad lamb.

Bummer Lamb

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This explanation of a “bummer lamb” has circulated throughout the Internet. It is too good to ignore, so here it is.

Every once in a while, a ewe will give birth to a lamb and reject it. There are many reasons she may do this. If the lamb is returned to the ewe, the mother may even kick the poor animal away. Once a ewe rejects one of her lambs, she will never change her mind.

These little lambs will hang their heads so low that it looks like something is wrong with its neck. Their spirit is broken.

These lambs are called “bummer lambs.” Unless the shepherd intervenes, that lamb will die, rejected and alone. So, do you know what the shepherd does? He takes that rejected little one into his home, hand-feeds it, and keeps it warm by the fire. He will wrap it up with blankets and hold it to his chest so the bummer can hear his heartbeat. Once the lamb is strong enough, the shepherd will place it back in the field with the rest of the flock.

But that sheep never forgets how the shepherd cared for him when his mother rejected him. When the shepherd calls for the flock, guess who runs to him first?

That is right, the bummer sheep. He knows his voice intimately. It is not that the bummer lamb is loved more; it just knows intimately the one who loves it.

It’s not that it is loved more; it just believes it because it has experienced that love one on one.
So many of us are bummer lambs, rejected and broken. But He is the good Shepherd. He cares for our every need and holds us close to His heart so we can hear His heartbeat.

We may be broken, but we are deeply loved by the Shepherd.

Image by Ralph from Pixabay

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Pssst 🎧 I’ve Got a Secret for You

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Many years ago, there used to be a TV show called “I’ve Got a Secret.” The point of the show was to find out if four people could ask a famous person the right questions to guess what that person’s job was.

The show had four semi-famous panelists (people) that wore blindfolds. Each week a famous or well-known person would be on the show. The host, Garry Moore, officiated in a light-hearted way to ensure the game was properly played.

The show was a hit, running from 1952 until 1967. And for most of my life, it required me to know every aspect of the show because nearly every new person I met would ask me if I knew about the show. You see, my name is also Gary Moore, and I’ve got a secret.

The Secret

I’ll share my secret with you only if you share it with someone else. I am weary from what I know remaining a secret. So here it is: No one has ever been unloved; this includes you.

You may roll your eyes and think that I’m espousing some threadbare idiom. I assure you that I am not. My secret is that this love is real love, and it is unbroken love, and it continues to this day. Remember that time when you felt completely alone and cried your eyes out? You weren’t alone, and those tears have been kept out of compassion for you. This is true.

If you’ve ever believed anything, believe that Jesus has never taken His eyes off of you. To Jesus, you have always been like a newborn baby – beautiful, full of potential, and you have your Father’s eyes. Jesus even keeps a baby book where he memorializes the ‘firsts’ of your life.

The Truth

Do you think I’m disingenuous?

“You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.” Psalm 56:8

This verse is not just some poetic line; it is factually true. As Paul wrote, “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.” (Ephesians 3:18

I have a second secret. The door to be in an eternal, loving relationship with God is Jesus. He is the way to love God back. Jesus is the truth that affirms this opportunity. And surprisingly, Jesus is life. He has the power to not just make you better but to give you eternal life so that you will never be separated from God’s love.

Good News

“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” Ephesians 3:18

You have never been unloved. You have never been discarded. You have never been unseen. God has always loved you. That is my secret. I hope you share this good news with your friends and family.

CBS Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Picture of Keith Green.

His Promises Remain

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My eyes are dry
My faith is old
My heart is hard
My prayers are cold
And I know how I ought to be
Alive to You and dead to me

But what can be done
For an old heart like mine
Soften it up
With oil and wine
The oil is You, Your Spirit of love
Please wash me anew
With the wine of Your Blood

My Eyes Are Dry by Keith Green.
YouTube of Keith singing this song

You can be twenty years old and have an old heart. Being in love with Jesus, keeping it fresh and eager every morning to learn what God has given you to do that day, is easily lost. A memorable line from the movie “Parenthood” is when Steve Martin, in a moment of frustration, says, “My whole life is ‘have to’s.” So, for three minutes today, lay down your burden and allow me to encourage you in the Lord.

Just because the Bible contains words that were first penned two thousand years ago, and more, does not mean that God’s promises are no longer effective. Those prescriptions have no use-by date. Actually, those promises came from the eternal, one true God. From God’s perspective, His promises were just given; they were written just a moment ago, and they contain all the strength and potency God intended, and they are for you if you are in Jesus.

You may say, “I prayed for my beloved mother, a God-fearing woman, yet she still died too soon.” Do you think that since her passing she has ever had one regret for leaving this wretched world and being forever in the presence of the Lord?

You might say, “I have prayed and sought Jesus to bring my local church back to the way it was when I was young.” I’m with you on that one, but we serve “I AM.” God works in the now, and He is moving us and the world in preparation for the return of Jesus. We can love what we have, but as servants of God, we must keep up with Him. He has an agenda, and in His love and grace, He has included you. We celebrate what God did, but we work in what God is doing.

Does your heart feel old? Do you feel like your life is not the one you saw when you were first saved? Do you feel like your life is all “have to’s?” Then I recommend what Keith Green wrote. I pray that you allow the Holy Spirit, who is already alive within you, to pour fresh oil and wine upon you. The oil is the Spirit of God, and the wine represents the sacrificed blood of Jesus.

Your first love, when you were saved, is not lost in the past. It is right beside you. It has never left. Ask Jesus for freshness, a soft heart, and a hungry soul. He will give them if you ask in faith.

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”

1 Thessalonians 5:23–24

Eseymour at en.Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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father disciplining adorable attentive son at home

Discipline Is not Punishment.

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I’ve noticed that Americans are very sloppy with the words we write and speak. We say that we love our child, and we love ice cream. Just this one sentence has probably earned enormous sums of money for therapists. Consider these conversations:

Adult: Why did my Dad love me like ice cream?
Therapist: Perhaps he wished you would melt away.

And then we have a problem with speaking. What we say is barely comprehensible from the written words.

Written: “James, be sure to wash your hands today.”
Spoken: “Jimmy, be sure to warsh yer hands ta-day.”

We all have certain misspoken words that literally drive us nuts. 😉 It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard when we hear “worshed” instead of “washed.” My pet peeve is when people say “ta-marrow” instead of “tomorrow.” It’s painful for me to hear Annie in “Annie, the Musical” sing, “Ta-morrow! Ta-marrow. I love ya ta-marrow! You’re only a day away!” And, how many times have you heard someone say punish when they meant discipline?

Mom: “Jimmy, this is the last time I’ll clean candy out of your jeans pocket! They went through the wash today and left a gooey mess. You will scrape that mess out and then handwash your jeans as your punishment.”
Dad: “Jimmy, that was a bonehead thing to do. If you do it again, your mother will kill you.”

With our language being as wonky as it is, it’s easy to mix up the meaning of words when we read the Bible. Mom didn’t mean punishment; she meant discipline. On the other hand, Dad implied punishment but not a capital offense.

Compare these two verses:

“Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.” 1 John 4:18 (New Living Translation)

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” Hebrews 12:7 (New Living Translation).

We are promised by God that if we are His child, we no longer face His punishment. Because God is our Father, He disciplines us. All discipline is love in action with an expectation of improvement. No one disciples a pet or a kid if they don’t love them. All discipline is intended to help, to guide, to nurture. How can we not rejoice in God’s discipline? Discipline is not punishment.

There is a day when judgment will come. On that day, God will hate everyone who rejected His sacrifice, Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb. These people will not receive discipline. They will receive eternal, unending punishment. God will not expect their improvement. Each will bow before Jesus, but their bow is the surrender of the conquered, not the bow of worship.

So, praise God! The love we enjoy from our Father has no fear, and all discipline is His love in action. He has expectations for us. That’s exciting! Who does He see when He looks at us? Oh God, bring your discipline. Help us to be that person You see in us!!

Photo by Monstera

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Faith Is Expressed in Love

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When I was a young Christian, more than once, I’d hear someone in our local church, complain that so-and-so was so heavenly-minded that they were no earthly good. In those early years, I learned to identify people that had ignored the admonition from James,

“Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”

James 2:18

Expressed Faith

Something didn’t feel right when I heard those comments. Well, that was because I was ignoring 1 John 4:20-21 NLT, “if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see.”

This leads me to today’s thought, found in Galatians 5:6b NLT, “What is important is faith expressing itself in love.” The answer to thousands of questions about faith is found in those few words.

When asked the question, “What should you be doing with your life?” most people think of occupations, some think of recreation, and a few think of some sort of ministry.” I’ll hazard a guess that only a handful would reply, “I want to allow the faith God has given me to be expressed in my love.” But faith expressed through love is the right answer and the most difficult answer.

Good News

Because we were born in sin, people are wired to harshly judge people and live faithless lives. But we left this way of life behind when, in Christ Jesus, we entered God’s kingdom. I pray that we all remember that if we can’t love someone we see, how can we expect to love God, whom we’ve never seen? And what greater good can come from our faith than to allow our faith to express itself in love? My prayer for all of us is that we are so heavenly-minded that we are of immense earthly good.

Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay

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