SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/24/2019 7:59 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Pattern”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 5:2b
Message of the verse: “just as Christ
also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God
as a fragrant aroma.”
I
stated in our last SD that I would talk about “puppy love” in today’s SD. I think that we can define puppy love as
romantic love or emotional love perhaps between a boyfriend with his girlfriend
or even for a new bride of her new husband as there are ebbs and flows and even
sometimes it disappears altogether. In
the case of romantic love in a marriage and when one thinks that it is over
this is never an appropriate excuse for dissolving a marriage, because the love
that God specifically commands husbands to have for their wives is agape love
as seen in Ephesians 5:25; 3:19 as this is love like God’s own which is
undeserved love for us, and this love is that which is based on willful choice
on behalf of the one loved, regardless of emotions, attraction, or
deserving. This kind of love is not like
what we described as puppy love. I guess
that most people can fall in love with a puppy, but the problem is that puppy
will grow up and become a dog that perhaps will not be so easy to love. John MacArthur states “Romantic love enhances
and beautifies the relationship between husband and wife, but the binding force
of a Christian marriage is God’s own kind of love, the love that loves because
it is the divine nature to love. It is
the love of giving, not of getting; and even when it ceases to get, it continues to give. Where there is the sacrificial love of
willful choice, there is also likely to be the love of intimacy, feeling, and
friendship (Philia).”
As
we look at agape love we know that God gives us this kind of love and even
though we are believers we will still sin and will fall short of His perfection
and His glory, but God still loves us even when we forget Him, when we disobey
Him, when we deny Him, when we fail to return His love, and even when we grieve
His Holy Spirit. In the little letter
that Jude wrote he said “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 21). MacArthur states that “he was indicating the
responsibility to stay in the place where that divine love sheds its blessing.”
Since
all believers are given God’s nature through Jesus Christ then they are
commanded to love as God loves. “In
Christ, it is now our nature to love, just as it is God’s nature to
love—because His nature is now our nature.
For a Christian not to love is for him to live against his own nature as
well as against God’s.”
We
will continue on this subject of love and even begin to talk about lovelessness
in our next SD, Lord willing, but I have to leave to go to what is called
“Grandparents Day” at the school where three of my grandchildren attend.
Today’s quotation is from C. S. Lewis
“Faith: the art of holding on to things
your reason has once accepted, in spite of you changing moods.”
5/24/2019 8:21 AM
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