Saturday....Being off.....wow.
It's still hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that Saturday is one of my off days. You see, my entire life, I have worked Saturdays. Not complaining, mind you, but it's just strange for me to be off.
I worked in the restaurant business for 17 years, so not only was I not off on Saturday's, I worked nights. It's funny if I am with some folks and they start talking about television shows from the 70's and 80's. They'll invariably ask me, "Did you see such and such? Wasn't that a great show?" To which I have to reply....
"No...I was working." Thank goodness for TV LAND and NICK AT NIGHT...I feel like my life is complete now that I can get caught up on MORK AND MINDY or The A-TEAM.
Got the grass mowed yesterday, so that is out of the way. All I have to do today is prepare for our meeting tonight at Rapha. I am being directed to teach from I Corinthians 13. Some call it the LOVE Chapter.
I like the way Paul gets us into Chapter 13, by setting up the last of Chapter 12.
"And yet I show you a more excellent way."Paul was writing about what it meant to be a member or a part of the body of Christ. That each person was given gifts by the Holy Spirit, and was expected to exercise those gifts in the church. Yet Paul knew that it wasn't the gift that focus of an individual...it was the heart behind the gift. So what was the "More excellent way?" A person's ability to love. Not love as the world defines love, but the kind of love given by God. Agape, or unconditional love.
For me this has been, and continues to be, a sticking point in my own life. I struggle with this. I'm not sure it should be a struggle. I want to love and some days I'm pretty good at it. I can tell that God is leading me and showing me how it's done. Then there are days that I feel like a complete embarrassment to Him. I'll say the wrong thing, or I'll let my flesh (old sin nature) rise up and I'll hide behind religion to justify my actions. I'm telling you right now, I'm a stinker. At lest I'm God's stinker.
In my Bible, the heading over Chapter 13 reads...THE GREATEST GIFT. This tells me that the ability to love is a gift given by God to us. Think about that. God, the perfect and divine Father, has given to His creation, the ability to love others. His creation! The creation that messed up on the Garden of Eden. The creation that nailed His son to a cross. God entrusts each of us who are followers of Jesus, with this incredible gift. That is why I want to learn how to love.
Paul closes out Chapter 13 with these words: And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Aren't you glad that John 3:16 doesn't say...'For God so tolerated the world." Or "God felt nothing for the world." But there in that verse, we see the motivating factor that sent Jesus to the cross and opened the door for me and you to be brought into right standing and relationship with God. For God so LOVED the world.
Know that I love you...I mean it.
Hope you have a good Saturday.
God on you...
mb
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