January 12, 2024

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4.1-6)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Let us start today with the challenge we reflected on yesterday at the end: therefore, strive to be completely humble and gentle so that all we say and do not only glorifies God and lifts Him up but restores dignity and hope to those around us and lift them up to God. The object of being patient, as Paul urges the Ephesian disciples to practice, was to bear with one another in love. Conversely, we can say, the bearing of one another in love increases patience. The pivot between the two perspectives is “love.” It is not just any love, but agape or the love which God gives us as experienced in the word, work and gospel of Jesus Christ. We may be able to “bear with one another” but how we do it and the outcome of it is dependent on the type of love which is practiced. Masked in the English language are a host of insinuated desires of loving and being loved. Sometimes, it isn’t even love that is being sought out for giving and taking but lust. In the Greek which Paul used to write to the Ephesians, the word “love” is more complicated because there are different greek words to express the type intended: brotherly love, erotic love, compassionate love and God’s love or, as I have used it “the love of God.” By that I do not mean that we love God, though we most certainly should and do. But, I am extending the idea that we share the love which is of God. He not only bestowed such love when He breathed His breath into us at birth as we drew first breath but before we were conceived in the womb His knowledge of us was conceived in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can never be separated from the “love of God.” Paul would later establish this truth when he wrote “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8. 38-39) It ought to be first nature to us but it is not. I believe we catch glimpses of it in children until the weight of the world which has been put upon them by adults begins to smother it and change it into a shadow. The light of our broken nature rises up and shines more brightly. We have to make the choice to submit the brokenness to the healing power of God’s love and recapture our first love. Jesus warned this same group of people in Ephesus with His Revelation to John, “But, I have this against you…you have forsaken your first love.” What an indictment. In less than a generation (forty years), the Ephesians had slipped back into old ways. For some, like for us, it may not take that long!

Why? It is because, I submit, that we see ourselves as more important than we see one another. We “care” about the needs, wants and conditions of others but with the purpose of capturing, or enslaving, their favor to meet our own needs, wants and disrupted conditions. We do not love unconditionally as God has so loved us in Jesus the Christ. We become conditional in our love for one another. We more easily say “I love you until I don’t” instead of “I love you till death us do part.” And for those who love in the latter even death does not separate them from the one whom they have loved. Built over time with sacrifice of self for the sake of others and to the glory of God, patient endurance is built up and becomes both first nature and second nature…thus a default nature that is “loving without thinking.” Too many people want to think about if they will or will not love, be patient, endure, be compassionate and most of all intentional about putting God first and His purpose of redemption, reconciliation and renewal. Again, as with be completely humble and gentle, the call to be patient and forebearing is expected to be “completely” as well. Our full purpose and intention is to be patient so that we can love others through their challenges spiritually,physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, financially and corporately. Our full purpose and intention is to be forebearing with one another in order to develop the skill and resolve to be patient and wait on the Lord who provides all that we need.

This is living the life worthy of the calling by which we have been called…brothers and sisters in Christ.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit spoke us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit so that others may be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind that we would know that we are Your people and that You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.