Increase Your Love

Jesus has loved us with an everlasting love. He loved us when we didn't even care. He loves us when we act like we don't care. Not with a love that is all emotion and no action, rather he loves us with a love that from the cross said, "Father forgive them..." From pain, from the rejection, he chose to love us. 

This is the love that overflows from us. We choose to love, to forgive, to wait, to try again, to repeat... in the power of his grace, to love. Because he first loved us.

Who Makes You Holy

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.

Exodus 31:12-13 NIV

Sometimes when we read a verse like this we forget that the point is that God makes us holy. We get caught up in legalism about if wether the lack of attendance is a sin or not. But that's not the real point. The point is that it is the Lord who makes us holy. We don't go to church to try to be holy, we go to church to be reminded that God makes us holy. 

This calls to mind one of my favorite verses: It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.  1 Corinthians 1:30 NIV Christ is our holiness and in him we are made holy. Think about communion. We don't take communion to remember what we did, we remember what Christ did, that his body was broken and his blood was shed. In Christ we are made holy.

Quite frankly, I think most of the time when we go to church we are really just going out of habit or to seek a warm fuzzy. We forget that we are there to worship the Lord of all creation, the Lord God Almighty, our Savior and Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who make us holy. 

Choose to Flourish

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
   they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
planted in the house of the Lord,
   they will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
   they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
   he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”

Psalms 92:12-15 NIV

My wife has a green thumb. She gives them just the right amount of care so they will flourish. Once she planted aloe vera plant and it has grown from a little sapling to full sized plant. More than once I have gone out to it and cut off a leaf and rubbed its juices on a cut or burn. 

We, planted in the house of the LORD, will flourish in his care. That means we will grow up in Christ and be useful for the body of Christ. The Lord is upright. That means he isn't going to abuse us or allow things to hurt us for no reason. God will prune us and that may not be enjoyable at the moment, but, it will lead to greater fruitfulness. Through those pruning moments we need to remember to look to the LORD our Rock and remember there is no wickedness in him. 

The difference between you and I and a seed is that we can choose where we are planted. We can be planted in "the house of the LORD" or we can plant ourselves on rocky places and among thorns (see Matthew 13:1-9). If you are reading this I feel confident you are trying to flourish in the house of the LORD. Let him doing his pruning and be willing to be the aloe vera that will bring healing to someone else in the house of the LORD.