Passage of the Day: Romans 5: 5 – 8 … 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us. 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
My Journal for Today: If one believes what the Apostle Paul is saying in today’s passage, as I do, he or she has to be bursting with assurance and gratitude. That word picture Paul uses in [Rom. 5: 5 in bold and underlined above for emphasis] … of God pouring out His love into the heart of any repentant, believing sinner drives me to want to share that love with others, especially to Christians who have trouble understanding or walking in faith with their salvation. You may or may not be one of those; but if you are, maybe this devotional was given to me on this day just for you.
The term “poured out,” also translated “shed forth” in the KJV, is the Greek word “ekcheo,” which according to John MacArthur’s Strength for Today and my study from Strong’s Greek Concordance in the Blue Letter Bible online program, means to burst forth in abundance as if a dam had burst and water was pouring forth from the breech in the dam. And though we, as sinners (see Rom. 3: 23, which you probably have memorized – our should) have hearts dammed up by evil/deceit (see Jer. 17: 9), God was willing to break the dam blocking my receipt of His love and to pour His love into a heart like mine by the shedding of Christ’s blood (you simply must put Rom. 5: 8 into your heart and, of course, John 3: 16, two of the most hopeful and helpful verses in all of the NT).
As the contemporary song declares, “Amazing love, how can it be … that my King would die for me?!” And it is that love, bursting forth from His heart into mine, that now can be shared with confidence with others. It is the expression in a believer’s life, like mine, of another great memory verse (Eph. 2: 10). The flow of God from my sinner’s heart, made right by God, at times just gushes forth [again in the Greek, “ekcheo”] as I’m just compelled to share my faith or God’s truth with others. But because it is God’s love and not my own, one can see how I would feel so compelled.
May we, who call ourselves “Christians,” always allow God’s love to “ekcheo” from our hearts whenever we encounter an unbeliever who is lost or a believer who is waning in faith.
My Prayer Today: Your love courses from me, Lord. Amen
PS - Blogger’s Note: You’ll note several verses in today’s entry to which I’ve expressed the hope that you have them memorized, internalized, and personalized in your hearts. I can’t tell you how important it is to have these and many other verses/passages captured in your mind/heart. But if you do a meditation/study of all of Psalm 119, you will come away with the power and import of God’s word and an understanding of my drive to memorize God’s word.
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