Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a You Tube video of Dionne Warwick singing Bert Bacharach’s 60’s hit … What The World Needs Now Is Love, and we need God’s love spoken loudly and in abundance.
Highlight Passage: James 3:9 [NKJV] …
9 With it [the tongue] we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God.
… Yes, we have all we need in Christ
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Highlight Context – James 3:1-12 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… James speaks forcefully about the need to speak God’s language of love.
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Reference Passage #1 … Romans 12:1-2 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Paul exhorts Christians to live out the love of God as a daily sacrifice of the love He showed for us.
Reference Passage #2 … Ephesians 4:29 [NKJV] …
29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.
… God, thru Paul, on how we are to speak grace and love to others - ALWAYS.
My Journal for Today: … Our Daily Bread author, Keila Ochoa, used a colorful illustration (see OBD like below) to remind her readers (me) on something we need in abundance, which I’m illustrating with the attached photo and the linked You Tube song (above).
And given what has transpired in the current headlines and this nation the past week (i.e., mass killings of police and explosive racial hatred), I really don’t think I need to write very much here to expand on the message of Bert Bacharach’s 1960s song and the attached photo, do I?
The passage in Chapter 3 of James certainly speaks to how powerful our “tongue” is in speaking out our emotions; and Jesus’ brother shows us how a poisoned tongue can poison the waters of this world so easily, especially when it’s spreading the poison of hatred.
And the Apostle Paul loudly exhorts us in the passages above (as Christians) to only speak forth the grace and love of God’s truth-in-love anytime we open our mouths to express what’s on our minds. As my parents used to say over and over again when I was growing up, … “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all !!” But I don’t think we’re hearing that message loudly enough, are we? And I’m certain that we’re not speaking God’s love loudly enough as depicted in the photo.
My Prayer Today: O, Heavenly Father, … Lord, give me a loud voice to shout Your love at the top of my lungs! Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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