Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube of images and lyrics from Joy Williams singing … Do They See Jesus In Me … poignantly singing of the challenging question all Christians need to ask and to emulate the love Jesus offers and gives to us.
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Highlight Verse[s]: John 15:12-14 [NLT] … 12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.
… No greater love was there ever exhibited to mankind that Jesus’ love and sacrifice for us; and He calls - nay commands - the same from us for our fellow man, calling us His friends if we do.
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Highlight Passage [context]: John 15:5-17 [NLT]… USE THIS LINK …
… Jesus on His disciples loving others as He has loved us.
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Reference Passage : … John 3:16 [NLT] … 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
… God’s love for His children was so great that He let His only Son die for us.
Reference Passage : … John 14:21 [NLT] … 21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
… We take on the essence of the Father’s love when we’re willing to be obedient and follow Jesus’ commands; and when we do, He can (and DOES) manifest His love in us to others.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Monica Brands, used a reference and quote from the novel Wuthering Heights to illustrate how too often we can be all too human in our difficult to show God’s love to others. The ODB author writes … In Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, a cantankerous man who often quotes the Bible to criticize other is memorably described as “the wearisomesst self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake (i.e., apply) the promises to himself and fling the curses to his neighbors.
Sound like someone you might know? … Well, I’ll bet most of us have come across someone who’ve been like the Pharisees were in Jesus’ day. Or maybe we ourselves have been that way. I was certainly aching in a bit of conviction when I read that Bronte quote.
Jesus, of course, was the personification of love for all mankind, wasn’t He? And He called on anyone - and everyone - who would believe on Him as their Lord and King to love others in the same way He befriended and loved us (meditate on Scriptures above). I’m haunted - and challenged - by the linked song today which asks me (and all of us) if others see and experience the love of Jesus in the way we live our lives and interact with others.
What about you?
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My THANKFULNESS: … Oh Abba Father, … thank You, Lord, … for being my loving Friend.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, … King Jesus, … I pray, Lord, that I can be the loving friend to others as You have been for me. … 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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