Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube video of song and lyrics from the group Weslife singing … Love Can Build A Bridge … poignantly singing of how we need to let God’s love, expressed and shared by each of us, to build bridges between us in this life. Yes, it’s time!!
Deer Moss
==============Highlight Verse[s]: Colossians 3:14-15 [NLT] … 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.
… The only way we can truly love another is to KNOW that God first loves us.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Colossians 3:12-17 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… King David, a “man after God’s heart,” commits all that he is to His God.
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Reference Passage : … John 13:34-35 [NIV] … 34 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
… Loving one another is the way we show to the world that we are disciples of Christ.
Reference Passage : … 2 Corinthians 5:17 [NIV] … 17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
… Now that we are in Christ we can live with a new nature, resisting the old, selfish tendencies and surrendering, thru God’s grace, to put on a new way of living.
Reference Passage : … Ephesian 4:1-4 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… We Christians should be bound together with the love and grace provided to us in Christ.
Reference Passage : … Hebrews 10:24 [NIV] … 24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.
… God exhorts us to help and motivate each other with acts of love and good works.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Amy Peterson, uses a botanical word picture of symbiotic relationship, illustrating how we need to live in close harmony and needing one another. And the ODB author wrote: While on a hike with my kids, we discovered a light, springy green plant growing in small clumps on the trail. According to a signpost, the plant is commonly called deer moss [see photo], but it’s not actually a moss at all. It’s a lichen. A lichen is a fungus and an alga growing together in a mutualistic relationship in which both organisms benefit from each other. Neither the fungus nor the alga can survive on its own, but together they form a hardy plant that can live in some alpine areas for up to 4,500 years. Because the plant can withstand drought and low temperatures, it’s one of the only food sources for caribou (reindeer) in deep winter.
God put us here on this earth, as the crowning glory of His creation, … to live and work together and to fellowship with Him. But the first two blew it in The Garden, didn’t they? And now we live with a natural tendency go inward and be selfish rather than to relate to one another as the fungus and lichen do in the symbiotic relationship of “deer moss“ [see the ODB entry].
But when we come to Christ, the old nature is replaced with a new nature (see 2Cor. 5:17); and we can choose to put on a new way of living, allowing us to relate to one another as Christ and His Apostles have called us to live (see remaining reference verses).
And that’s how I pray today that we’re seeking to live with one another … in a symbiotic relationship with God’s Spirit now living in our hearts.
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My THANKFULNESS: … Oh Abba Father, … thank You, Lord, … for infusing us with Your triune relationship.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, … King Jesus, … I pray, Lord, that all reading here can, and will, join me, to reach outward to show the love of God to others today. … 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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