Terri's Wellspring

For God did not give us a spirit of fear.

He gave us a spirit of power and of love and of a good mind.     II Timothy 1:7  NLV

It takes courage and strength to step out on faith. The risk of the unknown can raise fear in our hearts but it is not of God. I am thankful for this passage that reminds us that the Lord has provided us with the spirit of power, love and a good mind. The pace and complexity of problems and issues in our world may tempt us to retreat from moving boldly into action but our trust is in the Lord. He is the Strong Tower that provides strength and guidance for His children. We can step boldly into new places because He is with us. We are wrapped in His power and His love to move ahead.

Loving-favor and loving-kindness and peace are ours as we live in truth and love. These come from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the Son of the Father. II John 2:3  NLV   

When we look in the mirror what do we see? Upon our first glance, do we see a blessed child of the King or is our first response to begin to make a mental list of what needs to be fixed. I believe one of the best practices of creating a vision for ourselves and the road ahead is to look through God’s lenses as who we are as His children. I want to see myself as God sees me. Not what the world sees, not my physical imperfections but to have a consistent view of what God sees when He sees me. His view is through the lens of hope and love. Our Heavenly Father is generous with us unending mercy and forgiveness, when He looks upon His children. When we strive to see what He sees in us, it gives us perfect vantage point for our growth and our confidence in who we are and where we are going. We can look to His Word, His Holy Spirit to help us to see a clear picture of His view. Whoever and wherever we may find ourselves, He sees us in love.

I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. They are plans for peace and not disaster; plans to give you a future filled with hope. Jeremiah 29:11

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. Whoever puts his trust in God’s Son will not be lost but will have life that lasts forever. John 3:16 NLV

The subject of love will be the focus of lots of attention today. Cards, flowers, and candy will be given and received in the name of love. It is blessing to share our love and appreciation for the people that are so special in our lives. The world received the ultimate gift of super love from our Heavenly Father, when He sent His son Jesus for you and me. This gift is available to each one of us who accepts Jesus with an open heart, mind and soul. It is a present of tremendous love that will last forever. He came that we might experience His love and an abundant life. So when considering all of the expressions of love that you might be blessed with today, consider the super gift of love that God sent to you through Jesus Christ. I invite you to accept Him in your heart today.

Dear God –

Thank you for the special gift of love you gave us through your Son Jesus Christ. I admit that I am not right with you and I want to be right with you. I ask for forgiveness for all of my sins. I accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.   I ask that you to come into my heart and to lead my life. Thank you God for saving me!

in Jesus Name,

Amen

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  Matthew 22:37-40

We are so blessed that God will reveal things to us about what is down inside; the things that are pleasing and the things that need to change in our thinking and our behavior. They may be things that are just under the surface or find themselves down in the crevices of our thinking. I call them the “nooks and crannies” of our living. Our thoughts and deeds should reflect His love and His ways. Some times during our everyday living, we discover a hard place in our attitudes toward others that may not be loving, maybe judgmental or lack mercy or compassion. We may have a tendency to think of others based on race, economics, or even ability. When it happens, we may be tempted to “sweep it under the rug” as commonplace but the Holy Spirit is calling us to a higher ground of love. I am so glad that Jesus loves us enough to show us when we have some work to do to become more like Him. We can ask the Lord for forgiveness and to ask Him to change our hearts and minds toward His love and His compassion then it up to us to follow His lead and change our behavior.

Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”  Matthew 22:37-40 MSG

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love-so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about-not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. I John 4:7-10 Msg

Love comes from our Heavenly Father. As His children, love should be evident in our DNA and the world should be able to identify us because of the love on our faces and the traces we leave with our actions. We should able to spot strong evidence of love in our conversations and our ability to shine encouragement upon others. Just like the strong resemblance of the Jones, Smith or Williams families, people should be able to identify us walking on the street, on ours jobs, at the neighborhood school or in the marketplace.   They will be able to see it in our eyes, hear it in our voices and feel it with kind acts of our helping hands. The peace and love that we bring will transform situations where people will be able to see us as one of His children. Just think about the evidence of His love showing up everywhere His children walk, work and live. It’s powerful to think that love would appear everywhere we go.

4: Love does not give up. Love is kind. Love is not jealous. Love does not put itself up as being important. Love has no pride. 5: Love does not do the wrong thing. Love never thinks of itself. Love does not get angry. Love does not remember the suffering that comes from being hurt by someone. 6: Love is not happy with sin. Love is happy with the truth. 7: Love takes everything that comes without giving up. Love believes all things. Love hopes for all things. Love keeps on in all things.  I Corinthians 13:4:7 NLV

Sometimes the chronic relationship problems of our lives weigh us down. We become weary of the same things arising over and over again. Our attempts to solve the problem come and go with some level of success but only to find that “the problem” is actually still there under the surface to raise its head again. This happens because many times, the change we can make is only cosmetic but real change comes from God. We may need a repaired relationship in our marriages, with our children, with our parents or may be a difficult relationship at work. We may have let judgmental attitudes, lack of forgiveness and even hate to take prominence in the situation but I know a Savior who is greater than any of these obstacles. We may be reaching out in ways to solve the problem but I challenge each of us to reach up to our Heavenly Father. Reach up to His love to come into our hearts and to give us His view of our situations. He is able to renew our relationships with healing from past hurts, wisdom of how to move forward and to provide guidance with the right actions and words to transform our relationships forever.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others,Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back,But keeps going to the end. I Corinthians 13:3-7 MSG

But from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord’s mercy is on those who fear him.

His righteousness belongs to their children and grandchildren,

to those who are faithful to his promise, 

to those who remember to follow his guiding principles.

Psalms 103:17-18 GWT

God’s love for us extends to us now and well into the future. His righteousness is available to us and will be a blessing to our families for generations to come. Many of us are benefiting from generational blessings that extend from our family members who have gone before us living for the Lord. I think of the legacy of my parents and grandparents and their parents who have established a foundation of faith that we can continue to build on. I am hoping that my generation of parents will continue to bestow a legacy of faith based on the knowledge and reverence of God’s word and that our children will be able to share His light throughout the world. It is a tremendous gift to know that our blessings of faith can be extended to our children and our children’s children through our life of faith and their acceptance of His promise.

Dear Father –

We thank You for this day which is filled with Your promise to be with us each step of the way. We are grateful for the blessing of family and for those who came before us putting their full faith in You. We thank You for your continued guidance by Your Holy Spirit to be examples of faith and righteousness before our families. We thank You for answered prayer concerning the lives of our children and our grandchildren. We pray for open hearts and minds for the gift of salvation and a blessed life in You. We are so thankful for Your love which extends from everlasting to everlasting.

In Jesus powerful Name,

Amen.

The Lord is merciful and loving, slow to become angry and full of constant love.

He does not keep on rebuking;  he is not angry forever.

He does not punish us as we deserve or repay us according to our sins and wrongs.

As high as the sky is above the earth, so great is his love for those who honor Him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins from us.

As a father is kind to his children, so the Lord is kind to those who honor Him.

Psalm 103:8-13

We are so blessed to have a Heavenly Father who loves us. His ultimate gift of His son Jesus Christ allows us to live in relationship with Him. Some people think of God as someone who sits high and looks for things that we have done wrong. This distorted picture does not reflect a God that is “slow to anger”.   God may hate the sin that we may allow in our lives but His approach to us is full of constant love. I believe how we think about God guides our actions, our fulfillment and the happiness in our lives. If you accept the fact that our Father is available to us and provides grace and mercy because He loves us, it changes our perspective on life. His love for us is great! Knowing this in our hearts and continually seeking to do His will in our lives allow us to experience a closer walk in the Lord. What a blessing to know that God is love and that this tremendous gift is available to each of us.

Dear Father –

We thank you for this day. We bless your name for you are the living God that loves us. We ask that you would forgive us for any place where sin and shortcomings may exist in our lives. We know that your love for us is constant and that you are faithful and just to forgive us, when we ask for it. We thank you today for forgiveness and a closer walk with you.   Help us to experience and embrace your constant love for us.

In Jesus’ wonderful name,  Amen

You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.  But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!   In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.  For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.   Matthew 5:43-45

We are to love everyone even our enemies. It sounds like a tall order. This command includes people we don’t care for and people who maybe even trying to harm us, which sounds like an insurmountable task. We may say in our hearts in a very wide Agape sense that we love everyone. We don’t wish anyone harm and we hope everyone the best. This is the high level psychological framework that we allow ourselves when we think of this command. But then the hard work of daily living comes into play. We may have to cross paths with people who are mean, use harsh words or “despitefully use” us. And suddenly, loving others is a distant memory. So there lies the challenge not only to get along with others but to love them. I believe that these encounters allow us to see a little of ourselves and possibly expose areas that require more work in our hearts and minds. We may be required to be less offended by daily mishaps, to be more forgiving, or to have more mercy or compassion toward one another. It is our command from the Savior to do, so that the world will see the light in us.

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.  This is real love-not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. I John 4:7-10