Is the way you treat God. “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1John 4:20 KJV). Humanity is only able to function acceptably, when God is understood as the motivator and motivation for all our actions. Salvation or religion is that window of opportunity for us to bluster out of our slumber and attempt to understand what has just happened. Unless the Spirit of God lays hold of us and we begin understanding His efforts to communicate with us from the Word of God, we will slumber back asleep, as if nothing happened. “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the LORD” (Jeremiah 22:29). LORD, You said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4), grant to us the privilege of proving that with our lives. Make Your Word more valuable than our words, in our daily life. In Jesus’ name, we ask it. Amen.
Love Your Neighbor Equal to Yourself
Why We Live
Christ is the reason we live. “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21 KJV). Anything else is robbing God. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee? In tithes and offerings” (Malachi 3:8). Our purpose for existing cannot merely be the keeping of commandments, but glorifying God from a pure heart. “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently” (1Peter 1:22). How better to self-test our love of God, if Christ is indeed the reason we live, but do we love our neighbor as ourselves (1John 4:20)? Do we love one another, especially the household of faith (John 13:35)? If we are like the rest of creation groaning, awaiting the future redemption of our physical bodies (Romans 8:23; 1John 3:2) in New Heavens and a New Earth, then we should be praying our understanding and cooperation with the indwelling Christ would grow, so He would hasten to physically and corporally return (Acts 1:11; Revelation 22:20). “Looking for and hasting [literally, hastening] unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat” (2Peter 3:12). LORD, help us to see the daily fulfillment of our purpose for living is intimately connected with Your future plans for returning that “God may be all in all” (1Corinthians 15:28). That You would dwell with us forever (Revelation 21:3). Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen and amen.
Reproducibility of Love
The scientific method requires experimental results to be replicated with a high degree of reliability using the same methodology before the results can be recognized as scientific knowledge. The love of God must similarly be reproducible and transmissible to be regarded as sacred knowledge for us. “God is love” (1John 4:8,16 KJV). At its source, it has been revealed love comes from God. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Love was transmitted to humanity through the sacrificial death of the Son of God for the transgressions of man against God and man. “We love Him, because He first loved us” (1John 4:19). Our capacity to return love to God is engendered in us through His Spirit working in us. Once we discover in us “dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18), then it becomes apparent that “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). Accounting the Spirit of God to be the author of the love that comes from us, while we are fully engaged in willing and practicing it, is to “walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us” (Ephesians 5:2). “And this is love, that we walk after His commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it” (2John 1:6). LORD, work Your love in us, that we would have the practicing kind of religion that Alvin York (10:54) had. In Jesus’ name, amen.
With Malice Toward None
“With charity toward all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nations wounds.” During the American Civil War, these were the words of President Abraham Lincoln in his March 4, 1865 Second Inaugural Address, about a month before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and 41 days before his assassination. Charitable love must be the foundation of civilization and law, or we will descend into tyranny and despotism. “Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked Him a question, tempting Him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:35-40 KJV).
We Need A Miracle 