Excerpts from the first sermon of 2022 for January 9-16 time of prayer and fasting.
2022 Fast Days Devotional
Day 5 - Loving well means loving God first.
So what does it mean to love God?
God is our creator. He is our source of life. He is the source of love. Loving God means plugging in to the source of power, of life and of love. We tend to look to other people for all of these things.
Then there are those seemingly smart people who tell us that you need to look inside yourself to find the source. Eh? - closer- but still wrong!
It’s not yourself that you must look to, but your Creator. The One who is love and the source of life. It takes recognizing that I am not God, but God lives in and wants to love through me.
I can only love well when I love people as God loves me. I can only forgive well, when I forgive as God forgave me. I can only relate well, when I relate with the grace and courage that God has demonstrated to me in Jesus Christ.
So what often happens is that we do this, at least in part, but eventually we loose focus and go back to our human ways of thinking and relating. We get wounded or the patterns that we learned in our woundedness take over. We get selfish - or self-protective - it sounds more noble, but its the same thing. We still say that what we are doing is loving God and loving others, but in reality we’re making sure our own needs are met first.
Love is not something you get right the first time, or if you did, maybe you got it wrong further down the line?
Love is God’s nature, not ours. That’s why we begin again.
Can you think of a time when you got love wrong?
Now think of a time when you got it right?
How does loving God, or knowing that God loves you help you love well?
2022 Fast Days Devotional
Day 5 - Loving well means loving God first.
So what does it mean to love God?
God is our creator. He is our source of life. He is the source of love. Loving God means plugging in to the source of power, of life and of love. We tend to look to other people for all of these things.
Then there are those seemingly smart people who tell us that you need to look inside yourself to find the source. Eh? - closer- but still wrong!
It’s not yourself that you must look to, but your Creator. The One who is love and the source of life. It takes recognizing that I am not God, but God lives in and wants to love through me.
I can only love well when I love people as God loves me. I can only forgive well, when I forgive as God forgave me. I can only relate well, when I relate with the grace and courage that God has demonstrated to me in Jesus Christ.
So what often happens is that we do this, at least in part, but eventually we loose focus and go back to our human ways of thinking and relating. We get wounded or the patterns that we learned in our woundedness take over. We get selfish - or self-protective - it sounds more noble, but its the same thing. We still say that what we are doing is loving God and loving others, but in reality we’re making sure our own needs are met first.
Love is not something you get right the first time, or if you did, maybe you got it wrong further down the line?
Love is God’s nature, not ours. That’s why we begin again.