Category: Bible (Page 243 of 419)

Do you know someone who loves to be first? I don’t mean an athlete in competition or a fan rooting for their favorite team, but a person who always needs control. It’s a regular tendency.

John wrote to a church leader regarding a man named Diotrephes, who loves to be first. Apparently Diotrephes opposed hospitality to traveling believers, and spread malicious rumors about John and his party. Not content in his personal obstruction, Diotrephes threatened kicking those inclined to help out of the church.

A deep need for control twists a leader. Insidious, the one who loves to be first manipulates and confuses. Leaders like this arise in our churches, as we see here, as well as in politics and business and education and all walks of life. Such a leader strangles the passion of others, divides good people and works all situations to benefit himself.

Which makes me wonder—where am I tempted to control situations to my benefit? Where do I love to be first? As I work with people, the temptation to make situations beneficial to myself regularly pops to mind. Occasionally this creates a better plan, but most often I’m simply using others for my pleasure.

It’s worth asking a co-worker if they see this tendency in you (a seriously brave question). Dealing with this impulse before it fruits moves us to healthier places with God and others.

Plus, better than poor Diotrephes, we avoid becoming an object lesson for the next 2,000 years.

Photo by Javier Quiroga

In certain things we lack clarity, like what’s really out there at the edge of the universe? But other times truth shines clearly.

John illuminates divine reality with this statement—God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has the life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

Eternal life exists, the door opening at the hand of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. To accept this for ourselves means life, to turn away results in no life forever.

John writes so those who believe in the name of the Son of God may be confident in eternal life. With this life comes the action of the Holy Spirit, the confidence to pray boldly, and the protection of the Lord.

The point remains unambiguous. Such a wonderful life exists here only—no other savior or philosophy or religion or self-help program suffices.

Best to embrace the clarity and turn toward the Son.

1 John 5 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Sebin Thomas

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, an official holiday stretching back to Abraham Lincoln. I love this day dedicated to feasting and giving thanks.

The Bible encourages feasting to remember the goodness and work of the Lord. In one example God instructed Moses concerning Passover: This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast (Exodus 12:14).

It’s good and proper to feast and focus on God’s benevolence. I’m thankful today for my wife, my children and their spouses, my granddaughter, my family and my extended family—every person a gift from the Lord. I’m grateful for good health, a warm house, a job I like and people I like working with, for the ability to travel abroad and to return to a free and prosperous country.

I earned none of these gifts. Everything I possess and enjoy pours from the hand of God. Today I revel in graciousness.

Savor the feast. Fasting awaits, but not this day.

Spoon out a second helping without hesitation and taste the goodness of the Lord.

Photo by Jed Owen

I read my news feed or glance at social media and encouragements to love stare back. This usually involves loving a cause currently in vogue, or persons different from myself. As a part of this loving emphasis, people also humbly brag how they love better than others.

I find it easy to talk big about love, but much harder to practice. While folks spray paint love on walls and post signs on doors, I don’t notice an actual increase in loving acts of compassion around me.

John wrote this: Little children, let us not love in words or talk but in deed and and in truth.

Talk is cheap when it comes to actually loving others—spray paint as well. The thought does not count. Only the actual work, in particular toward those difficult for us to love, begins to fulfill that of which John writes.

Jesus taught to love your enemies. Incredibly counter-cultural to this day. I don’t see this phrase on many walls. How do we love such difficult people in our lives? Zechariah tells us, not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of Hosts.

The Holy Spirit empowers us to move from feelings of love to actual practice in our gritty interactions with others. Just ask, and you’ll find help to move from words to deeds.

1 John 3 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Hannah Gibbs