Tag: Love
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“Willingly”
1 Peter 5:2 “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you . . .” In the verse above there is a word that appears only two times in the entire Bible. It’s the word “willingly.” The word means “voluntarily; of one’s own…
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Hospitality
1 Peter 4:9 “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” You’ve heard the expression, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, in reading the passage above this morning I had a parallel thought, i.e., that a few words from God are worth a thousand words of man. You see, our omniscient God never meant…
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Earnest Love
1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” How earnestly do you love? What’s the extent of it? How far does your love stretch before it breaks? What’s its “tensile strength,” if you will? We can get some insight into this from the verse above. In essence…
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The Stretched
1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly” It is noteworthy that the command above was given from Peter to Christians who were being severely persecuted. It’s a surprising message in that during times of extreme stress, our thoughts tend to turn inward, rather than outward. Don’t you agree? Isn’t it true that…
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True Christian Unity
1 Peter 3:8 “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.” The Christian’s life is not the life of a loner. It’s never to be lived with the attitude of “do your own thing,” or “to each his own.” It’s a life that is demonstrated…
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Asking “Why?”
1 Kings 1:6 “(David) had never at any time displeased (Adonijah) by asking, “Why have you done thus and so?” Sometimes the seeds of rebellion are sown at a very young age. That’s the picture we see in the verse above regarding David’s failure as a father to Adonijah. Adonijah was the son born to…
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Be Kind
Ephesians 4:32 “Be kind to one another.” Are you kind? I can assure you, sometimes I’m not! But I really want to be. It’s something I pray about and ask God to help me with. This morning as I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that one way in which such prayers have…
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The Willing
2 Samuel 19:11-12 “And King David sent this message to Zadok and Abiathar the priests: ‘Say to the elders of Judah, “Why should you be the last to bring the king back to his house, when the word of all Israel has come to the king? You are my brothers; you are my bone and…
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Fed Up?
Psalm 136:1 “. . . his mercy endures forever.” Have you ever said or at least had the thought about a person, “That’s it! I’ve had enough!” Maybe you’ve tried to be kind and understanding to that person. Perhaps you’ve done things for them, even over and over again, but it didn’t seem to matter.…
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Multiplied Grace and Peace
1 Peter 1:2 “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” As you enter each day and interact with others, what is your mindset towards them? Is your thinking directed primarily toward them, or are you thinking more about yourself and how you look to them? There’s a vast difference. In Peter’s salutation to the…
To Encourage You 