Thank you so much for following me in 2021. We have discovered together what love and unity have experienced throughout the word of God. I believe we ended with a good formula – Truth + Love = Unity.
Now as the year ends I am looking at going through the Bible with the lens of Honour & Shame. I trust that this journey will be just as exciting and invite you to join me. Please click here for my new site.
May the year we are leaving give us the gifts and tools to journey through this new year. May we walk in love, speak in truth and build relationships that matter.
Consistent with the message of your culture, your resolve shifts from loving others to healing your wounds, to feeling complete as a loved and significant person. The corruption lying dormant within you since conception, the spirit of entitlement, now roars into death-dealing life. – Crabb
I count on the fact that God knows me and knows exactly what I am capable of.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust. – Psalm 103:13-14 HCSB
I count on my Father’s arms of care and protection in every challenge found in the day. I seek for God to teach me to love – as much as He has loved me. I cannot stop giving thanks for His love! I am finding joy in my unity in Jesus, with my wife, with my family and I love the Church.
The pain of those unmet longings becomes within you a void, an empty space, a lonely feeling of incompleteness. The desire for relief from that pain seems more compelling than your desire to love. And the disappointments you’ve suffered in your relationships have created wounds that beg so strongly for relief that nothing seems more necessary to your well-being. – Crabb
When I look at my struggles in light of eternity, somehow they are minimized enough for me to focus on how much God loves me.
They came up over the surface of the earth and surrounded the encampment of the saints, the beloved city. Then fire came down from heaven[e] and consumed them. – Revelation 20:9 HCSB
While this verse my be talking about a loved city, I know that I can put myself there in its place. I am loved by God.
And anyone not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. – Revelation 20:15 HCSB
I so easily forget that what matters most – my name written in the book of life – and I so easily forget how great the love of God is for those who have been made a part of the family of God through Jesus. Jesus shared this with me because He loved me – for God so loved the world.
As you live the Christian life, free from condemnation for past, present, and future sins and free at any moment and in any circumstance to love, you become aware of deep longings in your heart that remain unsatisfied despite your best efforts at faith and obedience. – Crabb
I am still clothed in the body of sin and decay even though God has given me a new nature within and has called me to walk in faith and obedience. It is why I cannot lead with my feelings, but rather with my heart which knows the truth.
Then he[b] said to me, “Write: Those invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb are fortunate!” He also said to me, “These words of God are true.” – Revelation 19:9 HCSB
I understand so little of the Bridegroom and His love for me. I am sure I will understand everything when I am with Jesus – the length, breadth, height and depth of His love when I am with Him in glory. Even now I can get a glimpse of that love through the power of the Holy Spirit and my unity with Him is complete. I am sure I cannot even imagine what it will be like to walk in Jesus’ presence, not just in Spirit, but in person. Love will be pure in the bond of perfection. My bridegroom will lavish His love on me and I can completely give myself to Him.
Your preoccupation with satisfaction when it feels most necessary is the corruption beneath your compulsions. Your expectation of feeling everything you want to feel in this fallen world renders you vulnerable to false teachers who, in the name of My Son, offer you a strategy that promises to let you feel as complete now as you will feel forever in heaven. And like My followers in the province of Galatia, you’re drawn to their perversion of My story. And your freedom to love no matter how you feel is replaced by slavery to a compulsive need to feel whole, to feel good about yourself before you feel able to love another. – Crabb
I have heard that you cannot love another unless you love yourself first. While that may have some truth in it, the little that you love yourself is the amount of love you can love another with. It ends up being true that we can all love our neighbour as ourselves.
After this I saw another angel with great authority coming down from heaven, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. – Revelation 18:1 HCSB
This kind of love becomes a great light – a testimony that encourages and builds others up. The light of being justified by faith and receiving the righteousness of Jesus brings a response of love and gratitude. The richest jewels of faith and love come to me as gold tried in the fire, white raiment and eye-salve so that I might see. It is here that I exchange my lukewarmness for love and zeal and walk in the power of godliness.
You are on the verge of discovering as if for the first time a compelling and holy desire in your depths that will expose every other desire as less, every other satisfaction as unworthy to be compared with the satisfying joy of loving others with divine power. But that discovery will only be made as you more clearly see the demand that keeps you in bondage to lesser desires and unworthy satisfactions. – Crabb
If the whole world is alienated from God, where does the power to love come from? Who seeks to be reconciled?
That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. – 2 Corinthians 5:19 HCSB
With Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit was it not the offended party that sought to be reconciled? There was no waiting for the offending party to make the first move. Does this not show the power of love that is found in God? He loved His enemies before they loved Him and He loved those who made a decision to separate themselves from God. Did love evince them to become friends with God?
I’m wondering if Luther was so drawn to this because he knew how unfree most Christians are to love well. I remember he once wrote that living the Christian life is like a drunk riding a horse. We keep falling off one side or the other, either into legalism, which chokes the freedom to love, or into license, which perverts freedom into guilt-free selfishness. – Crabb
This year I have been practicing to love and lately have realised that I have been missing the point of practicing truth as well.
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. – Romans 16:20 HCSB
At first, I thought that it was almost impossible to do both – love truth and love people. My mind does not comprehend how I can even love people if I don’t love truth.
I think the period I live in today is not an easy time to be a lover of truth. I believe the most common criticism I receive today when I stand for an important truth is that I am arrogant, which is the opposite of being loving.
So loving truth and people – possible? I think so but the temptation is to disagree with those who fall on the relational unity side as to what love is. Actually, that is where I find my dysfunctional self.
The pendulum swings pretty far, father than I want it to go. For instance, some will go so far as to overturn the clear teaching of the Word of God by arguing that the Bible is not clear on the subject or that love matters more than what the text actually says – the temptation is there at this very moment to reinterpret the text to make it say what I want it to say.
When I mentioned today as a hard day to live truth, I also think that we have defined love incorrectly too. Today love is more like a sick sentimentalism that wants to set aside doctrine in the name of love. Any love that is destructive of truth, any love that is tolerent of error or propagates error, has to be left behind because that’s not the essence of real love. Real love speaks the truth in love.
It’s as if I’m innocently floating along in the freshwater stream of a good Christian life, doing nothing visibly or consciously wrong; and then without warning I find myself hurtling down a fast-moving river of delicious temptation, heading straight for the falls of misery. I feel no power to reverse direction, no will strong enough to paddle over to my nice Christian way of doing things. And worse, at that moment I don’t want to . Flying over the falls seems more exciting than dangerous, more necessary than wrong. The thrill blinds me to the risk. And whatever love is within me dries up. I don’t care about anyone or anything else, including You. The only sense I have as I think about You is a guilty anger. – Crabb
Why is it so hard to see the different characteristics that make up what it looks like to follow Jesus or Satan? While it may seem harsh to admit that I am following Satan, I am pretty sure that I know when I am not following Jesus. Consequences that follow will confirm.
The 10 horns you saw, and the beast, will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, devour her flesh, and burn her up with fire. Revelation 17:16 HCSB
I know that Jesus loves His Church and Satan loves no one. Jesus is motivated by love for me, love that was willing to suffer humiliation and death that I deserved. Satan is only motivated by love for himself. He does not love those who follow him – he actually hates them.
What I have to say to you does not begin in comfort. In the long run, it provides unimaginable comfort. But the inclination to twist My story into a tale of relief and recovery rather than redemption and restoration is strong in everyone. Know this: the corruption within you, evidenced in your ongoing failure to love that needs ongoing forgiveness, can be and will be used by My Spirit to draw you closer to Me. – Crabb
Love like this can only happen when I can accept both God’s love and His justice.
I will sing of faithful love and justice; I will sing praise to You, Lord. I will pay attention to the way of integrity. When will You come to me? I will live with a heart of integrity in my house. – Psalm 101:1-2 HCSB
When I feel alone, even though I trust and love God, these words matter. The question of feeling alone may not be the absence of God’s love, but mine. I know why David values this faithful love of God. I also know that God never never stops loving us even though my disobedience can sometimes make it feel that there is a distance between us. It simply means that my life needs a change for the better and I need to get back on the right path to prevent me from getting into greater trouble. God does this to those He loves.
“Living to love is difficult. In this life, I promise you no comfort but My Presence (sometimes unfelt), My power to love (often unclaimed), and My promised hope (typically undervalued) of a never-ending existence of experiencing My perfect love in a perfect world where everyone loves perfectly. It was that kind of comfort and hope that excited Paul so that nothing could hold him back.” – Crabb
How amazing to have four friends and not one can even speak as to what love looks like.
Even if I speak, my suffering is not relieved, and if I hold back, what have I lost?
They open their mouths against me and strike my cheeks with contempt; they join themselves together against me. – Job 16:6, 10 HCSB
Job saw God’s hand, His love, and holds on to his integrity knowing that his relationship with God was on solid ground. How all-important it is that I enjoy the knowledge of God as He is and that my soul would be at ease and at home with Him, self-judging and resting in His love. The effect of real enjoyment of God’s love is that love flows from me.
Love—the perfect bond of unity 