The Everyday Prayer

Re:Verse passage – 1 John 4:19–21 (day three)

“We love, because he first loved us.”

What is the origin of love? Aquinas’s famous definition of love – “to will the good of the other” – is not the origin of love, but an attempt to put into human language its glorious essence. How did it start, though? One might say that God invented love, or that love began when God began to love. But the Bible teaches us something more fundamental. God did not invent love. God did not begin to love. Otherwise, God would have existed without love until he devised it, or until he commenced loving. If God is love, as John says, that cannot be. God is not God unless he loves. For God to live is for God to love. Human beings found out about love from the one who has always loved.

Re:Verse passage – 1 John 4:19–21 (day two)  

And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. Vs. 21

For God so loved…Love the Lord with all your heart…This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us.

How do we truly reflect the Imago Dei in our lives. The answer seems almost too apparent, we love. If this isn’t abundantly clear, re-read John’s gospel, and all his letters. If there is one characteristic that demonstrates the nature of our creator, it is love. We are instructed over and over again to display this trait in every way that we can. Love the Lord – love each other.

We spend so much time complicating that command. We attach qualifications to our love, even in our families, our churches, our friendships. Loving someone doesn’t mean that we agree with everything they say or do, and it doesn’t require them to meet a standard before we start to love. Love first, figure out to get along later.

Re:Verse passage – Jeremiah 29:10–14 (day seven)

This passage contains another “coffee cup verse” or as I like to call them “tattoo verses.” These are verses that nominal Christians will know by heart, but it is obvious that they don’t recognize the context surrounding them. I saw many teammates in football who would have tattoos of Bible verses, but that ink was the only thing that told me they had ever opened a Bible.

People want to believe that God has a plan for them, plans that “give [them] a future and a hope.” Yet, they aren’t willing to go past that verse to see how God defines and modifies that promise. The future hope is only becomes fully recognized through personal prayer and sincere seeking. If you truly want to know the future that God has laid out for you, you have to be seeking Him, and in order to find him, you have to be seeking Him “with all your heart.” 

Do you feel like you are seeking God with all your heart? What do you think might happen if you put more effort into your seeking? Don’t you want to know what God might show you if you sought Him with all your heart!?

¹⁹ And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. 1 Corinthians 15:18

Though the world may be in turmoil, a promise of transformation awaits.  This is the assurance of God in Jesus. Just as Jeremiah instilled hope in the exiles, promising a return to a restored Jerusalem, Paul urges us to live with the same confidence in the midst of our current challenges.

For Paul, the promise of Jesus’ return and the resurrection of the dead kept him committed to Jesus even when life was tough. His hope was that one day, life as it should be would be fully restored. We live with the same hope.

Re:Verse passage – Jeremiah 29:10–14 (day five)

When I read this passage, I see a loving Father God that truly cares for his children. Discipline was necessary to bring them back to Himself and to the Promised Land. What I love about this passage is that we see God’s Plans Never Change! We make mistakes and we sin against Him. We go astray and go our own way, but He remains true to His plan and promise. I’m reminded of the passage in the book of Hebrews: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb. 12:5b–6).

The Lord loves you dear child. He hears your prayers when you Call, Come, and Pray. You will find Him exactly where you left Him when you search for Him with all your heart.
Return to the place you first met Him and remember how He has brought you through this life’s journey. If you are experiencing His discipline, just remember that it is temporary and necessary to make you Holy and to bring you back to Him. If you are feeling distant and don’t know where God is, remember to call upon His name and seek Him like you never have before. He’s not far from any of us and in the Creator God we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:24-28). Now that’s learning what it means to be a part of the Imago Dei!

Re:Verse passage – Jeremiah 29:10–14 (day four)

There are some who believe God to be like a watchmaker – he sets the “watch” or the world in motion, and then walks away. No longer intimately involved in the world or in our lives, he simply allows time to tick on. Then there are some who think of God more like a character in Greek mythology – constantly meddling in human affairs for their own gain and getting caught up in earthly drama, punishing his people when he has a bad day. Passages like this remind us that neither of these theories are true.

Our God’s character is unlike any other. Only Yahweh is both holy and loving, omniscient and intimate, just and merciful. Only he can stand as Lord of Lords and creator of all the earth while also speaking kindly to the specific circumstances of his people. Only he can exist in perfect holiness while turning his face to sinful people, offering hope and restoration and wanting to be found by them.

Our God is intimate enough to set hopeful plans for us, and he is powerful enough to see them to completion.

Re:Verse passage – Jeremiah 29:10–14 (day three)

“When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you, to bring you back to this place.”

When every conceivable calamity has crashed down all around, when waking up doesn’t end the nightmare, when nothing remains of all you called valuable, when people you have loved the most have become the source of your deepest heartache, when you have asked yourself how you got to this place of misery – hope itself seems like an exercise for fools only. Has God too lost track of you? It feels like it, and no word to the contrary from well-meaning folks will change what you feel all the way to your marrow. You need others to sit with you until your dying day if need be and quietly hope when you cannot do so for yourself.

Re:Verse passage – Jeremiah 29:10–14 (day two) 

Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. vs. 12

As Pastor Chris said yesterday in the re:vlog video, 70 is a lifetime. Jeremiah contains many words of warning and admonition to kings, leaders, and people of every station. The Lord had been speaking to the people through prophets for generations, and this exile was not a surprise to those who were listening.

That’s the key to this passage; listening, keeping alert, and not straying from the path. There are many instances where people go through hardship, and they turn to every possible source of help and hope, and in their desperation they finally turn to the Lord. This is not one of those times. The Lord, in his mercy, had promised a time of hardship and exile because of the  people’s sin. There were, however, a remnant who remained faithful throughout the struggle. God reminds us of his presence throughout the trial. In this case he gives a timeframe, just like he did to Moses. Struggles can be a part of a larger narrative that the Lord is teaching you, and others. Sometimes, your job is to endure. You are to remain faithful. The Lord is not absent, he is always at work.