Devotionals for the Heart: Love

Love Like God
A devotional by Christa MacDonald

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” 

–Luke 6:32-35a (NIV)

There are plenty of passages in the Bible that take some work to understand but this passage above definitely does not. Jesus Christ is letting us know the rules: “You want to be a Christian? Follow me, do as I do, do as the Father does.”

Jesus is calling us here to be more than just countercultural in how we treat our fellow humans; He's showing us how to reset secular culture to reflect the culture of His kingdom. The world tells us to hate our enemies. We are to love them instead.

But what does that look like, loving an enemy? Is it saying “bless your heart” and ignoring them when they irk or anger us? Is it walking away from a fight? Not suing someone when we could? Not repaying their unkindness with some of our own? Yes, but it’s more heart-deep. We can curb our actions out in the world a whole lot easier than the thoughts in our heads and the feelings in our hearts. It’s easy enough to deny that we hate someone, but harder to not feel that hate, to not have hateful thoughts.

In this world, there are some truly terrible humans. How are we to love them? Billy Graham said, “You cannot pray for someone and hate them at the same time.” There I think we have the first and probably the best way to love those that hate us. Pray for them earnestly. Not the “Dear Lord, please forgive these fools for their foolishness...” sort of prayer either. Pray for them as if they were a loved one. See if you can start with words and follow with feelings.

Remember that every single person on this earth is made in the image of God.

Irrespective of their ethnicity, culture, creed, lifestyle, or habits, they are an image-bearer. All of us have people in our lives who challenge us, even actively hate us. When next faced with that person, try to lead with love (be patient, kind, longsuffering...) and have a Gospel-centered mind going into that interaction. If your particular problem person is not a believer, they’re lost, and you may be the person that God has placed in their life to help them understand repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Wow. That’s both an awesome responsibility and a privilege. How you treat them matters. How you feel about them matters.

The next time you’re tempted to lash out when wounded, or ridicule when made fun of, or criticize when criticized, think about the standard that Jesus sets in the verses above. Love everyone. Give freely, expecting no return. Do good to all. The bar is high, and we’re obviously still persevering on the road toward sanctification, but believers see the path as lighted by His Word. When we show love to those who hate us, we shine the light of the Gospel for a world in desperate need of direction.

Let’s Pray: Father God, please help us love, give freely, and do good in all the places in this world where you have sent us. Help us to spread the Gospel with our every word and deed. In Jesus’s Name I pray. Amen.

~*~
Author Bio:

Christa MacDonald is a 2017 Carol Award finalist for contemporary Christian fiction. 

She began her writing career at the age of eleven, filling a sketchbook with poems and short stories. After publishing a few short pieces in her college’s literary magazine she took a long hiatus during which she embarked on a few different careers, got married, had three kids, and renovated an old barn masquerading as a house.

Her most recent work, The Redemption Road, finished the Sweet River Redemption series published by Mountain Brook Ink.

When not working or writing Christa can be found ferrying her kids around, reading, or attempting something crafty. She and her family live along the coast of New England.

~*~
Connect with Christa:
Website: www.christamacdonald.com
Newsletter: https://christamacdonald.com/connect-with-christa/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1538432676468229/
Amazon: https://amzn.to/33uk329
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CricketMacD
Christa's book publisher: http://mountainbrookink.com/about-us/authors/christa-macdonald/

Devotionals for the Heart: A life lesson about loving our neighbors

Loving Our Neighbors
A devotional by Christa MacDonald

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” – Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV) 

I am currently employed at a community newspaper group and one of my responsibilities involves cataloging the obituaries per publication. Mostly, it’s a straightforward data project, opening files and saving them into a specific folder to be exported later. I love these projects. I put on a playlist of classical tunes and get my work done while my brain takes a rest.

There’s no angst involved, no customer interaction, just data. As straightforward as it is, I also find it moving. I open each file and read the name of the person who passed, maybe catch a few details of their life, and see their picture. Some of these stop me in my tracks, leading me to read the notice in full.

Managing the obituary department, I see a lot of faces of the departed. The pictures that I find the most compelling are the candid ones—people caught in their everyday existence, their expressions a window into both the moment being captured and their lives. Grandfathers with hokey hats and crooked smiles, moms with corsages beaming with pride from weddings past, uncles in sunglasses holding up huge fish, aunts laughing with friends just out of frame, a son posing with a football, a daughter with a wide smile clutching a teddy bear in a hospital gown.

Each one of them Imago Dei, which means they were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26).

In the verse above, Jesus tells us that after loving God, loving our neighbors is next in importance. So much so that all the law and prophets (a euphemism for all of scripture) hang in the balance. Seems simple, and it’s easy to love someone when they’re loveable or similar to us. The challenge comes in loving those who differ from us, those we don’t agree with on some level. In our deeply divided country, we’ve made it easier to hate than to love. Our rhetoric can easily become extreme. Disagreements become pitched battles. Some form camps, raise flags, and list offenses, knowing that they’re right and the other guys are wrong. And they aren’t simply wrong, they’re evil, monstrous. It’s hard to love a neighbor who you’ve demonized.

Media pitches battles for us daily, presenting things for us to get upset about, throwing headlines to inflame our passions about things that simply do not matter on an eternal scale. We declare war on those we should be loving for trivial, worldly stuff, corporations changing their brands, toys changing their names, and a million other petty distractions. We engage in culture wars when we should be sharing the Gospel and serving our communities.

Loving our neighbor means looking past that person’s external details and seeing the image of God imprinted upon them. We need to see through political affiliations, socio-economic status, lifestyle choices and instead see that person as God’s creation.

We need to see the people around us as God does. We are all sinners. Some of us have been saved by Grace. We need to have that eternal perspective in mind whenever we interact with the world God loved so much that he sent his Son to die so that we might have everlasting life.

Let’s Pray: Heavenly Father, please help us to see our neighbors as you do and to love them as you commanded. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.

~*~
Author Bio:

Christa MacDonald is a 2017 Carol Award finalist for contemporary Christian fiction. 

She began her writing career at the age of eleven, filling a sketchbook with poems and short stories. After publishing a few short pieces in her college’s literary magazine she took a long hiatus during which she embarked on a few different careers, got married, had three kids, and renovated an old barn masquerading as a house.

Her most recent work, The Redemption Road, finished the Sweet River Redemption series published by Mountain Brook Ink.

When not working or writing Christa can be found ferrying her kids around, reading, or attempting something crafty. She and her family live along the coast of New England.

~*~
Connect with Christa:
Website: www.christamacdonald.com
Newsletter: https://christamacdonald.com/connect-with-christa/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1538432676468229/
Amazon: https://amzn.to/33uk329
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CricketMacD
Christa's book publisher: http://mountainbrookink.com/about-us/authors/christa-macdonald/

Thankful Thursday: The Maker Loves Me

It’s Thursday and I’m thankful that The Maker loves me!

Most of this entire week, direct evidence of God caring for me was revealed in so many wonderful ways! I knew that my post today had to be about this very topic and truth of how the Maker (God) loves me, you, and all of His creation—from the Evergreen trees and your favorite fruit, to you and me—the love of God for His children is beyond words.

So here’s what happened:

On the evening of Monday, Aug. 24, I received an e-mail message from Jennifer Slattery. She sent the message to remind me that my guest post for her blog was scheduled for this week Thursday (Aug. 27) and that she needed my post that day (Aug. 24). 

Now I was totally unprepared—or so I thought because I forgot—but then I remembered the idea that dropped into my mind as I was going to sleep the night before. Facebook “celebrity look-a-like” tests were on my mind because I’d seen a lot of those in the previous week and then the light bulb turned on (I got an idea): Why not write something about how we are made in God’s image? God is way better than a celebrity! So at exactly 12:51 a.m., I typed my thoughts into a notepad application in my phone.

Here’s a snippet of what I typed: “People want to be like stars and so to resemble a star is to be connected to greatness but the God of the Universe made you in His image and He would move mountains just to connect with you! You resemble the Almighty God! It does not get any better than that!” Voila! I remembered this and so on Aug. 24 in the afternoon, about an hour after reading Jennifer’s e-mail, I went to work on writing the devotional about being made in God’s image and I finished within two hours! Would you like to read it? It was posted on Jennifer’s blog today. You can read it here.

My second and final note of thankfulness happened today! I was shopping at one of my favorite stores for the perfect pair of shoes to wear to my brother’s wedding. I went to a store known for its great shoes at low prices first but the shoe(s) didn’t fit. So I visited one more store and found the perfect sandals! They are gorgeous! 

Now how I found these sandals are where the testimony starts. I searched high and low (quite literally, I went through the entire store looking at all levels of the shelves that made the wall—from the shelves above my head to the shelves below my knees). Just when I was about to give up (after trying on at least five shoes that did not fit my feet), my attention was directed (yes, I believe God directed me) to a few fancy shoes laid out on the floor by a woman who looked like she too was searching for the perfect shoe. A pair of beautiful beige sandals decorated with a gorgeous flower of the same shade, captivated my attention. So I went over to where the lady sat and commented on the sandals. “Oh, you like these?” she said in a tone that made me think she was waiting for me to come over and comment on the beige shoes. “Here,” she said as she lifted one of the sandals off the floor and handed it to me. “Ask him.”

The “him” she was referring to was the sales attendant who stood nearby. I followed directions and long story short, left the shoe store with the perfect pair of sandals for my brother’s wedding! The sandals complement my dress so I am beyond elated!

Wrapping up this Thankful Thursday post, I’d like for you to watch the official video for Chris August’s song, “The Maker.” I am head-over-heels in love with this song ever since hearing it for the first time, earlier this year! I believe when you listen to it, you’ll feel hugged by God because it’s about how much God loves you and will reveal His goodness to you because you are one of His children and He takes care of His own! Read Philippians 4:19.

What are you thankful for today?