“For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” – I John 3:11
“Brethren, pray for us.” – I Thessalonians 5:25
Love is such a criterion for all of our relationships that we are driven to prayer; that we might drink from wells of unconditional love. We plunge into the depths of God’s love that we might love one another. Therefore, we are compelled to seek Him deeply in prayer for He is the source and the force of love. His spirit’s course through our lives is an endless supply of agape.
We are called to seek God’s strength to love one another in prayer and to pray for one another that the love of God might flow through us substantively and visibly in a dark world.
Prayer is the expression of a love relationship with God that cannot help but overflow with love for others. This is especially true of love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
As we pray for one another, a miracle takes place. It is the miracle of empathy, for that is the soul of intercession. We feel the pain of the other for whom we intercede even as we experience his or her joy.
Consider the love prayers of Jesus as He interceded with His own blood. Allow his love to fill you and spill out from you into the dry and dusty world of the thirsty and loveless.
We are not capable in loving this way in our flesh. We have neither the resources nor the inclination. We are at the mercy of God and He is the one who can supply beyond our imagination. But we must find that supply in prayer and, in prayer, exercise the love that he there supplies.
Prayer is the expression of a love relationship with God that cannot help but overflow with love for others. This is especially true of love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
As we pray for one another, a miracle takes place. It is the miracle of empathy, for that is the soul of intercession. We feel the pain of the other for whom we intercede even as we experience his or her joy.
Consider the love prayers of Jesus as He interceded with His own blood. Allow his love to fill you and spill out from you into the dry and dusty world of the thirsty and loveless.
Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren – I John 3:16
- We perceive the love of God by gazing upon Jesus and contemplating his sacrificial death. We perceive it in an even deeper way as we stand with him in his love and lay down our lives for others. By sharing his sacrifice, we understand it better.
But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? – I John 3:17
When we build walls of selfishness and divorce our hearts from real compassion, we pervert the love that is our birthright in Christ. We deny our own faith and stifle his work in our hearts.
Let us love one another in Christ, in faith, in word, in deed, and in prayer.
Pastor Tom's Community 
Leave a comment