Becoming Loving - Part 4

Focus Scripture

John 15 : 9-17 (NRSV)

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Daily Byte

In Jesus the whole idea of relationship with God changed. From a distant monarch, unapproachable and dangerous to behold, Jesus shifts us to discover God as loving, welcoming parent. More than that, Jesus calls us friends, close friends, friends for whom the Christ would lay down life! This is a God who is close and intimate, and a love that changes everything. But, of course, the love needs to be spread around - any friend of Jesus must be a friend of ours. That’s why Jesus calls us to love one another even as we have been loved, to befriend one another even as we have been befriended.

Think about the people you worship with each week. Who do you consider your friends? Who would you struggle to be friends with? Who is easy to love and who is not so easy? How does it change things when you realise that just as Christ offers to be your friend, so Jesus offers to be the friend of all of these others? Are you willing to try and fulfil the call to love them as Jesus loves you? As you worship this week, ask God to fill you with love for those who gather with you, and seek, in some small way, to show them love.

Pray As You Go

How many ways You have cared for us, O God;
How many companions You have given
to share our difficult and joyous journey.
And yet we forget Your care,
and reject Your messengers.

Forgive us for failing to recognise You
in those who are different from ourselves.
Forgive us for rejecting other people -
children of Yours who are equally loved.
Forgive us for believing the lie
that says we can do it our way, and we can do it alone.

Teach us to love as You have loved us,
to embrace and welcome others
as You have welcomed us,
to enjoy and commit to the family
which You have given for our comfort and nurture.

In Jesus’ Name.

Today’s devotion is taken from Rev John van de Laar’s outstanding book ‘The Hour That Changes Everything: How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be.’ Used with permission

To order copies of this book and for other superb worship resources visit http://www.sacredise.com

Becoming Loving - Part 3

Focus Scripture

Isaiah 49 : 13-19 (NRSV)

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the LORD has comforted his people,
and will have compassion on his suffering ones.

But Zion said, ‘The LORD has forsaken me,
my Lord has forgotten me.’
Can a woman forget her nursing-child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.
Your builders outdo your destroyers,*
and those who laid you waste go away from you.
Lift up your eyes all around and see;
they all gather, they come to you.
As I live, says the LORD,
you shall put all of them on like an ornament,
and like a bride you shall bind them on.

Surely your waste and your desolate places
and your devastated land -
surely now you will be too crowded for your inhabitants,
and those who swallowed you up will be far away.

Daily Byte

God’s people were in ruin - their country conquered, their Temple destroyed, and their people carried away into exile. No wonder they were tempted to believe that God had abandoned them. But, God speaks into their grief and suffering and offers them the image of a mother lovingly nursing the child she has born, protective and unfailing in her love. And, though sometimes mothers fail their children, God assures the people that God’s love is sure - their names have been engraved, cut into the flesh, of God’s hands. They are part of God’s very being. This is a radical love, an excessive, unreasonable love. This love is offered to all of God’s children, including you and me. No matter what you may be going through at the moment, God’s love is right there with you.

Reflect for a moment in silence on these images of God’s love for you. Allow your knowledge of being loved to settle into the deepest parts of your soul. Can you feel anything shift inside you? Do you find yourself relaxing and growing softer, less brittle or stressed? This is what love can do. Now think about the fact that everyone - everyone - is loved like this by God. How does that change the way you see other people, especially those you struggle to love? As you prepare to join your community in worship this week, allow God’s love to come to you and try to lean into it - not just for you, but also for all those who are part of your life.

Pray As You Go

It’s more than I can take in, God,
this palm-engraving love of yours,
this extravagant commitment you have
to the likes of me.

But, thank you for your love,
and for your determination
that I should know it.
I realise that the only way I will ever know
if your love has really taken root in my heart,
is when I can be committed to loving,
even the unlovely,
in at least a little of the way
that you love me.

Amen.

Today’s devotion is taken from Rev John van de Laar’s outstanding book ‘The Hour That Changes Everything: How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be.’ Used with permission

To order copies of this book and for other superb worship resources visit http://www.sacredise.com

Becoming Loving - Part 2

Focus Scripture

John 3 : 1-17 (NRSV)

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

'Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

'For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Daily Byte

To really encounter God’s extravagant, self-giving love can only change us. This change is so complete, so transforming that Jesus calls it a new birth. It’s like we leave the old behind and start a whole new one - a life that is lived in the reality and the principles of God’s reign. If there is one word to describe God’s reign, it is love - the love that did not hesitate to sacrifice itself for the sake of the world. Once you know, in the deepest part of you, that God was prepared to choose death rather than abandon God’s love for us, everything changes, and you find yourself striving to live in love in every relationship, every moment and every situation.

How do you feel when you consider that the cross was not too big a price to pay for God to show you God’s love? When you hold this love together with the idea of being ‘born again’ (as John does in his Gospel) what do you think this new birth really is? Are there any ways that you are afraid of committing to be a person of love? How can your worship help you to open to God’s sacrificial love even more, and inspire you to embrace to cost of being a person who lives out of the love of God? Would you like to be willing to give up your life for the sake of love? If so, offer this as your prayer when next you join a worship gathering.

Pray As You Go

You keep talking about dying, Jesus;
about how life is found
not by white-knuckled clinging;
but by a prodigal losing.

We nod and smile, and ponder the deep significance of these words, and then with a slow sigh of relief,
we go back to our life-preservers;
our safe, protected worlds;
our well-sheltered, comfortable spirituality;
and we turn our eyes away from those who reach out to us, those we could touch with Your life,
if only we would take the risk.

What were you thinking, Jesus?
Surely faith is about finding life,
not laying it down?
Surely we need to follow You in order to be sure
that life doesn’t end when we die?

There’ll be no dying today, Jesus - not if we can help it.
and if your promise is to be believed;
no dying at all - ever.

If only we could keep away the images of those,
the different, the lonely, the misunderstood, and the forgotten, the hungry, the abused, the least;
the ones in whose eyes we glimpse, in unguarded moments, the outline of Your face;
the ones in whose silence we hear a sound,
not unlike Your voice, inviting us to carry a cross.

Today’s devotion is taken from Rev John van de Laar’s outstanding book ‘The Hour That Changes Everything: How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be.’ Used with permission

To order copies of this book and for other superb worship resources visit http://www.sacredise.com

Becoming Loving - Part 1

Focus Scripture

Matthew 22 : 34-40 (NRSV)

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Daily Byte

Love, it seems, can be a frightening thing. We don’t really trust it, if we’re honest. We think of love as something soft and fickle, something wishy-washy and weak. Clearly Jesus had a different view of love though. He makes it clear that the entire Bible is summed in the twin commands to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves. This is the only command we’ve been given as followers of Christ! Yet, somehow we would prefer to reduce the Gospel to another set of religious laws, drawing lines to determine who is good and who is bad, who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. The law is always the easy way out. Love is much harder and more complex. It requires more of us - more listening, more seeking to understand, more involvement, more time, more energy. But, the law has never been able to heal us or our world. Only love can do that.

How do you feel about the idea that love is our only commandment as Christians? How are you doing in following this one commandment? When are you tempted to replace it with other, simpler laws? How can you allow your worship to reveal God’s love to you more? And how can you learn to express your love for others in your worship gatherings?

Pray As You Go

That’s it, Jesus? Seriously?
Only love? No other command;
no other law?
Nothing else required?

You must know something about love that we don’t, Jesus;
You trust it so much more than we do,
you believe its power so completely;
how else could you have allowed it to drive you to the cross?

Teach me to trust love the way you do, Jesus,
to open my heart to your love,
and to learn to speak and act and think in love as you do;
Give me the courage to make the quest for love,
an essential guiding principle of my life.

Amen.

Today’s devotion is taken from Rev John van de Laar’s outstanding book ‘The Hour That Changes Everything: How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be.’ Used with permission

To order copies of this book and for other superb worship resources visit http://www.sacredise.com

Becoming Beautiful - Part 5

Focus Scripture

Psalm 96 : 1 -13 (NRSV)

O sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth.
Sing to the LORD, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvellous works among all the peoples.
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;
he is to be revered above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.
Honour and majesty are before him;
strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
bring an offering, and come into his courts.
Worship the LORD in holy splendour;
tremble before him, all the earth.

Say among the nations, ‘The LORD is king!
The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.
He will judge the peoples with equity.’
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
let the field exult, and everything in it.
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the LORD; for he is coming,
for he is coming to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with his truth.

Daily Byte

The beauty and creativity of God are seen in all that God has made, and in this psalm the celebration is loud, vibrant and creative in return. Singing, rejoicing, bowing, bringing offerings - The Message translation even includes dancing - are all creative ways to express worship, and the context is “the beauty of holiness” or “God’s holy splendour” (vs 9). In worship we are invited to recognise the beauty of God that surrounds us - both in the physical world we inhabit, and in the spiritual reality that flows through and around the physical. Wherever God is, there is beauty, and wherever beauty is, there is worship. All we need to do is join the celebration, and allow the beauty of God’s holiness to draw us into deeper intimacy with God.

In what ways have you become more aware of God’s presence through the created world? How have you become more aware of God’s presence through “spiritual” activities like prayer, Scripture reading and worship? How have these activities helped you to be more aware of God’s presence everywhere and in every moment? When you become aware of God’s presence, how do you usually respond? Can you open yourself to worship and let it teach you to become a more celebratory person, joining the worship of creation whenever you can?

Pray As You Go

What an amazing thought!
What a glorious reality!
Celebration is going on all the time!
Animals and angels,
people and plants,
all caught up in a majestic symphony of praise!

And I’m no gatecrasher - I’m invited, the door is open;
all I need to do is join in,
to see the beauty all around me,
and give thanks
in whatever way I can.

Thank you, God, for your ever-present beauty,
and for the eternal celebration
that reminds me of your grace and love
in every moment.
Amen.

Today’s devotion is taken from Rev John van de Laar’s outstanding book ‘The Hour That Changes Everything: How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be.’ Used with permission

To order copies of this book and for other superb worship resources visit http://www.sacredise.com