A New Beginning With Love
In the series of New Beginnings, the concept of love is a central theme. Love has become the catch word for a faithful religious experience and a life-long walk with Jesus. It's important, as well, to find truth. With truth that we learn to fully love...without reservations, without doubt.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9. Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10. But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. 11. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. 13. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
Summer is the final season of our growth...we are the blossomed buds of faithful service to learn the truth of Jesus. We pray to remember all the simply truths as we learn to love a love that deserves phrase and compassion. It is through the Lord that all things are made in truth. And it is through love that all things are make real. Amen.
.... So that, if a man only abstains from doing evil in order to avoid punishment, Non pasces in cruce corvos, [Thou shalt not be hanged.], saith the Pagan; there, "thou hast thy reward." But even he will not allow such a harmless man as this to be so much as a good heathen. If, then, any man, from the same motive, viz., to avoid punishment, to avoid the loss of his friends, or his gain, or his reputation, should not only abstain from doing evil, but also do ever so much good; yea, and use all the means of grace; yet we could not with any propriety say, this man is even almost a Christian. If he has no better principle in his heart, he is only a hypocrite altogether.
- Dr. John Wesley
