A Letter To The Church: (Please pass it on)
“ 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son [ b ] into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for [ c ] our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
With much love from,
1 John 4:7-21
I believe in only one religion: Love. I belong to only one denomination: Love. I hinge my entire belief system on this one thing: God is Love. No “if”, “and”, “but”, or “maybe.” God is Love. God’s love is perfect. It’s unconditional. It is long suffering. It does not change with the season, roll in and out with the tide, or flucuate with the changing of the moon. God’s love is constant day in and day out, and what’s more: “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”_Roman 8:38-39
Dear Church, do you get it yet? I hope you do, because I am growing weary from bandaging up all the brothers and sisters that you have hurt and abandoned. We should have been reminding them that God loves them, and that God has not forsaken them, or tossed them aside as misfits and outcasts. Regardless of the place they are at in their spiritual maturity. (Trust me, none of us have “arrived” yet.)
Who did we hurt? We hurt those who do not look exactly like us, talk exactly like us,walk exactly like us, believe and think exactly like us, or attained the same level of “perfection” that we so ignorantly and arrogantly feel that we have arrived at! It is not our business or job to judge another’s soul. We have no right to crush those who do not fit into whatever cookie cutter mold we have set up as being the pentacle of righteousness, or those who we feel are not quite ”good enough” to belong to our “little club house” denomination, or to serve in it. We are commanded to do one thing: LOVE EACH OTHER. I pray to God that everything to the contrary ends!
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angelsunaware s.” _Hebrews 13:12
I hope when the angel of the Lord shows up at the church doors that he/she will have sprayed on some supernatural cologne to make it seem like he/she is reeking from the smell of Jim Beam and prostitutes,that his/her eyes have a drug glazed look, that his/her hair will look like it hasn’t been washed or combed in a month, that his/her clothes are tattered and torn, his/her body is covered in tatooes, half of his/her teeth are missing, AND…he/she sits down right next to YOU! And I further hope that when this angel goes back to God and is asked if he was shown God’s love, the angel will respond, “Yes!, and get this, they invited me to sing in their choir next Sunday too!”
Now,maybe we are getting somewhere! (To be continued, as we are all a work in progress….)
With much love,
Rita (Who has often been considered one of God’s “misfits.” *laughs*)
P.S. Discover timeless wisdom and a practical prosperity program in the amazing forgotten 1910 classic, The Science of Getting Rich. Download your free copy now! Read and be blessed.http://www.scienceofgettingrich.net/gifts/blessedgift.html
A Letter To The Church: (Please pass it on)
“ 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son [ b ] into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for [ c ] our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
With much love from,
1 John 4:7-21
I believe in only one religion: Love. I belong to only one denomination: Love. I hinge my entire belief system on this one thing: God is Love. No “if”, “and”, “but”, or “maybe.” God is Love. God’s love is perfect. It’s unconditional. It is long suffering. It does not change with the season, roll in and out with the tide, or flucuate with the changing of the moon. God’s love is constant day in and day out, and what’s more: “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”_Roman 8:38-39
Dear Church, do you get it yet? I hope you do, because I am growing weary from bandaging up all the brothers and sisters that you have hurt and abandoned. We should have been reminding them that God loves them, and that God has not forsaken them, or tossed them aside as misfits and outcasts. Regardless of the place they are at in their spiritual maturity. (Trust me, none of us have “arrived” yet.)
Who did we hurt? We hurt those who do not look exactly like us, talk exactly like us,walk exactly like us, believe and think exactly like us, or attained the same level of “perfection” that we so ignorantly and arrogantly feel that we have arrived at! It is not our business or job to judge another’s soul. We have no right to crush those who do not fit into whatever cookie cutter mold we have set up as being the pentacle of righteousness, or those who we feel are not quite ”good enough” to belong to our “little club house” denomination, or to serve in it. We are commanded to do one thing: LOVE EACH OTHER. I pray to God that everything to the contrary ends!
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angelsunaware s.” _Hebrews 13:12
I hope when the angel of the Lord shows up at the church doors that he/she will have sprayed on some supernatural cologne to make it seem like he/she is reeking from the smell of Jim Beam and prostitutes,that his/her eyes have a drug glazed look, that his/her hair will look like it hasn’t been washed or combed in a month, that his/her clothes are tattered and torn, his/her body is covered in tatooes, half of his/her teeth are missing, AND…he/she sits down right next to YOU! And I further hope that when this angel goes back to God and is asked if he was shown God’s love, the angel will respond, “Yes!, and get this, they invited me to sing in their choir next Sunday too!”
Now,maybe we are getting somewhere! (To be continued, as we are all a work in progress….)
With much love,
Rita (Who has often been considered one of God’s “misfits.” *laughs*)
P.S. Discover timeless wisdom and a practical prosperity program in the amazing forgotten 1910 classic, The Science of Getting Rich. Download your free copy now! Read and be blessed.http://www.scienceofgettingrich.net/gifts/blessedgift.html