Forward In Love - Friday January 11

I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown.”
Jeremiah 2:2

Love is a two-way street. It is only by knowing God that we learn to love and it is only by loving that we learn to know God. Like a stream, love flows from God. Like a trail of bread crumbs, love leads to God.
So how is the traffic flowing on love’s street? Is it flowing both ways? Are we as loving to God as we used to be, or are we only expecting God to be loving to us? Are we full of the little things that excite his heart? How much love have we shown him this past week?
In Jeremiah 2:2, God is saying to Israel and perhaps to us: You are not in love with me now, but I remember the time when you were. Think back to those early days in your relationship with Jesus. Are you as full of the extravagant love of Jesus as you were in the beginning? Do you remember those times when you didn’t care about anything but Him? Are you there now or have you become too wise for all of that foolish love?
If you see that Jesus means less to you than he once did, let that reality produce humiliation in you; that humiliation will lead you to repentance, which will drive you into God’s heart.

Forward In Love - Thursday January 10

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8


There is a spontaneous nature to love. It is not premeditated. It bursts up in unexpected ways. There is nothing calculated in Paul’s description of love. Love is not a rule. We don’t list the requirements of the Bible on our to do list and say, I will do these to show my love today. But when God’s love is boiling over in our hearts, we live according to that list without even knowing it. Later we look back on those moments and are amazed at how little our focus was on keeping the requirements.
The springs of love are in God, not us. He is the source. It is a lost cause to look for God’s love in our own humanity. God’s love only fills us when it has been spread through our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
If we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we do not. The proof of our love for Him is the spontaneity and natural flow of our love. It is those times when the only explanation for our actions is simply because we love Him. The life of God overflows in us because the springs of love are found in our quiet hours with Jesus. Dig a well and allow that living water to flow through you until it becomes natural.

"FASTING FOR LOVE"

I am beginning to hear great stories about our 21 day fast. People are fasting different types of foods and activities. Some are getting strange looks from co-workers and classmates. I guess in the end, it all boils down to just wanting to love God more.
As we walk through this journey together, we will all need encouragement at some point. Hearing other people’s stories are so encouraging. It reminds us, we are not alone. Would you post a comment on our blog about your fast? What are you fasting, how is it going, is there an insight you would like to share? Also, any feedback or thoughts you have had that came from the Forward devotional. Just post a comment on any of our recent blogs.
The more people blogs we post, the more people will read them, the stronger we will all become. God bless, keep moving Forward in Love!

Forward In Love - Wednesday January 9

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:35; 37-39

God does not keep any of us immune from painful experiences. God is with us through all painful experiences, but He doesn’t take all of them away. The good news is, regardless of how bad the pain gets, there is no pain severe enough to separate any of us from our relationship with God.
Trouble, hardship, persecution, starvation, nakedness, danger, violence, death, life, angels, demons, now, later, all powers, height, depth, and nothing created. The is an amazing power list of the greatest forces, trials and emotions known to humanity. This verse is so arrogantly driven into our faces, it can only mean one of two things; either Jesus was a deceiver and Paul was delusional or amazing, supernatural things happen when a person maintains a death lock on God’s love. Only God’s love could explain such reckless stubbornness. Keep holding on, every detracting voice eventually melts away.
If absolutely nothing can separate us from God’s love, then the only battle left is for us to relentlessly believe it. So believe it today. Ask God to increase your faith in his love, to believe it is everything he says it is.

Forward In Love - Tuesday January 8

There 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.
1 John 4:18


Is hate the opposite of love or is fear? We may never know. One thing we can be sure of, love and fear do not co-exist. No child who is raised in a caring home with a covering of love lives in fear. That child may have momentary flashes of fear, but she will not live regularly live in fear. In the same way, neither will an adult live in fear who walks in God’s love.
Where does fear come from? It comes from the expectation of punishment. As long as we think of God as our Judge and Law-giver, we will be submerged in fear. Have you ever noticed that people who seem to live in the most fear, tend to interpret the painful circumstances of their lives as things that God did “to” them. Why? They expect to be punished because they think that is the kind of God they serve. They often ask questions like, “Is this God’s way of punishing me for the things I did when I was younger?” or “What did I do wrong to deserve this?” For certain there are consequences to our actions, but please don’t confuse those with God’s heart for you. If you follow that line of thinking, you will believe in a God that takes more pleasure in punishing you than in loving you.
God’s word does not tell us that God is Judge or God is Law-giver, it tells us God is love. In the end, it was God’s love that caused Him to send Jesus to pay penalty for our sin so we could escape punishment. Once we understand God’s true nature, our fear is overcome with his love. Let today be the day you move FORWARD in love, ask God to reveal himself to you until all of your wrong pictures of who He is are gone and your fear has drowned in His love.

Forward In Love - Monday January 7

…God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
1 John 4:16

“God is love”. This is probably the greatest single statement about God in the entire Bible. It is amazing how many questions that one sentence answers. For example, with God there is never a question about motive. We never have to ask why. We already have the one and only answer there is: love.
In this verse we are actually told what God is, He is love. Love is God expressed. Love is the most basic ingredient of God. It is His essence. There is no adequate way to describe God apart from love. But God’s love is not some co-dependant loneliness. God did not create people so that He would have some focus for His love that He would otherwise be incomplete without. God is love, with or without His creation. God’s love is altogether free standing of our existence or our receptivity. It actually has nothing to do with us at all, it is who HE is!
Being that God is love, He is our only source for love. When a mother stares into the face of her newborn, where does the love come from that instantly binds her heart with that little stranger? It comes from the only source there is, from God. God is love and no one else is. If we have love, it is only because after the fall of humanity we have maintained some faint silhouette of the original form that God created us in. There is one way to get a clearer picture. That is to receive God’s love into our hearts through Jesus, and to pursue Him with wild passion. As we do, the revelation of His love in our lives will become clearer with each step.
Any journey with God, is a journey in love. Will you join me for the next 20 days as we go FORWARD in love?

Let’s pray together:
Lord, today I pray that by your mighty grace, you will pour more of yourself into us and by the end of this day, we will see greater evidence of your love in our lives. Amen

Devotional Post

All post for the FORWARD In Love Devotional will be posted the evening before the day to be read. Blogger is not allowing pre-post at this time so they will be done manually the evening before. If you have received any already via email, please disregard them until the appropriate day. We would also like to encourage you to send an email to your friends and family asking them to subscribe to the blog. After subscribing it is important that they verify their email or they will not receive it in their inbox. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts on the blog as we move together through the next 21 days. God Bless You!!!