As I go through each week, I’m continuously aware of my failings. How about you? I feel that I can more often “fall” in my attempts to love my God, my wife, my son, and others God has placed in my life. The concept of falling in love is great to talk over a bit. There is a sense of mystery and fumbling to love at times, but more often than not, especially for us men, genuine and intentional love takes focus and consistency. As we focus in on the LORD of Heaven and Earth, we learn so much about love and how to show it. God has consistently sought His children in love and has never ceased to amaze them (when we pay attention) with His grace, though we have often failed to be amazed due to our blindness from sin and self-orientation.

Have you listened to any episodes from the radio program called Intentional Living?  I’ve only heard a few, but it all really fits what God puts down in His Word for us in Ephesians and 1 Corinthians and Romans and so on time and time again.  When we are intentionally showing love, our joy increases and we’re more consistently walking in the sweet spot of God’s will.  A genuine showing of love eventually produces a sense of “falling in love” I’m realizing.  For us to see a decidedly and refreshingly established counter culture in the US of loving Christians instead of judgmental and “we are always right” conservatives, we have to submit to the Spirit of God as we walk in the Word of God daily among the people of God and among the lost.  The lost will only be attracted to the Gospel by our love, not by our rightness.  If they are attracted by our rightness, they are being attracted to a religion on the fringe of Christianity, not Jesus’ follower’s lifestyle of following the Master Himself and living as He did among us.

I’m reading a book right now about transformation as experienced when God’s people live out healthy groups’ ministries in their communities.  When we as believers build the local church via healthy groups, we see a multiplication that God intended.  The author speaks about how trees don’t cause the wind.  In other words, God’s Holy Spirit is the One Who ultimately shapes the church, but we must be recumbent together as God’s people upon God’s Spirit, depending on Him, trusting Him, walking out our days on mission under the Great Commission of Jesus together as believers.

Father, please minister to us as we seek to live lives that honor Jesus’ life here and His death for us.  May our every move be a humble and joyful response to the death of Jesus for us.  We will fall so often in our efforts to show the love of Jesus to those we encounter in this life, so Please give us courage and Your Holy Spirit and a deep satisfaction in Your Word daily, that we might run in Your ways as You enlarge our hearts.  Sincerely we pray this in the name of Jesus, let it be so.