Tag Archives: love

Turning a Blessing Inside-out

I concluded last week’s devotional with this verse.

This is how we know love: Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. (1 John 3:16)

In theological circles they have a term to describe this type of living. They call it cruciform (a life formed by the cross of Christ). It is a concept I use regularly as a filter to assess my thoughts and actions.

The other day I was praying through the Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6:24-26.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his face to you and grant you peace.

I realized that this blessing wasn’t to stop with the first recipient, but in turn be re-appropriated as an outflow of being blessed. This is a covenantal blessing that can be extended to include others in the covenant with God through a life lived sacrificially.

I will try to unpack this passage to illustrate what I mean in a concise manner.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The word bless has two meanings that create a word picture. It means to kneel and to speak well of. The way I see it is when we humble ourselves before the Lord he is then able to speak well of us and extend his covering of keeping grace over us. In turning this blessing inside-out we see that by submitting our lives to King Jesus we are better equipped to not only bless others but to extend keeping grace to our brothers and sister.

The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.

I see this passage as subsequent to the first. The Lord rejoices over those he has blessed and makes himself available with mercy, grace, and help in times of trouble. When the joy of the Lord is our strength, we are more inclined to be gracious.

The Lord lift up his face to you and grant you peace.
The Lord longs for us to know him face to face, and it is in this close relationship that we find peace. In the Hebrew mindset, peace (shalom) is the highest form of blessing known to man. Jesus intends that through our earthly relationships we would make known him who is the source of our peace, and how he can be that source to them as well.

I pray that we find the grace to turn this blessing inside-out, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength …[and to] love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:30-31)

Grace and peace,

Brook

On Dying Daily

Last week I shared on finding joy through expressing gratitude. This is completely backwards to our way of thinking. We usually give thanks for the things that make us happy. This happiness/joy experience is generally viewed as magical or serendipitous. Something we have no control over. My point in sharing this last week was two-fold. The first is that we are responsible for our own joy. The second is that genuine joy brings glory to God.

What does this have to do with dying daily?

Well, since I posted this last week, I have been personally challenged to be more grateful. And, through the testing I’ve learned that in choosing gratitude I needed to let go of something within, usually pride, in order to focus on someone else (spouse, child, co-worker, God). When Jesus calls us to be his disciple he is calling us to embrace the cross. Jesus died our death and rose to life that we might die his death and rise to life in him.

As I opened my iPhone Bible reading app this morning, I was greeted with this Verse of the Day:

This is how we know love: Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. (1 John 3:16)

My prayer for us (myself included) is that we will continue learning to love one another as Jesus loves us.

Grace and peace,

Brook

Being a Disciple, Part 4: Learning to Love, Jesus’ Way

This week I’ve been reflecting on the Greatest Commandments (Matthew 22:37-40, Mark 12:29-31, Luke 10:27), which are commonly abbreviated to “love God and love others.” I will spare you the back story, but I found myself looking at it in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 is what Jesus quotes as the first of the two Greatest Commandments, but in the verses that follow I noticed that this commandment is a living document. It is to be foremost in the hearts and minds of God’s people. In verse 8 it reads, “Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.” Orthodox Jewish people have taken this literally by tying leather boxes with small scrolls of scripture in them on their wrists and foreheads. I’m not speaking against that practice, but I see it in a metaphorical way. The way in which we see and interact with the world around us should be bound to the commandment to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength. This I believe is wrapped up in Jesus second statement, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

If our heart is to be disciples of Jesus, then this is the lesson that is always before us. When we are with him, he will teach us to love like this. It is the paradigm of our life. Jesus didn’t promise it would be easy, but he did promise he would be with us as we walk through it. He also gave us one another. We are not alone.

I pray you experience God’s grace as he leads you to love, Jesus’ way.

Grace and peace,

Brook