Church Family Update - July 22, 2020

Prayer Requests:

Let’s remember to keep our church family members in the health care industry in our prayers as they continue to serve faithfully and joyfully during these stressful times.

A Devotional Thought:

“Keep yourselves in the love of God” Jude 21

This morning I read the brief little letter of Jude. Jude reads like a little postcard tucked in the back of our Bibles. It’s short but it’s packed with verses that both encouraging and confusing. I tried to read it this morning as if reading it for the first time. And one particular phrase stood out. It’s a commandment:

“Keep yourselves in the love of God.” What does that mean? Is God’s love for us dependent on our ability to keep ourselves in it? Surely not! Then what’s being commanded here? Here’s the image that came to my mind as I thought about this.

God doesn’t love everything. He only loves what is righteous and good. Of course, all of creation was good when He originally made it but now it’s a mix of good and bad. By definition, God loves what is good but He does not love what is bad. So picture God’s love as a giant circle that encompasses everything that is good but excludes anything that is bad. 

Okay, now picture the circle of everything that you love. My guess is that your circle isn’t quite as pure as God’s circle. Sometimes our desires get a little complicated and we love things that we shouldn’t love. We’re a mixed bag that way. 

Now picture your circle of love and God’s circle of love functioning like a Venn diagram. God’s circle of love is huge and perfect…encompassing all that’s good and excluding all that’s bad. The goal here is to get our loves to overlap as much as possible with God’s love. Ultimately we’re trying to get the circle of our loves totally encompassed within the circle of God’s love. 

I think that’s what it means for us to obey the commandment to “keep ourselves in God’s love.” It doesn’t mean that His love for us will ever change or waver. I think it’s a command for us to learn to love what God loves and stay away from what God doesn’t love. And, of course, He issues this command not for His sake but for ours. Staying within the circle of God’s love is the most blessed, joyful, healthy and safe place we could possibly be. 

May you find joy in God's love today,

Pastor Jason