Real Life:  Love “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” 1Corinthians 13:13 Love’s origin is God, for God is love.  It’s not a sentiment or a feeling, but deliberate, intentional action.  In the Greek it is the word agape and agapao.  The Vine’s Bible dictionary states it this way: “Love can be known only from the action it prompts.  God’s love is seen in the gift of His Son, 1John 4:9,10. It was an exercise of the Divine will in deliberate choice.”  Love is action taken by deliberate choice of the will.  Love is drawn from His very essence.  God’s love is ours because of Who He is and what He’s done for us.  Our love to God…

“The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;” Psalm 146:8 As part of His mission on earth, Jesus taught in the Jewish synagogue on the Sabbath day each week. When He finished teaching that week, He saw a woman who “…was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years.  She was bent over and could not straighten up at all”. (Luke 13:11).  He called the woman over.  Because she was crippled, getting to Jesus was extremely painful for her, but she came anyway because faith was already at work in her heart. He said, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity”. Luke 13:13. She immediately straightened up and began to praise God.  Those who believed rejoiced with her.  But the religious did…

Self-Acceptance:  Keep it Real “Walk in the light” 1John 1:7 Keeping it real may be a cultural trend, but it is so much more.  Nathaniel Branden puts it this way:  “It is our willingness to experience rather than disown whatever may be the facts of our being at a particular moment”. We deceive ourselves if we pretend dark thoughts and emotions do not rise to stain our everyday life, given the chance. The Bible says in 1 John 1:8 that “If we say we have no sin [refusing to admit that we are sinners], we delude ourselves and the truth is not in us”. We need to acknowledge the presence and the manifestation of those emotions without self-condemnation. The rich provision for our waywardness is…