Tag Archives: hope

Called to love

 

Love Has Called My Name

 

I have been there when it is hard to love someone that God has called me to love. When I finally let go, He empowered me to love and to keep loving. Yes, I have walked away first many times before coming back to love. God is always patience, kind, gentle and affirming through it all.

Living out God’s calling as a redeemed person myself, I trust that my gifts, talents and personal temperament all factor in how He uses me.

And there I will give her her vineyards
    and make the Valley of Achor[e] a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
    as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. – Hosea 2:15  ESV

I am adopted into His family. He transforms my valleys, my sin patterns, into a door of hope for others. And all of who I am intersects with human need around me.

And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” – Hosea 3:1  ESV

Despite my own unfaithfulness, foolishness and obstinacy, God’s love and patience endures and leads me through hardship to discipleship.  God is responsible for making me righteous – justified.

With that comes peace.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith[b] into this grace in which we stand, and we[c] rejoice[d] in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. – Romans 5:1  ESV

Suffering is an intense word. Maybe it would be good to check out what it means. Translated it means pressure or affliction.

The expression given to me that allows me to endure is God’s love and my ability to love too.

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Weakness

 

Fill me with Thy gracious Spirit

 

One thing I bring daily to Jesus is my weakness. I lean on Him every day in simple faith. Weakness is a burden, they can become my chains. Carrying them alone means another day of failing. What a release when I turn them over to Jesus and let Him carry me and my burdens – He finds a way to take that weakness that I offer Him and turns it into a strength. The secret must be that He does not remove the weakness necessarily, but He will give His own power so that I may be strong. This strength I can find when I seek to be that humble, trusting disciple. 

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. – 2 Corinthians 12:9  ESV

I think of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane – thinking about the cup of suffering – and the Father confirming that everything was going as planned. I have been in many situations where I have asked the plan to change, to have the weakness removed, to have a miraculous provision. In my heart, I knew that the prayer was not what the Father had in mind for me.

Paul saw weakness not as a liability, but rather as a way of being totally surrendered to the Lord.

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. – 2 Corinthians 12:10  ESV

And as Psalm 78 encourages me, I give ear to my Father, with submission and reverence, silent and earnest, so that I might capture the instructions given and to move forward properly understanding what He has asked of me.  

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth! – Psalm 78:1  ESV

Psalm 78 also brings me back to the ultimate parent/child relationship that expresses the power of investing in “weakness” and what that looks like. It is an expression of discipleship.

We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.

So that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;
and that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God. – Psalm 78:4,7-8  ESV

I need to see faith, I need to see that those who follow God will set their hope in Him. I want to make sure that no one forgets God’s work of redemption – that includes the stories in the Old Testament. This is fundamental to my faith and that is why it needs to be the same for others. These stories of weakness, given to God, make me a stronger person as I follow Him.

 

 

 

 

 

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