Tag Archives: devotional

My Beloved

“How is your beloved better than others, most beautiful of women?“

Song of Songs 5:9

How indeed.

My Beloved has a love like no other.

I have never known a love like His. So consistent, so willing to remain no matter what. A love that I have never had to earn, or fear losing. His is a love that heals and binds and pursues and protects and holds on and persists beyond the boundaries of my understanding. All other loves have broken me, but not His. His made me whole.

My Beloved is truer than any other.

His love is wrapped in mercy and grace and compassion that is not of this place. He has no flaw, no hidden agenda, no selfish motives. He will never show a dark side or prove to be someone other than who He has always been. And if I searched a million days and a million ways I would find no lie in Him, and He has never, not one time, gone back on His word. 

My Beloved is more faithful than any other.

He will never tire of me. Ever. He chose me and has no regret, no wondering if He made the right choice, no question, no moment of wishing He had chosen differently. I’ve never seen His back, even when He has seen mine. He has never let me down, left me disappointed, never made me feel used or too much or not enough. Every day He wants my presence, wants to hear my voice, wants to hold my heart.

My Beloved is more powerful than any other.

His power is unmatched in heaven or on earth. He makes darkness run and hide just by showing up. He makes mountains melt and is an impenetrable shield around me. He can calm any storm, split any sea, heal any disease, rend any veil, move any stone, and change any heart.

Jesus, You are better than any other, in more ways than I can count. I long to bow before You, throw down every crown, and give You endless praise. You are my first love, my King, my Savior, and my home.

The above was today’s devotional piece for Word of God Speak, my weekly email devotional, and this is my shameless pitch for you to subscribe to it. If you want. No pressure. Actually, you know what? Forget I said anything. Who needs another email? Seriously. Unless of course, you want to. Like, you’ve been wishing you could open an email on Fridays at 10 a.m. that would give you a little bite to eat, just a morsel to hold you over for a wee bit. I mean, if that’s the case then, by all means, you should totally hit the subscribe button below and fill out the very, very short form thingy. But only if you want to.

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Internet Theology

“I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish My covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.”

{Genesis 6:17-18}

 I recently saw a meme that said something along these lines:

God never told Noah not to invite other people onto the Ark.

On the surface, that sounds good. Very inclusionary. Unfortunately, it lacks theological soundness. First of all, it casts blame on Noah that doesn’t belong to him. Second, just because God did not specifically say something, does not mean He did not specifically imply it. He made it clear that He was going to destroy every living thing on the earth, but, He was making a covenant with a specific family – Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. The implication is that Noah and his family were not given permission to invite any other people into a covenant God was choosing to make.

The suggestion of the meme is that it was not God’s intention to exclude people from the ark, but that it was Noah who chose to exclude. That goes down easy in a culture that is rallying around the word “inclusion” right now, and often the snowballed effect of that easy thought process is “God would never send anyone to hell”. The everyone goes to heaven and all roads lead to God theology, which bears no resemblance to the scriptures, is shaped by culture, not truth.

This is the danger of letting the internet determine what we believe about God. We end up with a god created in someone else’s image, and we don’t know the God in whose image we have been made.

Social media is full of things that sound good and it’s tempting to adopt them as truth. Beware! In the Word of God we have been given what is true, not just what sounds true. This is where our theology is built. The Bible is our plumbline against which every other thing must align itself.

Father, help us to let our theology be shaped by Your Word and not by our culture. Teach us and help us to steward well the truth You have given us. 

don’t be lazy

crossing-the-finish-line-4-dr-diva-verdun“Now we want each of you to demonstrate the same diligence for the final realization of your hope, so that you won’t become lazy but will be imitators of those who inherit the promises through faith and perseverance.” Hebrews 6:11-12

We go to church every week, spend our quiet time with Jesus almost every day, attend bible study, attend all the events, and we talk about Jesus, like, all the time.  So we can skim over Paul’s warning not to become lazy, because we are, spiritually speaking, pretty. darn. busy.Continue reading “don’t be lazy”