From the Kitchen Table

Kitchen Table

Day 27

“Love”

Love… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:7

Love doesn’t give up.  Love holds on and holds out even when everyone else has left the room.  Lust doesn’t last that long.  Some people love lust so they will be stubborn to get what they want but love is steadfast for what God wants.  What God wants is love, the real thing.  Love isn’t stubborn, it’s steadfast because love always believes.  Love creates hope that inspires faith and love lives for that hope by faith.  This is what that means, love begins with God and ends with us.  How we love is determined by who loves us and once we’ve found God’s love, we don’t have to give up and give in to any other kind of love.  Don’t be afraid to believe; God loves you.

Kitchen Table

Day 36

“Love”

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.

1 Corinthians 13:6

We cannot walk in love and not operate in truth, doing what is really right in God’s eyes.  Anything less than right and true is a perversion of love and involves some kind of lust.  Love possesses and pursues what is right and true with a passion.  True love will not fold to what is wrong and warped.  And as love works in our lives, as we begin to see it and seek it, we will begin to target what is right and true, trusting the One who is always right and true. 

Kitchen Table

Day 35

“Love”

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, ⁵ does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,               1 Corinthians 13:4-5

Love is a peculiar and powerful force in our lives and in this world.  It operates from our belief, not from what we behold.  That is why love is so strong.  It lives from within us and that’s why what we believe must be right and real.  If what we believe is not right nor real, we will become motivated by what’s wrong for us and for others.  Love operates in truth.  Know what you believe is right and real.

Kitchen Table

Day 34

“Love”

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant…                    1 Corinthians 13:4

Pursue love because without it we are left unhappy, unable, and unsatisfied.  We were made for love, not lust.  Know the difference.  Be able to identify them from a distance.  Love lives to the beat of a different drum, a divine drum.  Move to the beat of God’s heart and don’t stop.  Love is painstakingly persistent with passion.  It’s what God has for us and has for others through us.  Don’t stop believing!

Kitchen Table Devotions

Day 33

“Love”

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.                      1 Corinthians 13:3

Without love, we are left unsatisfied.  Nothing we can do can fill the hole in our hearts like love does.  We were made for love by the God of love who made us to be loved.  Without love, we work to find satisfaction in the things we do but it’s love that brings satisfaction to the things we do.  When we have love we have everything we need for everything else.  But we don’t work for God’s love, we receive it by faith because He worked to bring love to us.  All we do is believe that He loves us.

Kitchen Table

Day 32

“Love”

If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.                   1 Corinthians 13:2

Without love we merely find ourselves going through the motions.  We can’t measure life by the noise we make or the pictures we take; life needs meaning, and love does that for us.  Love puts meaning into every one of those memories.  Imagine having everything and being nothing.  A man without a maker is a man without meaning.  Love brings value to everything we do and say and so we need to say and do it all in love.  We find that love first in Jesus.

Kitchen Table

Day 31

“Love”

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1

Where there is no love there is noise.  We were made for love from love.  God is love (1 John 4:16) and eternal life is about knowing God who is love (John 17:3).  We were made from love and for love and Jesus brings us the love God has always had for us.  Without love, we get loud, either in our words or our walk.  It just happens but it doesn’t have to happen to us because we are loved.

Kitchen Table

Day 30

“Prayer”

However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”                        Luke 18:8

Prayer is the evidence of faith and faith is exercised through prayer.  Those who believe, pray!  Faith talks to God, turn to God and takes all things to God.  Faith knows that He can and He will.  Don’t live without it!

The Kitchen Table

Day 29

“Prayer”

I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”                                   Luke 18:8

Until we see the attitudes and actions of our enemy as unjust, we will not begin to call on our God for the justice of heaven in our lives.  The enemy, like Socialism, Marxism, or Communism, needs us to be hurting and howling for help because of an injustice.  The injustice of man lives and leaves people hurting and howling and it’s so normal that we accept it as part of this life.  Prayer will always help us to hear and hate the injustice of sin and Satan.  But God will bring about justice once we get tired of the injustice in this world and call on Him for good, right, and true.  Faith prays!

The Kitchen Table

Day 28

“Prayer”

Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart,              Luke 18:1-2

It’s prayer that keeps the heart hot with passion and purpose in life.  Life without prayer just keeps the head preoccupied with the perils of life.  Prayer fills the heart with the possibilities of heaven.  It’s prayer that fills the heart with the hope, help, and honor of God.  We cannot survive without these little talks with Jesus.  It’s prayer that lets us walk side by side with Jesus and not lose heart for living from heaven.