Understanding Love

We must have the ears and eyes of our heart open to God, expecting to hear and see Him, and being ready to obey. We can prepare our heart to receive from the Lord by knowing His Word, by taking time to listen to the Holy Spirit, and by desiring to hear from Him. As we spend time with God, He places His desires in us. His heart becomes our heart. This is the foundation of hearing His voice and becoming a good listener. It is important to distinguish God’s thoughts from…

“Bobbie the Wonder Dog” was a collie mix separated from his family while they were on a summer vacation together more than 2,200 miles from home. The family searched everywhere for their beloved pet but returned heartbroken without him. Six months later, toward the end of winter, a scraggly but determined Bobbie showed up at their door in Silverton, Oregon. Bobbie somehow made the long and dangerous trek, crossing rivers, desert, and snow-covered mountains to…

While growing up, I had several Sunday school teachers, but Craig Stowe is the one I remember most. A few times a month, Mr. Stowe stopped on his way home when he saw me delivering newspapers. He’d ask how I was doing and inquire if there was anything he could pray about for me. And before he pulled away, he always bought a newspaper—for five times its worth. Those brief conversations with Mr. Stowe had a significant impact on my life. I knew he cared about me…

I’m not someone who typically runs around outside, or even inside for that matter, in my bare feet. At the shore, yes, but even then, I usually have flip-flops on. It doesn’t take long even without a dusty road to get your feet dirty. When I think about the fact that Jesus's last supper with His disciples included the creator of the universe getting on His knees and washing His disciples’ feet, I’m humbled beyond understanding. I’ve heard…

Back to the drama in the Garden of Eden. Remember now, God gave us this story of the first marriage to help us get our bearings. It provides some very essential categories for navigating our marriages—like how gender is so fundamental to our identity, and how we were made for Paradise. How mankind fell and what that Fall did to our lives as men and women. And it also makes something else absolutely and utterly clear—we have an enemy. Now there’s a thought.…

Michael was diving for lobster when a humpback whale caught him in its mouth. He pushed back in the darkness as the whale’s muscles squeezed against him. He thought he was done. But whales don’t prefer lobstermen, and thirty seconds later the whale spit Michael into the air. Amazingly, Michael had no broken bones—only extensive bruises and one whale of a story. He wasn’t the first. Jonah was swallowed by “a huge fish” (Jonah 1:17), and he…

Hopefully by now you are ready to let God help you love everyone—even people who are hard to love. There’s something I’d like you to think about: In the process of our quest to learn more about love, we want to make sure that we are not the one who is hard to love. I admit that I was very hard to love for many years. Because of my abusive past, I wanted to control everything and everyone, so I was only happy when I got my way. But I am so grateful to God…

Thanksgiving Day meals in America bring families together for a delicious ham or turkey dinner. But they are notorious for family spectacle as well—the picky great-aunt who remembers when she could cook better, the politically active uncle who can’t hold his opinions back, the growing son helping himself to a fourth serving of potatoes. Sometimes manners don’t match the occasion. Turns out, family drama is nothing new. In the first century church,…

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus taught (Mark 12:31), implying a direct link between one and the other. Loving our neighbor is clearly an essential to Christian faith; I think we all get that one. But the qualifier “as yourself” is lost upon most people; it confounded me for years. It almost sounds too pop psychology, something you’d see on the cover of the magazines at the checkout stand, right next to the articles on “brain superfoods;…