Abounding Love

Daily Reading: 1 Thessalonians 3-4

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another… so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness. (1 Thessalonians 3.12-13)

Devotional Thought: Even though the Thessalonian congregation was begun with much turmoil and affliction, Paul subsequently had great joy.  He wanted them to experience that same great joy, and he told them how: increase and abound in love!

From where does such love come?  Paul knew that it was the Lord who could give them an abounding love.  The Bible says that “God is love,” so if we want to experience bountiful love, we must go to its source.  Decide to love and then ask God to make that love grow!

Don’t expect that such love will come without a cost.  It cost Paul a great deal in the way of vulnerability.  We also - as we love someone - become vulnerable to heartache.  Anyone with children knows this is true!  As children grow, they do not always obey.  They assert their independence.  They have accidents and get hurt.  They make decisions that cause them and others grief.  They grow up and move away.  In all this, we pay the high price of love: pain.  Yet, amid these “growing pains” we discover a greater joy than we could possibly have known without them.

We pay a high price to love one another in the church, too.  We must sacrifice our own good for the good of our brothers and sisters.  We often are offended by words and actions we don’t understand.  We work and give and pray for the welfare of those who are not always adept at appreciation!  Yet, as God makes his love increase and abound in our willing hearts, something wonderful happens.  We are established in our faith.  We become more and more like him.  We become “blameless in holiness.”

Prayer: Help me, Lord, to love as you do - to love with your love.  Pour your love into my heart through the Holy Spirit, and then make it abound more and more.  Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 29.1-6

1 Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. 

3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters.

4 The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.

6 He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.