DEVOTIONAL BY BILLY GRAHAM – HOPE FOR EACH DAY

Compassion and Love

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. – 1 JOHN 4:11

Charles Allen once made this statement: “Some people seem to have such a passion for righteousness that they have no room left for compassion for those who have failed.”

I pray that would never be true of us. God, our Father, has shown us such great kindness and gentle mercy. May we ever reach out to the lost in compassion and love to bring them gently to Jesus Christ. Jesus, “when He saw the multitudes, … was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd” (Matt. 9:36).

Let me share these lines from an unknown poet:

Just to be tender, just to be true,

Just to be glad the whole day through,

Just to be merciful, just to be mild,

Just to be trustful as a child:

Just to be gentle and kind and sweet,

Just to be helpful with willing feet, …

Just to let love be our daily key, That is God’s will for you and me.

DEVOTIONAL BY CHARLES STANLEY – ON HOLY GROUND

Unconditional Love

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  – 1 John 4:7

God’s love for you stands unmatched by anything this world has to offer. Only His love can:

• calm the restlessness of your soul.
• heal any hatred you have experienced.
• change worry and doubt to hope and security.
• resolve the anger and bitterness that come from disappointment.
• give you a sense of purpose, self-worth, and hope.

God never grows tired of you. He sees the span of your life. His eye is on the potential that your life holds.

He spends each moment completely absorbed in thoughts of you—developing you, molding you, and blessing you.

So often we miss His blessings because we worry about what we should or should not do. Questions fill our minds: Did I do it right? Is God pleased with me?

God loves you, and His love will never change. He has a plan for your life, and you will succeed. The key is to remain focused on Him and not on who you think you should be.

Don’t waste time comparing yourself to others. Many who are single wonder why God has not answered their prayers for a husband or wife. He has. He has given you Himself, and in His timing He will satisfy the longing of your heart in the way that is best for you.

DEVOTIONAL FROM POSTCARDS FROM HEAVEN – CLAIRE CLONINGER

Here’s How To Share Your Love

Dear Child,

You have told me that you love me, and you long to prove your love.  But how? You wonder.  What do I desire of you?  Will I be impressed with lofty words or fasts or sacrifices?  No.  Here is the way to show me your love.  Here is the way to my heart.  Break the chains of injustice.  Stand for the oppressed.  Free those around you who are in bondage.  Welcome strangers.  Share your food with the hungry, and open your home to those who have no place to go.  And don’t get so busy helping the needy that you forget your own family.  Love your wife, your husband, your parents.  Listen to your children, and let them know they are important to you.  When you do these things, then you will feel my pleasure and share my delight.  For your light will break forth like the dawn and all that is in your own soul will be healed.  You will call me, and I will answer.  I will continually guide you.  I will satisfy your deepest needs and strengthen you.  And you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

To show your love for me, love others – God

JOHN 13:31-35

³¹ When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. ³² If God is glorified in him,^[a] God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

³³ “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

PSALM 37:3-9

Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
⁴ Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

⁵ Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
⁶ He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.

⁷ Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.

⁸ Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil.
⁹ For those who are evil will be destroyed,
but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

DEVOTIONAL BY OSWALD CHAMBERS – MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST

The Divine Commandment of Life

. . . be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect —Matthew 5:48

Our Lord’s exhortation to us in Matthew 5:38-48 is to be generous in our behavior toward everyone. Beware of living according to your natural affections in your spiritual life. Everyone has natural affections— some people we like and others we don’t like. Yet we must never let those likes and dislikes rule our Christian life. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1:7), even those toward whom we have no affection.

The example our Lord gave us here is not that of a good person, or even of a good Christian, but of God Himself. “. . . be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In other words, simply show to the other person what God has shown to you. And God will give you plenty of real life opportunities to prove whether or not you are “perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Being a disciple means deliberately identifying yourself with God’s interests in other people. Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

The true expression of Christian character is not in good-doing, but in God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your life, not just good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian’s life is that the supernatural becomes natural in him as a result of the grace of God, and the experience of this becomes evident in the practical, everyday details of life, not in times of intimate fellowship with God. And when we come in contact with things that create confusion and a flurry of activity, we find to our own amazement that we have the power to stay wonderfully poised even in the center of it all.