JOHN 15:9, 10a – As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.
THEME OF THE DAY. RESTORED, STRENGTHENED, MOTIVATED. Ever have one of those days? Sure you have. You know what it is like. The alarm goes off or you simply wake up, not refreshed, but already tired and you haven’t even gotten out of bed! Just the thought of all that faces you in the new day makes you want to pull the covers over your head and just hide. You don’t feel motivated to attack the day. In fact, you would like a “sick day”, a day off, maybe a week off, with no responsibilities, no demands, no tasks, no appointments, no calls, no meetings, and basically just let the day be all about yourself. All of us have those days but staying in bed and just letting the day go by is unrealistic. As for a day or week off, sure they come, but they are short. They don’t remove all life’s demands and responsibilities from us. Vacations end. Days off end. All they do is allow us to get off the fast-lane of life, pull over into a rest stop for a brief time, knowing we must return to the hectic “traffic” in our lives.
Having one of those days is really a result of the catastrophic event in the Garden of Eden. When our first parents sinned, a whole lot of bad stuff happened. Not only the worst – broken relationship with God, but other things like fatigue, like lack of motivation, like “bad days”, like grumpiness, like complaining, and the list goes on and on. But God came down. Immanuel, God with us, came to our rescue. And through the glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can actually overcome “one of those days” by being restored, strengthened, and motivated by the most powerful and enduring thing in all the world and beyond – God’s love.
Have we thought about that recently? Not that we are loved by God, which is a motivator in and of itself, but that God’s love is powerful? That His love is strength for the weary? It is. Work our way through this prayer of the Apostle Paul and pay attention to the words “strength” and “power” . . .
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19). The context of the prayer is knowing and experiencing Christ’s love as a source of strength and power to control our lives. Start praying this prayer daily, not as a formula, but as a heart cry to live. As God answers it, we will know the restoring, strengthening, and motivating power of His love on a regular basis.
Does God love us? Absolutely. Meditate on today’s scripture to see how much, but don’t stop there. Go beyond to see that His love is not just to be marveled over. It is to be prayed for and lived out daily by appropriating faith as our source of strength and power, especially when we are having “one of those” days!
PRAYER: “Father, help me believe and cling to the power of Your love restoring strength and motivating me to live for You.”
QUOTE: “God’s love is so powerful it will strengthen the weary and motivate the unmotivated to live for God’s glory.”