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Suggested Bible Readings for the Week of February 16, 2025:
God’s radical love in the Hebrew Scriptures – Psalm 23:6, 48:9-11, 59:10, 16-17 || The Bible contains several types of literature, each of which need their own interpretive lens. The Psalms were written as Hebrew poetry, likely to be sung, not just read or spoken. Readers today need to interpret elements of poetry like image,
metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole, and apostrophe (click here for a helpful guide to interpreting the Psalms as poetry). Today’s passages poetically sang of the “Already Not Yet” radical love of God. For us, “Already-Not Yet” means that on one hand, Christ’s Easter resurrection has “already” defeated death and love has overcome evil. On the other hand, the world around us is “not yet” fully restored to its intended wholeness. Long before Easter, Psalm 48 already sang of God’s faithful love, righteousness, and acts of justice. Where has God’s radical love “already” changed your life and the world around you? Thank God for how He is already working in and through your life. News and social media remind us every day that our world is “not yet” fully restored. Suffering, pain, and injustice are all around us. Psalm 59:16 said, “you (God) have been my stronghold, my shelter when I was distraught.” When has (or is!) God given you shelter when you have felt anxious? Easter means God already won the ultimate victory, but that doesn’t remove today’s pain. How does God’s radical love “already” give you hope and strength amid our world’s “not yet” realities?
Prayer: Lord God, thank you for your radical love, not just for me, but for all of creation. Help me find strength in your “already” radical love so that I can persevere and find hope through life’s “not yet” realities. Amen.
** “ḥesed is one of the richest, most theologically insightful terms in the OT. It denotes ‘kindness, love, loyalty, mercy’.... The Psalms effusively proclaim the steadfast love of God (e.g., Psalm 31:7, 32:10; 57:3; 59:10; 94:18; 143:12). God’s abiding love stabilizes (Psalm 94:18, “When I thought, ‘my foot is slipping,’ your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up”) and sustains life (119:88, “In your steadfast love spare my life, so that I may keep the decrees of your mouth”). God’s great self-disclosure, when allowing his glory to pass before Moses, includes ḥesed (Exodus 34:6-8).”
Prayer: Lord God, thank you for your radical love, not just for me, but for all of creation. Help me find strength in your “already” radical love so that I can persevere and find hope through life’s “not yet” realities. Amen.
** “ḥesed is one of the richest, most theologically insightful terms in the OT. It denotes ‘kindness, love, loyalty, mercy’.... The Psalms effusively proclaim the steadfast love of God (e.g., Psalm 31:7, 32:10; 57:3; 59:10; 94:18; 143:12). God’s abiding love stabilizes (Psalm 94:18, “When I thought, ‘my foot is slipping,’ your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up”) and sustains life (119:88, “In your steadfast love spare my life, so that I may keep the decrees of your mouth”). God’s great self-disclosure, when allowing his glory to pass before Moses, includes ḥesed (Exodus 34:6-8).”
Jesus' radically self-giving love – John 15:9, 12-17, Revelation 1:5-6 || New Testament Christians wrote often that Jesus' blood saved us (cf. Romans 3:25, Ephesians 2:13, Hebrews 9:14 and 12:24, 1 John 1:7 and Revelation 1:5). There is divine mystery, and lots of varied ideas, about exactly how that works—but no mistaking the teaching that, spiritually, the blood Jesus shed in a radical act of self-giving saves us. Bishop Michael Curry wrote that Jesus showed “what love looks like; giving of the self, even sacrificing the self for the good and well-being of others.” Jesus began John 15:9 with ten key words: "As the Father loved me, I too have loved you." Our love for others reflects God’s love for us the way the moon reflects the sun’s light. In what practical ways do you live out your commitment to love God and others? To what extent are you able to view self-giving, not self-gratification, as key to the kind of radical love that makes life genuinely worth living? How can our church be, above all, a living model of God's love for all people? Suppose you invited a non-religious friend to join you at church, and he or she asked, “Why should I go to your church?” How likely would you be to adopt Jesus' way of answering that question: “This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other”?
Prayer: O Lord, help me not to pretend to love as an outward disguise to hide my anger or pain. Let me love from my heart as your love overflows and bubbles out of me to bless others. Amen.
Prayer: O Lord, help me not to pretend to love as an outward disguise to hide my anger or pain. Let me love from my heart as your love overflows and bubbles out of me to bless others. Amen.
Jesus radically expanded “Love your neighbor” – Matthew 5:43-48 || We know that Jesus identified loving God and loving your neighbor as the “great commandments” (cf. Matthew 23:35-40). But in his sermon on the mount (which was not a one-time event, but a summary of the way he regularly taught about the Kingdom of God—cf. Luke 6:27-36), he expanded the meaning of loving your neighbor in ways that must have sounded, and may still sound, radical. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.” Dr. King went on in that sermon: “This is what Jesus meant when he said, ‘Love your enemies.’ I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself... every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear”. Do Dr. King’s words, and Jesus' words he quoted, inspire you to embrace Jesus' kind of radically self-giving love? In our
polarized society, how can love actively help to dismantle the “us vs. them” mentality and build bridges, even with
personal or social “enemies”? Jesus said loving your enemies makes you more like God, who “makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.” What kind of growth in character and maturity does it take to love your enemies? Did Jesus mainly mean altering your emotions to feel more affectionate toward them, or altering your behavior to act for their good? How can you become more like God in your willingness to act for the good of all?
Prayer: God, grant me the strength to trust that love is a powerful force against division and evil. Guide me to actively seek to build bridges, challenge personal prejudices, and confront injustices with a living faith that transforms my heart. Amen.
Prayer: God, grant me the strength to trust that love is a powerful force against division and evil. Guide me to actively seek to build bridges, challenge personal prejudices, and confront injustices with a living faith that transforms my heart. Amen.
“As I have loved you”—a radical standard for love – John 13:34-35, Romans 12:10, 1 Peter 1:22 || Jesus lived, and taught his followers to live, the Greek word “agape”—resilient, tenacious love. “God does not merely tolerate sinners: he loves them. God for all his ability to punish and for all his own spotless purity does not regard sinners with aversion, but with the costly love we see in the cross where Jesus died to save them.” Egyptians, Canaanites, Greeks or Romans did not believe their gods loved them. Christ followers believe Jesus showed that God loves you and that God’s love reshapes your life for the better. The most distinctive response Jesus asked of his followers was to live in God’s love, which meant loving one another. Jesus modeled that love by telling his followers he didn’t call them servants but friends (cf. John 15:15). Saying his new commandment was to love each other “just as I have loved you” took “love” to a whole new level. What, in practical terms, does it mean for you to love others as Jesus loves you? Peter urged his converts to “have genuine affection for your fellow believers, love each other deeply and earnestly.” Why? Because “you have been given new birth.” Isn’t it tragic that too many people in our society, even in churches, believe being “born again” means becoming angry, intolerant and judgmental of others? How did Jesus' and Peter’s teaching and example highlight the great difference between “liking” and the kind of radical love Jesus offered and called us to?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, keep teaching me how to love and show honor to others in ways that follow your model. Let my caring acts grow from seeing them as you do. Amen.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, keep teaching me how to love and show honor to others in ways that follow your model. Let my caring acts grow from seeing them as you do. Amen.
Loving “with action and truth” makes God visible – 1 John 3:16-19, 4:7-13 || These passages dived deep into love’s meaning, urging readers to move beyond sentimentality and translate love into concrete actions (1 John 3:16). This message came to early Christians who faced hardship—challenges from false teachers and potential persecution. 1 John emphasized the call to prioritize the well-being of others, even if it required personal sacrifice. This was founded on a central truth: "God is love" (1 John 4:8). This was a revelation of God’s very nature. If we stop to think about it, we know love is more than just a feeling. The agape that Jesus and the apostles taught was about action, even (as in Jesus' self-giving life and death) radical action. So, 1 John tells us that the agape we have received compels us to act. But how do we bridge the gap between the warm feelings our culture associates with love and the often difficult, even radical, choices that true, sacrificial love demands? John’s letter did not say that “God loves.” It added that amazingly significant word “is” — “God is love.” God could no more stop loving than an ocean could stop being wet. How does knowing, and seeking to understand, that love is the very essence of who God is transform your approach to loving others? How does your heart respond to the challenge of letting God’s love flow through you so that, in a world where “no one has ever seen God,” others can glimpse God through you?
Prayer: God, reveal to me the depths of your love, a love that asks for nothing in return. Grant me the strength to mirror that love not just in what I say but through my actions toward others. May they see and experience your love through me. Amen.
Prayer: God, reveal to me the depths of your love, a love that asks for nothing in return. Grant me the strength to mirror that love not just in what I say but through my actions toward others. May they see and experience your love through me. Amen.
Jesus: “Just as I have done, you also must do” – John 13:1, 4-5, 12-15 || The radical implications of the story in John 13 are easy to miss unless we understand what went on in the society Jesus lived in. “Washing others’ feet was normally a servile task. Dirt roads made feet dusty. Disciples served teachers rather than the reverse, and the one act of service specifically not expected even of them was dealing with the master’s feet.” Conditions are vastly different today. Most of us seldom walk on a dusty road with nothing but sandals on our feet. Usually today (though not always!) washing someone else’s feet is mainly symbolic and does little to actually make that person’s life better and more pleasant. But Jesus' disciples, acutely conscious of their relative rank in the group, all shied away from doing a slave’s work and washing the others’ feet. So, Jesus unblushingly, radically did the slave’s work. Then he pointedly told his status-conscious disciples, “I have given you an example: Just as I have done, you also must do.”
“The story in John 13 encourages us to ask this question: Are you—am I— worried about who appears to be the greatest, or are we focused on humbly serving others?” What’s your answer? How has it changed over time? Later that night Jesus prayed for his followers and said they “don’t belong to this world” any more than he did (cf. John 17:14). In what ways are you most attentive to this world’s values and interests? In what ways do you most sense your energy and focus shifting to God’s mission in this world and God’s offer of eternity beyond this world? In our baptism, as in Peter’s call to be an apostle, Jesus has washed us. Yet every day, we are “dragged through the dust,” just like the sandal-wearing disciples’ feet. What are some valuable real-life ways you can “wash the feet” of family members, neighbors, co-workers or other people?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, this is a hard prayer to pray. But I mean it: teach me how to find my greatest glory in serving you and others in the ways you have equipped me to serve. Amen.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, this is a hard prayer to pray. But I mean it: teach me how to find my greatest glory in serving you and others in the ways you have equipped me to serve. Amen.
Prayer Requests for the Week of February 16, 2025 ::
Birthdays: Courtney Toney, Andy Douciere, Stella Holloway, Brooklyn Toney, Channing Toney,
Gwen Scarborough, Layton Stampley
Anniversaries: Logan & Katie Morris
Anniversaries: Logan & Katie Morris
Dan Andrews, Clint Beckham, John & Judy Bonin, James Booker, Jennifer Boyd, Emily Bruyninckx, Bro. Aaron & Amanda Carpenter, John & Marlena Cherbini, Lillian Cochran Chenoweth, Doug & Donna Cook, Tommie Cook, Ruthie & Mike Cooper, Charles Darnell, Tristan Dupont, Tamie Dyer, Carey J. Ellis, Kelly Evans, Baby Deacon Hemphill, Claude & Dellie Hicks, Greg Hilburn, Laverne Hudson, Betty Sue, Todd & David Landrum, Steve Lawrence, Gavin Martin, Marty & Kay McClure, Wayne McManus, Shane Mees, Cole Morris, Rex Muegge, Gary & Sandra Pesnell, Cheryl & Leroy Ratcliff, Bonnie Rhodes, Henry Rice,
Don Scarborough, Edward Shoemaker, Carol Sorey, Ronnie Spencer, Caroline Spires, Nelwyn Spruell, Charlie & Peggy Thomason, John & Janice Thomason, Addison, Kasey & Hayes Thompson, J.C. Vandenberg, Parker Vidrine, Bud Vinyard, Benny Walker, Darryn Walker, Sarah Wallace, Lonnie Walters, Danny Watts, Edna Watts, Anita Wing, People struggling with disasters in North Carolina and California, Israel and persecuted Christians Worldwide, Missionaries Worldwide, Ongoing situation in Ukraine, Our Church, Our Community, and Our Country, Those injured in the New Orleans attack
Strickland Family, Family of Jackie Mason, Family of Drew McClure, Family of Virginia Sue Barr, Family of Judge Glynn Roberts, Family of Linda Rice, Family of Josephine Hightower, Family of Ray Christian, Family of Kareem Badawi (friend of Paula Cumpton’s grandson), Families of those killed the New Orleans attack