2015
last 11 minutes of 2014.
To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
the labs never fail to amaze me at Piper's gift for teaching the word.
As the pursuit of love continues in 2015, Jon Bloom strikes again with 7 resolves.
Relationships of love trade on the currency of trust. If trust can be broken, love dries up and the church will split, the small group will fall apart, the marriage will break up, the friendship will disintegrate, and the professing Christian will walk away from the faith. When love dries up, Christianity dries up. So to destroy love, Satan targets trust. It's the quickest way to kill love.
Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). This love - John 15:12-13 love, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 love, 1 John 3:16-18 love - is the single greatest evidence that we belong to Christ. It surpasses spiritual giftedness, social justice action, and martyrs’ boldness in importance (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
This is precisely why Satan seeks above all to destroy such love between Christians. And it’s why we find it so difficult to love - our love is under assault. And in the middle of it all, it appears like we are wrestling one another when we’re really wrestling with cosmic powers of darkness that are attacking Christ’s kingdom (Ephesians 6:12).
So if Satan seeks to destroy our love for one another, and he routinely seeks to do that through corrupting our trust in one another, then we must redouble our resolve to vigilantly protect our love by guarding our trust