Loved and Loving

What are the chances you will be perfectly loved today?  Good?  Impossible? 100%?

If Jesus lives in your right now then your chances are 100%.  The same way Jesus was loved continuously and perfectly by the Father, Jesus invites you to abide in his continuous and perfect love each day.

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love." John 15:9

Never expect to be loved perfectly by the people in your world.  Never doubt that Jesus is loving you perfectly 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

Abide in the perfect love of Jesus and He will perfect the quality of your love and love the world through you.

Bud McCord

Abide International

Hunger and Thirst

And Jesus said to them,

“I am the bread of life.

He who comes to Me shall never hunger,

and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. John 6:35

Jesus promises He can satisfy the hunger and thirst we all experience.  What kind of hunger and thirst is it that He can satisfy?

Jesus satisfies the hunger and thirst that comes from seeking perfect love in a world of people that cannot produce it or sustain it.  Only Jesus can produce such love, sustain it and offer it as food and drink to all who believe in Him.

Think of the start of your day.  What kind of love will probably go unsatisfied for you this day?  You know what kind of perfect love will probably be out of your reach each day.  You can already feel the hunger and thirst for it in your inner life.

Will you be treated with dignity and respect today?  Will you be listened to and taken seriously?  Will you be shown compassion if you suffer?   Will you be forgiven if you fail?  Will these hungers and thirsts for perfect love go unmet for you today?

As you begin your day you can identify these potential hungers and thirsts.   By faith  take your hunger and thirst for dignity and respect to Jesus and ask Him to satisfy both.  Jesus will see your dignity and respect you. Eat and drink of His life and love for you.  Take your need to be listened to and taken seriously to Jesus.  He will listen to you and take you seriously. Eat and drink His life and love for you.   Even your hunger and thirst for compassion and forgiveness He will satisfy as you take them to Him alone. Eat and drink of His life and love for you.

Jesus is the table filled with every kind of love God sets for you each day in your inner life in the presence of all enemies of perfect love in your world.  Jesus is all the love you long to eat and drink each day from people in your world and often cannot find.

When you begin each day at the table where Jesus is the food and drink you will never need to expect the people of the world to love you perfectly.  Every day you live in this world Jesus will be the same beautiful food and drink of perfect love in you.  Eat and drink  one day at a time of the perfect life and love of Jesus in you and you will never hunger or thirst.


 

Touching Spiritual Substance

Every religious system has a list of activities which offer the way to touch the depths of true spirituality or spiritual substance.   In any religious community one must practice all the items on the list if one wants to be taken seriously as a true seeker of spiritual substance.

Those who do not see the group’s governing list as essential and fail to faithfully practice the list will be looked upon as spiritually less and in some religions suffer rejection or worse.  

Once a person accepts the list as the way to spirituality and begins to practice it faithfully that person becomes a slave to whoever wrote the list.  The desire to find our list and practice it runs deep in the human heart.  So deep, in fact, that we cannot truly rest until we feel we have touched true spirituality.

Jesus said in John 14:6 that He was the way, the truth and the life and that no man comes to God but by Him.  Jesus is the list that God wrote that directs to true spirituality.  Jesus is all God demands of us in order to touch spirituality.  This is why we can say “Jesus is all”.

If we want to touch true spirituality we must connect to Jesus as the list of all God requires of us. Touching this true spiritual substance is called being ‘of Christ”. Staying in the connection is called being “in Christ”.

We must become slaves of Jesus and Jesus alone.  He  is the source of the spiritual substance we long to touch.  Abide in Him and you are touching all the spiritual substance that God offers.

So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths,  which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Colossians 2:16-17
 

Bud McCord

Abide International

Listen Again

Do we really let the Bible say what is really says about Jesus?  Listen again to the words from Scripture and ask yourself if you have really let the Bible say what it says.

 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
John 14:6

“Without Me you can do nothing”
John 15:5

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth.”
Colossians 1:15-16

“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell…”
Colossians 1:19

“For in Him dwells all of the fullness of God bodily: and you are complete in Him…”
Colossians 2:9-10

“When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.”
Colossians 3:4

Listen again and again and again.  Let the Bible take you to Jesus and leave you there for all eternity.
 

Bud McCord

Abide International