Receptivity and Gratitude

At the moment of our conception we are what we have received through no merit of our own. We have arrived in this world having decided nothing, sustained nothing and done nothing. All we have done is receive well.

Whatever we are are at that moment of our conception is the biological best we have received from those who conceived us.  From this unique beginning called ‘me’  I move outward into my experience of this world while continuously finding myself supported by things I did not produce and things I do not sustain. I breath air I did not create or sustain. I drink water I did not create or sustain.  I eat food I did not create or sustain.  I live and move among others who were brought to life here and sustained by others as I have been.

To not acknowledge my debt to things and people I did not create and I do not sustain is the most basic of sins against reality. And it is from this lack of gratitude for what we have received that so many evils grow in us and around us.  Where a spirit of ingratitude is strong, so is sin which is the inability to love as one should love.  

Where love stops ingratitude is always in the background.

Regardless of one’s vision of life and reality can anyone truly defend a human spirit that has no gratitude?  Would it be too much to ask all humans to be grateful for the good things they have not created or sustained?

A society that is not thankful wants to die while God wants us to live.

 “…give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God concerning you.” I Thess. 5:18

Bud McCord

Abide International

2017- A Very Good Year For Love

                                                                                                                                                                                                 2017

A Very Good Year For Love

"Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your heavenly Father in heaven is perfect."

Matthew 5:48

According to Jesus, being and behaving as our heavenly Father defines a very good year of human life.  Among the many perfect things the Father does every year, the Father "makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust." In other words, He loves and is generous to all mankind in very practical and life sustaining ways.

We would all be wise to understand that the goal of our discipleship is to perfect our love until it matches the Father's generous love.  We are all in this process of being perfected in love and this world is the perfect place for training in love. We are surrounded every day by the just and the unjust. We will not lack for opportunities to love in 2017.

No matter how perfectly or imperfectly you loved this year, the Father will not alter the goal of perfecting your love.  The best thing we can do to prepare for a good year of love is be honest about 2016 and pray for the grace to love better in 2017.  2017 will be a great year to abide in Christ as we remember without HIm we can do nothing.

Love is not optional for us.  We exist to love.  A very good year is measured by the quality of our love. May 2017 be our best year ever for love.

Bud McCord

Abide International

The Gift

                                                                                                                                                                                                   For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16

True love always inspires intentional, authentic and effective giving of ourselves to others. The one who genuinely loves is willing to give that which best communicates the depth of their willingness to give themselves to their beloved. So, a true giver always includes something of themselves in every gift.

The deeper our love, the more of our true selves we put into the gift we give.

That is why the Father gave us Jesus. In Jesus God is giving all of Himself to us.

That first Christmas the Father packed all of His fullness into Jesus just for us.

When we say we love someone, we are saying "The best I am and the best I have I am willing to give you at the right time, in the right measure and in the right way."  To withhold ourselves from another who needs us is the opposite of love.

Gift giving should always include giving something of ourselves to another.  It should be more than just giving something nice to another.

Seeing Jesus as God giving us Himself makes Christmas take on its true meaning.  Examine Jesus closely this  Christmas and you will see God giving you everything.

When someone asks what you got for Christmas.  Just say, "Everything!".

Bud McCord

Abide International

A Good Theology

Is your theology good?  Would a face to face meeting with Jesus concerning your personal theology go well for you? Would your theology pass the Jesus test?

In John chapter 5:38-47 Jesus has a very direct and honest conversation with the Jewish theologians of His day.  The conversation did not go well for the theologians.  They definitely did not pass the Jesus test.  Listen to Jesus’ evaluation of their theology.

“But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

“I do not receive honor from men. But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive.

How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God? Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust.For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

Notice the three things Jesus said they their theology did not give them.

1.     Life.  They thought they had found eternal life in the Scriptures so they did not need to go any farther to find life.  They especially did not believe they needed to come to Jesus for life.

2.     Love. They sought honor from men above the love of God.  God’s love had no home in them.

3.     Faith.  They knew Moses’ words but they did not believe them.  If they believed them they would have believed Jesus’ words.

In the end it will be Jesus who says whether our theology was good or not.  Jesus defines and approves theology.  Theology does not define or approve Jesus.

Bud McCord

Abide International

Armed With Love

True love is most evident when it faces danger and death for others unarmed. Look for weapons in Jesus' hands. In a very violent world Jesus held no weapon but love. No weapon could have loved us or died for us. Only Jesus lovingly and voluntarily facing danger and death unarmed could.

There will come a time in every believer's life when love will be the only weapon they can carry to save the lives of those they love.  Missionaries have understood this for centuries. Missionaries used to go to the nations to live, love and die unarmed. Most still do.

Depending on where we live in the world we may or may not bear arms legally. No matter where we may live we can always love for against love no law or weapon can permanently succeed.

In these violent days do we really believe in love's power? We will all find out when what we face can only be overcome by love.

"Love never fails." I Cor. 13:8

Bud McCord

Abide International

Resilience

Resilience seems to be the hot word for these turbulent times.  Resilience is the quality one needs to adapt to a constantly changing world.  It is the quality one needs to face and overcome the 24/7 news cycle of each day.  Without resilience nothing survives.

Jesus was way ahead of His time.  In fact, Jesus was from before time!  Jesus is the very source and definition of resilience.  Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.

In the Sermon on the mount Jesus defines resilience using one of the most necessary elements of life-Salt.

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men."  Matthew 5:13

Men step on anything that is not resilient.  Just take a drive through a city with a depressed economy that once thrived and you will see what being trampled underfoot by men looks like.

Every Christian can and should be resiilient because the very essence of resilience is Christ within.  One day at a time every disciple of Jesus can be renewed and resilient.  Jesus is bigger than any change that mankind faces. 

Bud McCord

Abide International

The Final Week and a Good Death

As Jesus lived his last week He knew certain things were true about Him.

"Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." John 13:1

During His final week He knew…

That His hour had come.

That He would leave this world and go to the Father.

That he had loved His own who were in the world.

That He loved them to the end.

Take a close look at this list of Jesus’ certainties.  See which of these are yours.

Can you say…

I know my hour will come.

I know I will go to the Father.

I know I am loving those given to me to love.

I know I will love them to the end.

Jesus lived with “the end in mind”  and so should we.  Our final week will come and our final week should even include a good death.  Jesus made this clear for us by the way His final week was full of certainty about who loved Him and who He had loved to the end. This is how His final week included a good death.

Make your final week certain by knowing right now who loves you and by loving right now who you should love.  Make your final week and death good starting today.

Bud McCord

Abide International

The Perfecting of Love

Imagine a world where every person believed that they exist to love.  Imagine every person in that world spending each day loving others and allowing God to perfect the quality of their daily love.  As hard as this kind of world is to imagine, the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be the beginning of this kind of  world.

Jesus died to forgive us for every thought and action that was not rooted in love for God and for our neighbor.  Having once and for all forgiven us by His death on Calvary, Jesus then came with the Father and the Spirit to make a home in each believer.  From this new home in us and with us the love of God is being perfected in us and through us one day at a time.

The world of perfected love is not an impossible dream.  This world of perfect love is already here in every one who has received Jesus and is cooperating with Jesus one day at a time.

As we all awaken each day in this world where it seems love is dying, we can say to ourselves “The love of God in Christ lives in me so I can love today. God in Christ by the Spirit will perfect my love today.”

Have no fear.  Love never fails.  Love has already been perfected in Jesus and the new world where love wins is already here.

" No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us."  I John 4:12-19

Bud McCord

Abide International

Why Focus on and Believe in Jesus?

Because only focusing on Jesus reveals to us what God is really like.

“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fulness should dwell.”  Col. 1:19

When we see Jesus we see the Father.  Seeing Jesus allows us to answer the fundamental questions of reality:  In Jesus do we see the kind of God we hope exists?  Does Jesus reveal the kind of God in whom we would seek refuge ?

When we focus on Jesus we see in flesh and blood what God thinks, feels and wants.  Focusing on Jesus we can decide if this is the God with whom we want to think.  Focusing on Jesus we can decide if this is the kind of God with whom we want to share our feelings.  Focusing on Jesus we can decide if this is the kind of God with whom we want to cooperate.

No amount of theological thinking about God  can replace focusing our full attention on Jesus. When we focus on Jesus  we meet the Father face to face.

Because only by believing in Jesus we become the  kind of people who can love continuously.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”  But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive;...” John 7:37-39

When we believe in Jesus as the drink that satisifes our inner thirst for love , the Holy Spirit becomes in us the river of  Jesus’ love which moves through our lives toward our neighbors.

As we believe in Jesus, He answers the second fundamental question of reality:  How can we become the kind of people we hope to be?  How can we love our neighbors as we love ourselves?  Believing in Jesus allows us to see and become  people who can  deliver love continuously by the Spirit in us.

Why focus on and believe in Jesus?

We focus on and believe in Jesus in order to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength  and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  We focus on and believe in Jesus because we exist to love God and our neighbor. Jesus makes both possible.

No other focus or belief can take us to this place of simultaneous Divine and human love. Only Jesus can take us to this place.  Focus on  and believe in Jesus. Only then love will flow toward God and others.   Without Jesus we can do nothing.  With Him our love can be perfected.

Bud McCord

Abide International