Love meetings make me laugh with beautiful joy that freely flows from my heart. Loving laughter is a wonderful thing. It connects people heart-to-heart and helps them to be open and honest with each other.
To open your heart to God is to open your heart to love and joy. Where there’s little visible love, God is being resisted. Where there’s lots of love and joy, God is being welcomed.
Love isn’t sentimentalism. It’s not a program. God is love! He cares enough to call all people to freely come to Him and to live moment-by-moment aware of and surrendered to His presence. People who continually respond to that invitation radiate love throughout the day.
When people who do that assemble themselves together, heart-changing love, compassion, and forgiveness fill the room. They visibly spread from person to person as released by God’s Spirit. Christ is living in and manifesting His love and healing presence through all those who embrace and obey His inner promptings.
When the members of the body of Christ begin to listen to and individual act in response to the voice of “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” the Gospel story is clearly demonstrated in their midst as a sense of awe fills the room. I’ve seen that happen many times. The first time I experienced it, it completely changed my life and ever since then I have continually hungered and thirsted for that kind of literal manifestation of God’s love. “O taste and see that God is good!”
Attraction to religious distraction often traps Christians in spiritual inaction and blinds us to the moral crises within and around us. The purpose of church shouldn’t be to get people to learn or to repeat what a pastor says, but to train them to directly hear God. It should be a loving, interactive support group humbly helping people discover and obey the voice of God in their conscience (They say that church is family, but how many families line the members up in rows to hear a weekly lecture?)
The biggest and most ignored crises facing humanity and our planet is the moral crises that has produced a lack of self-sacrificing love. The neglect and avoidance of self-denying love has been driven by the modern movement to ignore, deny, reject, and refute the voice of conscience. Following the human conscience leads to living by God’s moral standards and to speaking the truth with love and genuine respect for others.
If you aren’t listening to and obeying your conscience, the law of God written on your heart, you’re in a moral crisis that is pulling you away from genuine love, whether you know it or not. The best investment you can make for your happiness and peace of mind is to listen to and obey your conscience.
When people don’t have the freedom to speak against the things their conscience says are morally wrong, they aren’t free. They’re trapped in an unloving moral crisis. No person, group, organization, or government has the right to try to make you say, do, or support anything you believe is morally wrong.
Be conscious
Of your conscience.
To decide
To set aside
Your conscience
Is to ride
Life’s riptide
Without God
As your guide.
That kind of pride
Is dangerous.
There’s a popular pill that people are using to kill their unborn child–a kill pill. My conscience tells me that taking the life of a developing human being is morally wrong. My conscience tells me that all types of cruelty and unkindness are wrong whether through words or actions.
To treat the action
Of procreation
And heart-connection
As recreation
And nothing more
Is morally wrong.
The Christian message of Easter means that Jesus is here now (wherever you’re reading this) at this very moment. (He’s speaking in your conscience.) Listen and let Him lead you out of your moral crises and empower you to follow Him with love and joy. Where do you interact with and surrender to the risen Jesus?
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 