Cross-Centered Love (Part 5)

CROSS-CENTERED LOVE (Part 5)

"This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love; not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we ought to love one another." 1 John 4:9-11

Well here is the last installment of insights from Dr. Paul David Tripp on what "cross-centerd" love will look like in our lives. I trust it has been a helpful study:

33. It means being open to correction, loving criticism, and godly rebuke

34. It means believing in the body of Christ and recognizing that you are but one of the tools in God's big toolbox of redemption

35. It means being open to counsel and receptive to advice

36. It means being willing to go to bed tired and to awake to another day of calling

37. It means hiding God's Word in [my] heart and keeping His kingdom always before [my] eyes

38. If means refusing to become anyone's substitute messiah, but instead to point people to the presence and grace of Jesus

39. It really does mean looking out not only for [my] own interests, but also for the interests of others

40. It means building relationships, not just for the purpose of being relationally comfortable, but so that those relationships would be a workroom for redemption

41. It means loving people in such a way that they never feel like that are in debt to [me]

42. It means remembering that you are more like than unlike the people you are called to love

43. It means understanding that the call to love is a call to both word and deed

44. It means daily remembering Jesus, being in awe of the gift of his love, and living thankfully

Truth is often painful, isn't it? But the good news is that I can love with cross-centered love as I allow Christ to live HIS life in and through me. Just think what life will be like when love like this. It could be the beginning of revival ... and it still starts with YOU and ME. -- Bill Welte is President and CEO of America's KESWICK

DIGGING DEEPER: Proverbs 30; Exodus 23-24; Matthew 20:1-16

DIG THIS QUOTE: Let no extreme difficulty discourage you, and make you think, Oh! it is impossible relief can now come; What? Are not all things possible to him that hath all things in his hand? Yea, "All things are possible to him that believeth;" and it is possible for you to do all things through Christ strengthening you, even to overleap the highest walls, to break bows of steel in pieces, and wade through the deepest fords in your way. Ralph Erskine

DETERMINED DIGGING: Level 1 -- 2 Chronicles 7:14; Level 2 -- Psalm 19