Today’s Readings:
Isaiah 54
1 Corinthians 13
11 “O afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted,
Isaiah 54:11-13
Behold, I will set your stones in antimony,
And your foundations I will lay in sapphires.
12 “Moreover, I will make your battlements of rubies,
And your gates of crystal,
And your entire wall of precious stones.
13 “All your sons will be taught of the Lord;
And the well-being of your sons will be great.
The Lord says,
How are you weathering the storm? Are you letting the storm define you? Or are you letting Me define you? Is your character a reflection of the adversity you have faced? Or is it a reflection of the Father who loves you and teaches you how to live? Submit your heart to Mine. Submit your weary soul to Me. Don’t allow the storm to be an excuse for living outside of glistening hope. Don’t let the storm be the cause of disconnection and fraying relationships. Pursue Me more. Dig deeper into those heartfelt connections. Fight for them. Bring My healing balm to them, and don’t allow them to be a casualty of the storm.
13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13
Though the winds blow, and perhaps beliefs and understanding are put in stark contrast — don’t allow that to be your excuse to back away. Don’t allow the storm to tear, diminish or break those important connections and relationships. Fight for them in love. Lead with love, and leave the details behind if that’s what the moment requires. Preserving and choosing love when it is hard, when it is frustrating and when you seem worlds apart is the only way to ensure a fulsome celebration on the other side of the storm. Lean in with love and let go of opinions, issues and perspectives where they clash and break down connection. Truth will ultimately prevail, so don’t break the beautiful and important relationships and connections with which I have entrusted you on behalf of truth.
13 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
It’s not your job to wake everyone up. It’s not your job to badger them into seeing the truth. It’s your job to seek Me, seek the truth, pursue the truth and choose to love these dear ones I have placed in your life and your path for a reason. This is loving in the tension, and this is love that leaves you open. It marks you as a safe one to come to when the truth breaks wide open and their eyes can see it. Your love maintains that that connection and creates a safe place for discovery and admission of the truth as it happens.
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Don’t hold on so tightly to the truth that it doesn’t allow you to love. The truth can stand on its own. Release your tight grasp of it, and lean into love. Lean in to seeing the beauty of the world around you. Lean in to calling out the gold in those beautiful ones that I have place in your life who can’t yet see as clearly as you do. Rest in Me, and trust that I will bring them around just as I brought you around. Pray for them. Bless them. Encircle them with support and love. This is an acceptable act of worship — to love well amidst disagreement and polar perspectives. It will bring a great return and a great reward.
How to Respond
- Bless those in your life with whom you are not seeing eye to eye.
- Choose to live in immediate and radical forgiveness — not allowing any offense to take root in your soul.
- Pray, Lord, help me to trust You to bring my loved ones around to the truth. Help me to let go and stop making it my responsibility to wake them up to the truth. Help me to speak when You prompt me to speak up and to be quiet when You instruct me to be quiet.
- Declare, the Lord is love. He is patient with each one of us. He is revealing the truth in greater measure and in more obvious ways. He will make the truth apparent and undeniable to all.
- Decree, my good and healthy relationships are gifts from God. They will not be casualties of the storm. I will lean in to love. I will not allow being right to be my primary goal. My loved ones will wake up. They will see the truth, and they will join me to celebrate the great overcoming work of the Lord.
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