Or Loving and Living
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Jesus’ Way
Love by any other name
still has thorns
the cost of love.
But you are nowhere without loving God.
Deuteronomy 4:10
How you once stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, “Assemble the people for me, and I will let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me as long as they live on the earth, and may teach their children so”;
.
2 Timothy 3:14-15
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
…
Words of Grace for Today –
…
Learning to fear God …
and
be instructed in salvation …
All the stuff that people put together to make there own salvation, even when they say that God provides the salvation, it’s just that they themselves have to earn it, and of course they have earned salvation (of course, of course) and all their enemies and ‘those other people’ have not and fail to because they just did not do and learn and believe the right things.
The truth is
fear of God is only the beginning of a really miserable life.
Fearing and loving God is the complete package,
because what God has already done and made most obvious in Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection –
namely God has offered salvation to every person of all time.
The only way to miss out is to resist and refuse and deny and turn away and rebel against the Holy Spirit’s work bringing us to believe.
From then on it’s all living as you were made and empowered to live:
righteous,
faithful,
loving,
kind,
and
working for justice for all.
A simple way to live,
just take up one’s cross and give up one’s life and find joy in giving life to others.
So we can do nothing to earn God’s Grace,
but we certainly can choose to turn away from Jesus’ Way and refuse to follow.
And that leaves us
fearing God and loving God
each day.