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The Lord’s insight. He who has believed thinks of Jesus in the past. He who is believing thinks of Jesus always in the present moment.

John 3:16: “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.”

Acts 16:31: “And he brought them out and said, sirs what must I do to be saved? So, they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, and you and your household.”

John 3:16 is perhaps the most quoted and clearest expression of what we must do to be saved. In this scripture Jesus wasn’t talking directly to believers or to the lost gentiles, He was talking to a lost ruler.

You see, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus secretly and told Him that they knew Jesus had to come from God because no one could do that things He did unless God were with Him.  Nicodemus didn’t see Jesus as God, he saw Jesus as the evidence of God.

At this point, perhaps Nicodemus wasn’t talking about being saved. He didn’t even know he needed to be saved. Still, he wondered enough about the Lord to talk to Jesus secretly about what he knew. Perhaps Nicodemus found himself believing what he knew about Jesus. He could have been afraid of believing.

In Acts 16:31 a jailer wanted to know what he had to do to be saved. The disciples made it clear to him. It wasn’t enough for the jailer to know what, he had to believe what he knew to be saved. The Lord was clear to Nicodemus back then. Jesus told him he had to be believing of what he thought was only information.

Until he talked with Jesus, Nicodemus didn’t allow the knowledge he had about Jesus to bring him to a place where he was believing in what that knowledge really meant. Nicodemus knew if he started believing in what he knew it would change who he was. He would indeed be born again.

Could some of us be like Nicodemus? We hang onto what we know but we resist allowing ourselves to start believing what we know because believing means changing. What we know about Jesus is not the same thing as believing in what we know about Jesus.

James 2:19 tells us “You believe there is one God.  You do well.  Even the demons believe – and they tremble.” I don’t believe the demons’ belief will get them everlasting life. Demons believe but they are not believing. They don’t change.

Perhaps there is more to John 3:16 than we have allowed ourselves to see. God says whoever believes in Him will have everlasting life. Unlike demons, our belief should move us to become believing. We can believe the facts of what God says or we can be believing in the facts of what He says really means to us.

To have eternal life, we must come to a point where we stop and say we believe in the Lord. Then we must leave that point and start believing in what it means to believe in Him. Perhaps to believe that Jesus is Who He says He is and believing what all that means about us and for us is what Jesus is after.

He is our life in the present moment when we are believing in Him in the present moment. If we want what Jesus promised Nicodemus, we must believe and we must be believing. You may not enter the womb again, but when you are believing in your belief in the Lord, you will live each day like you are born again and again and again, dying to what you know and living to what is at work in you about the Lord.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight. Expectation should come with tolerance. Tolerance should never be without expectation.

John 8:10-11: “Woman, where are those accusers of yours?  Has no one condemned you? She said No one Lord. And Jesus said to her, neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”

John 5:14: “Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, see you have been made well.  Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

Recently, I was walking into church and ahead of me was a teenage girl who was dressed like she was just born. Her diaper didn’t cover much of what it should have covered. She walked with what I believed were her parents. I must confess. I was appalled at how she was dressed entering the church.

I know, I know, some of you might say to me, lighten up a bit. At least she was at church. That’s a good thing. I don’t disagree with that. Still, church hasn’t been the same for me since I saw that. I have prayed about me more than I think about her. I want to make sure I am not judging someone by the way they dress.

I have examined myself inside out. I have asked the Lord to examine me inside out. If there is something lurking within me that would make me question another person’s belief and faith, I want to know that. I want to root it out of me.

I don’t want to excuse my own behavior and thoughts about that young girl by saying I’m no better than she is because we all have our faults. Most believers would say something like that. But they would still have a judgmental view of that young lady.

So, this message is about me and my conversation with the Lord about how that young girl made me feel about me.  When it comes to the church, I don’t care for pastors and church staff who do trendy things like wear skinny jeans, tight clothes, men who wear shoes with no socks, ladies who wear jeans with holes in them, men who wear hats in church.

Yes, this is me. But it is also me to accept that my belief and my walk is mine and yours is yours. I do not want to judge anyone before I let myself be judged by the Lord. Still, there are some things I would rather not see as a part of the church where I choose to worship.

A church can be welcoming. I guess the opposite of that is the church that stands out and points fingers. A church can be tolerant. I guess the opposite of that is the church that is so strict the people faint. A church can be loving, and I guess the opposite of that would be the church that loves only those who love like the church.

For me, after praying about my heart, here is what I believe works for me and perhaps it might work for many of us. I came to the Lord many years ago just as I was at that time. That is the only way you or me or anyone else can initially come – just as we are.

But I have learned that I don’t keep coming just as I was. When Jesus said go and sin no more, when He said, sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you, He was saying I have expectations that you will change so I will be tolerant and understanding and patient and noncondemning while I wait for you.

The church that works best for me is the church that expresses its expectation by showing its tolerance. Love without expectation is harmful. Mercy without expectation is harmful. Acceptance without expectation is harmful.

It is through my expectation, first of myself, and then towards others, that I will show my love and tolerance and acceptance and grace and understanding.  Jesus does this for us all day every day. I pray I can do it for more days than not. Consider allowing your expectations to reflect your tolerance.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight. Itching ears will be drawn to a perverse conversation.

Genesis 3:4: “Then the serpent said to the woman, you shall not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

2 Timothy 4:3: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth.”

A few years ago, while I worked in an office setting, a young lady came to me and told me she was a witch. She went on to tell me of all the things witches worshipped.  She told me that if I didn’t start deferring to her that she would cast a spell on me.

Well, I didn’t know what to say.  I didn’t know anything about a witch except for what we see in the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” But I didn’t care to know anything about them or her. So I told her, she could cast all the spells she thought she could cast.

I let her know while she worshiped a lot of things, that I tried to serve the creator and maker of the things she worshipped. I told her I was sure, the Lord Whom I worshipped and served, would take her spell and cast it back on her.  And even if He didn’t, she would not get any more respect from me by threatening me with her foolishness.

That was the end of our conversation.  We never had another conversation about me allowing her to have the spotlight on our team. I guess I didn’t react the way she thought I would react.

I have always thought that we have two ears so that we can hear more of what the Lord wants to say to us.  And we have only one mouth because its easier to keep it closed and listen before we speak. We will have better and more fulfilling lives when we learn to listen more and to speak less.

Listening is how we come to get perverse thinking into our lives.  Perverse listening leads to perverse thoughts.  Perverse thinking is cunningly evil. It takes a fundamental truth and twists it into a tantalizing lie. It its easy for us to fall for perverse talk because we may have itching ears.

Eve didn’t need to respond to the serpent but she did. She wanted to hear what he had to say. And even when he twisted God’s command into a perverse idea of some other truth, she listened even more. She fell from the truth for a lie because she had itching ears.  Ears that wanted to hear the possibility of something different.

Paul warns Timothy of a coming time when people would no longer listen to sound teaching. Instead they would listen to stupid stuff that would reshape their desires to hear more stupid stuff.  They would listen for those things that aligned with their worldly thinking and fall away from Godly thoughts.

Perhaps we are in that time today. We should watch that we do not have itching ears.  If a person tells you they are a witch if might be better for you to simply ignore the foolishness and move on.  If a teacher tells you there are more than two sexes, it might be better for you to simply ignore the stupidity and move on.

If a doctor tells you a man can have a baby, it might be better for you to ignore the stupidity and the doctor, and move on.  Perverse talking is disguised as enlightened talk by enlightened people.  Learn never to listen to foolishness especially when it comes from an expert in a field of fundamental truths.

So keep yourself guarded from foolish conversations.  Guard what you hear and what you actually want to hear. If an astronaut tells you he saw the sun rise in the west, tell him he was obviously looking at things upside down and move on.

The Lord doesn’t want our witness of Him to be watered down by itching ears just waiting to hear something perverse so we can show how smart we are. Our greatest witness is this. To stand firmly on the Word of God and by listening to that only, we speak more boldly of our Lord by refusing to engage in the foolishness that comes from a perverse generation of people.

Perverse people will say a lot of perverse things. Let them talk to themselves. We don’t need to defend what the Lord has said.  He needs no defense. We proclaim the truth. We don’t ever need to defend it from perverse talk.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Importance of Little Things

The Lord’s insight. Sometimes, we think the Lord must part the sea just so we can step out of our bathtub.

Matthew 17:20: “So Jesus said to them, because of your unbelief.  For assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.”

2 Kings 5:13: “And his servants came near and spoke to him and said, my father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, wash, and be clean?”

In Matthew 17, the disciples wondered why they could not cast a demon out of a young boy. When they asked Jesus, He told them it was because of their unbelief.  They expected they had to do something great to deliver something great.

Then in 2 Kings 5:13, Naaman, was seen as a great, honorable but proud man, but he had leprosy.  He had gone to see the prophet Elisha to seek healing from God.  He was told to go wash himself in the Jordan river.  He was offended by being asked to do such a simple thing. He expected God Himself would have appeared to do something great to bring about something great.

Sometimes we need to remember, we don’t need to face the big things in life with the biggest things we have.  Perhaps we must remember it’s the little things we are willing to give up that move the big things in life that need to be moved.

The disciples had walked with the Lord daily, yet they saw more of their unbelief than their faith. They needed to give up a place for unbelief to live so that just a tiny bit of faith could thrive.

Naaman was a big man who thought big things had to happen in a big way to deliver him from the incurable disease of his day. Naaman had to give up his pride so that a little bit of humility could thrive.

Unbelief never brings relief to us; it keeps us from having what we want to have.

Pride never delivers us from anything; it makes us the incurable thing of our time.

The Lord gives us many of these little things so that we can enjoy lives that are free from the cancers of the day or so that we can overcome the big things we think we face.

Before we set out to do anything for anyone, let’s check ourselves to make sure we have allowed the little things the Lord wants to do in us to thrive.

Often times it is pride, unbelief, anger, selfishness, condemnation, and things like these are the very things that keep us in the mess we live in. We cannot see how we will get out of the tub of water because we refuse to open the drain.

If you want your child to be protected from evil, is it too little a thing for you to accept that the Lord might ask you to stop playing with evil?  If you want someone to be delivered from alcoholism, is it too little of a thing to accept that the Lord might ask you to stop drinking?

When we learn to give up the little things, we allow the great things to happen.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight. It is God who Fathered you; it is man He used to do that.

Deuteronomy 32:18: “Of the Rock Who begot you, you are unmindful and have forgotten the God Who fathered you.”

If God had not begotten our spirits, we would not exist as the humans we are today. In our humanity, we are all the products of our earthly parents. They are our earthly mothers and fathers. But we have a heavenly Father, who is God, who begot our spirits. Without the Spirit Being that God begot in you, there would be no human being of you.

A man and a woman cannot birth any child that God has not already begotten in the spirit. In a way, we spend a lifetime where our spirits are trying to live through our humanity that our earthly parents helped to bring forth. Moses, in Deuteronomy 32, warns the people of Isreal that they had begun to live like human beings born only to earthly parents rather than the begotten children of God.

That was a long time ago, but if we live with the awareness that we are children of God, we can see in us today many of the things Moses saw in the people then. Moses’ warning to the people may be relevant to us today also.

In Deuteronomy 32:18, Moses warned the people they had become unmindful of the Rock, Jesus, who was their heavenly Father.  In 2026, in many ways, we have become a people who are unmindful of the things of the Lord and more mindful of the things of our own hearts.

In Deuteronomy 32:3-4, Moses proclaims the name of the Lord and the greatness of God. He reminds the people that God is our Rock. All His work and all His ways are perfect. He warned the people they had become corrupted and removed themselves from being His children.

In 2026, it seems as if we remind God more that He reminds us. We want the Lord to know we can be rocks of our own. We want Him to know we can know what is right and wrong based on our own morality. We want to remind Him our ways are perfect when we focus on each person. We want Him to know we are more perfect today than we have ever been. We are our own children and our own parents.

In Deuteronomy 32:20, Moses tells the people that God said He would hide His face from them. He would wait to see what would be the end of their own making, for they were a perverse generation, children in whom there was no faith.

In 2026, could it be that have hidden God from our face? Could it be that we have removed Him from many aspects of our lives? Could it be that all that we are able to do on our own is the beginning of the end of our own work and doings? Is it possible we have replaced fundamental Godly truths with fundamental human errors, and this is our end?

And could it be that in 2026, because we have removed God from most all places in life, that we have no need to live with faith. And since we live with no faith, we must live by what we can believe in ourselves and of our own doings.

Indeed, when we consider all this, we should wonder if we have made ourselves children who have no Father. And if we are children with no Father, we will be left to our own ways where we argue among one another trying to get one another to live the way we believe we should live more than to live the way God wants us to live.

So, in 2026 and thereafter remember, you are begotten. You have a heavenly Father. You did not beget yourself. Without a heavenly Father and faith, it is impossible for us to live in truth about anything.

Live A Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight.  When God asks you for something it’s usually because He wants to give you something.

John 4:7: “A woman of Samaria came to draw water.  Jesus said to her, give Me a drink.”

John 4:15: “The woman said to Him, Sir give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

Matthew 11:28: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

You may know of this scripture where Jesus meets this Samaritan woman at a well when she comes to draw water. It’s where I get the reference “Moment at the Well.”  Jesus asks her to give Him a drink of water. When she questions Him, Jesus tells her if she knew who He was, she would have asked Him and He would have given her living water.

She responded to Him by saying, “Sir, give me some of this living water.” Jesus asked her to do something so that He could give her something. In Matthew 11, Jesus is teaching the people when He asks them to come to Him and He would give them rest. Come and He will give.

Has Jesus ever asked you, “do you really know Who I am?” Do we know where He comes from?  Do we know why He is here in our lives?  Do we know what He wants to do for us? He asks us to believe on Him, that He is the Son of God, so that He can give us eternal life.

So, for those of us who are wearied, for those who are tired of drawing water each day, for those who get up each day and can barely stand on our own, for those of us who can see no relief from the difficult things life brings to us each day, for those of us who work hard and get little, for those of us who are laden with worries and challenges that won’t go away, perhaps we should cry out “Lord give me some of the Life from above that You offer.

Listen, the Lord, does not give you water that comes from the ground.  He gives you water from above where He lives. He does not give you life from earth; He gives you Life from above.

He does not wake you so you can live through another hard day. He lifts you up above what is here, so you can live daily in the freedom He offers when you live through Him not just with Him.

He does not stand by and watch you work hard and get little. He stands with you so that you are blessed, working at the little things He asks so He can give you more of what things others work hard to have.

He does not simply stand by and watch you live under the weight of worries and burdens that keep you from focusing on Him.  He relieves you of what burdens you by connecting you to the yoke He pulls so that He pulls your weight for you as you travel with Him.

So, let today be the day you respond to His cry that you give Him a drink. When you give Him what He asks you to give, you open your hands and arms to receive more of what He wants to give you.

He is asking you to give Him a drink of your worries and He will give you freedom from worry. He is asking you to give Him a drink of your burdens and He will give you an ability to move freely with all that you encounter.  He is asking you to give Him a drink of your doubts about life and He will give you confidence that doubt is nothing but a step before a firm belief and faith.

If He asks you to give Him a drink of your unbelief, it’s because He wants to give you faith that comes from above. If He asks you to give Him your defeats, it’s because He wants to give you victory that comes from above. If He asks you to give Him some love, it’s because He wants to give you more Love that comes from above.

Lord, I want more of what you offer from above, so please ask me what you want me to give to You so that You can send me more of the things from above that You have waiting for me.

Live A Delivered Life.

Accepting and Claiming

The Lord’s insight. If you still have more to leave than what you have left behind, you are closer to where you were than where you should be.

Ruth 1:16: “But Ruth said, entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you.  For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”

Acts 9:20:” Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.”

Sometimes our relationship with the Lord might seem like it is stuck in the same place. For many of us, our relationship with the Lord may actually start this way and never change. Accepting the Lord should tell us more about who He is and about who He promises we can be.

We can get the feeling we are stuck in the same place because we won’t give up who we are and what we have now so that we can become who we should be and have what we are promised. Think of it this way. We keep playing with our old lives, trying to get a new experience rather than forsaking our old life for a new life and new the new experiences that come with the new life.

In Ruth 1:16, she is in a way saying to Naomi, her mother-in-law, please don’t ask me to go back to the place I was and to the person I was before I met you.  I have left that life behind me. I have accepted the new life I believe I will have when I go with you. I will stay where you stay. And I claim the same God that you claim.  Ruth accepted something new and she claimed something she never had.

In a like way, it is said in Acts 9:20 that Saul went from being a persecutor of the church to Paul, a preacher of the gospel. He went from being called Saul to being Paul, and from being a persecutor to being preacher. How did this happen? Well Paul left all that he was before He met Jesus, and he accepted the Lord’s call to live a new life. He claimed the Lord as his Savior.

Many of us feel no different in our lives as believers because we do not accept and claim. We must accept the promise of eternal Life the Lord offers us, and we must claim the life the Lord wants us to live daily as we wait. The Lord doesn’t want us to find more enjoyment in hanging on to all our old ways while we keep the promise of a new way of life as an unwrapped gift.

We can know if we have accepted the promise and claimed the life He wants for us by looking at ourselves today to see how much of what we were yesterday still lives in us. If we have not forsaken much, we probably have not moved much.  If we do not see what we left behind, we probably still live in those things. If we find more comfort and enjoyment in remaining who we are we may be stuck having an unwrapped promise.

If we have claimed the life that Christ wants us to live daily, we will be different tomorrow from the way we are today. If we are not feeling any different, we are probably not any different. If we are taking into our tomorrows the things we should forsake today, we are probably still living our old lives only with knowledge of the promise of a new life.

So, start each day accepting what it means to have Eternal Life. We cannot rightly have the new while holding to the old. And let’s live each day claiming the life that Christ wants us to live and forsaking the life we lived to ourselves. We must accept His promise, and we must claim that we are His and He is ours.

Lord, encourage each of us to not turn back from following You. Where You go, we want to go. Where You live, we want to live. We want to be one of the people You call Yours. And we want You to be our God. Help us to forsake all that keeps us from this. We want to accept your Promise, and we want to claim You as our Lord and us as your children.

Live A Delivered Life.

Wisdom follows nothing.

The Lord’s insight. Wisdom is more important than wealth.

Proverbs 4:7: “Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.”

 Proverbs 1:4: “To give prudence to the simple. To the young man knowledge and discretion.”

If you are a parent, you know this. There is much you would like to share with your kids but there is not enough time to do that. And more importantly, your kids don’t always want to hear what you have to say. God saw that we would be this way with Him too. There is not enough time, or books hold all that He wants to tell us.

God did something about this. Knowing that we would not listen to Him; knowing that we would not read His Word; and knowing that we would not hear anything but what we wanted to hear, He made wisdom available to those of us who are willing to know how to view life in a better way.  Because how we view life determines how we will live life.

An old man sent his two sons to a land far away.  He told them to look at the land and let him know if it would be a good place for them to sell the shoes they made.  The oldest son saw that the people of the land didn’t wear shoes, so he reported back to his father, “there is no chance to sells shoes there because none of the people wear shoes.”

The youngest son saw the same thing. But he reported back to his father, there is great opportunity to sell shoes there because none of the people wear shoes. How could this be? How could they see the same thing but arrive at different perspectives?

Well, its simple.  One brother lacked wisdom and the other thrived with wisdom. Wisdom is the key to your life. It is the key to everything important to you. It is the key to good health. It is the key to great relationships. It is the key to any success you may have in life.

Wisdom is the principal thing. But it is not learned from what you do.  It follows nothing. It is revealed in how you think and in how you live.  It is the reason for the way you live and for all that you do. Wisdom is the principal thing to us. But it is nothing if we do not make it the principal thing.

This is what I mean. God made wisdom the principal thing to how we live. It is principal whether or not we make it principal to us. Nothing can take the place of what wisdom will do for how successfully we live. Whether we recognize we need to be saved or not, all people need to be saved.

Jesus saw this when God sent Him to that land of people far away from heaven.  Jesus could have reported back to God “Let’s now waste our time. The people there are selfish and want only what they want.” Good thing He did not do this. Jesus saw exactly who we are as people and still He said to Himself, “they all need Me.”

Because we lack wisdom, we make hard things harder than they should be. We make simple things more complex than they are. And we make awful things from the best things that we have. It doesn’t make much sense. But nonsense is exactly what follows a lack of wisdom.  We do not have the ability to make sense of what makes no sense to us when we lack wisdom.

So then, what do we do with this message? If you have wisdom as your principal thing, you are likely to see how you should adjust your life so that wisdom leads. Wisdom never follows. It is either leading or it is not present at all.

This is a getting message. In all your getting, get wisdom first. Before you get a job, get wisdom.  Before you get a degree, get wisdom. Before you get married, get wisdom. Before you get your next meal, get wisdom. When you get wisdom, all the things you want to get will come to your more easily when those same things will escape others.

The principal thing is not to have more of what life has to offer, it is to have just a little bit of the thing that will make life give you what it keeps from you because you lack wisdom.

Live A Delivered Life.

Whose Way Do We Want

The Lord’s insight. What God restricts man want to allow. What God allows man want to broaden.

Genesis 3:6: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.  She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”

Matthew 7:13: “Enter by the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

I believe Adam and Eve had many times seen the tree from which God told them not to eat. How else would they know to stay away from its fruit? But after being tempted by the devil, Eve saw the tree in a different light; now she wanted to have the knowledge of good and evil. She wanted what the devil said more than what God said.

So, she and Adam ate the fruit. They decided to follow their way to a place of their choosing rather than to follow a path God chose for them to a place God chose for them. To them God’s command was a restriction that kept them from enjoying all that life had to offer. They wanted to be allowed to live life to its fullest.

In Matthew 7, Jesus talks to us about destruction and about the path we take to life. He tells us life is something we find and enter into by our living. So, we must restrain ourselves so that we live on a narrow path that leads to a narrow gate that opens to life eternal. He wants us to learn to deny our own way of living by restricting ourselves to the way and the path God has chosen for us.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be focused on living life to its fullest when we don’t really know what that means.  Perhaps life can only be had when we learn to deny ourselves and to restrict our way of living to that which God has said. This, Jesus warns us, is what will lead us to find the fullest life possible.

In a way, God tells us that what seems like restrictions to us are actually His allowances for us. Because what He allows for us is always good for us and it always leads to life. And like this, we must recognize that the thing we would allow for ourselves is the thing God will always restrict for us because our choices of allowances will almost always lead to death.

But we are like Adam and Eve in that we want to live with more allowances than with restrictions. We believe it is actually more destructive to live a narrow way each day so that we never find a full life. So, we justify our own way of living by broadening the path and gate God has reserved for life.

We see this idea of taking the broad way of living almost everywhere. When God describes marriage as between a man and a woman, we see that as a restriction. So, we broaden the idea of marriage to include a relationship between two people of any sex. We want to allow for rather than to restrict from.

Also, in a similar way, we see many people today who believe the church should represent the people of the communities in which the church is located. The church will encourage people to come as they are without the expectation that they must change who they are. The church in essence is changed by the people more than the people are changed by the Word of God.

We want the life behind the straight and narrow way to be had by allowing a broader and wider way of living. And so that our way of living is not condemned by others, we legalize the broad way and the wide gate so that those who follow the straight and narrow way must allow for a broader wider way.

One way to know if your way of living is the way God wants you to live is to ask yourself if a law is required to allow or to restrict how you live. God tells us to love one another. We don’t need a law to allow or to restrict loving others. Loving others is a straight and narrow way of living that leads to life.

God also describes marriage as between a man and a woman. We don’t need a law to accept what God says about marriage. This is God’s way. This is the straight and the narrow way of living that leads to life.

Learn to live in a way that is delivered from what you want to what God wants. God’s Way is always better than our ways.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight. Love is kind; it is not tough.

1 Corinthians 13:4: “Love suffers long and is kind.”

John 15:12: “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

I’m sure you have heard people speak of “tough love,” or you may have used the idea of tough love yourself, but love is not tough at all.  God made love the cornerstone of everything.  We are to first love the Lord with all our hearts and with all our souls.  Then we are to love others as we love ourselves.

The Lord wants us to abide or to live in His love.  Part of the reason for this is that we can learn to love in all things, to love at all times and to be love towards all people. Just like believing in Him is not made difficult for us to do, loving Him and others is not tough.  It is easy.

So, how then did the idea of “tough love” find its way into how many believers suggest we should interact with others sometimes?  Perhaps it’s because in some ways we may want people to deserve our love because of the things they do to us. But God did not ask us to earn His love, so we ought not to think that others must earn or be deserving of our love.  There are three things to consider with love:  Love is not tough; Loving is not tough; and Being love is not tough.

Love is not tough.  Love is kind.  Things that are kind are not tough things at all.  If you live in the Love of the Lord, you live in the kindness and in the grace and in the mercy of the Lord.  It may be tough for you to love because you want to bring a consequence to someone, but this does not make love tough. You may want to withhold kindness and grace and mercy until a person accepts personal fault, but this is not love.

Thinking this way simply makes “tough love” a pretense for love when it is really selfishness and condemnation and the like that you want to be received as love. It may be tough for you to accept the kindness of Love, but love is never tough because you are tough. You don’t protect yourself with “tough love.”

Loving is not tough. We are called to love God with all our hearts and to love others as ourselves.  Loving God and loving others then is not tough. God did not make something so crucial to our relationship with Him and others to be difficult for us to do.  Loving Him and loving others is easy and it should be as natural as loving our own selves. Loving is not tough because Love is not tough.  You are loving because you are Loved.

Being love is not tough. 1 Corinthians 13 says that love is patient, it doesn’t envy, it is not selfish, it does not behave rudely, and it thinks no evil. If you listen to this scripture, it tells you that love is something that lives more than it is something that we just do.  Being love is not tough, so manifesting the things that come from being love is not tough. If being love is tough for you, perhaps it is because you are simply trying to do loving things, but you are not being a loving person.

So then, love is not tough, loving is not tough, and being love is not tough.  Perhaps then, we should consider if the idea of tough love should be something we embrace. Ephesians 4:15 tells us that love is intended to unify not to divide.  We are to speak the truth to one another in love so that we come closer together.

But let’s make sure we speak the truth more than we speak our feelings.  Your feelings may not be the truth.  Your feelings just may be your need to hurt others in love rather than to speak the truth in love.  If what you say to others is not intended to love and to bring unity, perhaps it’s something you should keep to yourself.

Love is never tough to give; it is never tough to receive; and it is never tough to be. What is tough is for us to learn that we don’t need to express all our hurt and pain that others may cause us simply because we want them to know how we feel.  Love spoken in anger is not love. You can always forgive others for their hurts even if you do not share with others you are hurt.

This is the strength of Love.  Love can love easily and always even in the middle of pain.

Live a Delivered Life.