2008-11-18 11:35:00
"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4:8)
Lynne, a friend of ours, called the other night seeking advice concerning a nephew who is struggling with his faith in God and is now leaning toward an atheistic belief system. She’d had a role in raising the boy and is deeply burdened for the state of his soul.
Last night I reconnected with Paul, a friend I hadn't seen for many years. He told me his oldest son, although very successful in terms of worldly education and success, had drifted from his spiritual moorings established from infancy by his godly parents.
Today's message is intended to bring hope to those burdened for a wayward loved one.
Many years ago I heard a remarkable testimony from a veteran pastor who served in the 2nd World War. He went to Nagasaki, Japan shortly after the A-bomb was dropped. Interestingly, his mission that took place shortly after the Japanese surrendered was to provide care to the Japanese by going from house to house, checking on them and getting them out for medical care. He was not serving the Lord at the time and was consumed with hateful feelings, especially toward the Japanese.
Over many years his godly mother had been diligently praying that he would turn to Christ before it was eternally too late. She had given him a Bible before he left home which he never read. But the Lord was working on his heart and one Sunday, prompted by the Spirit, he decided to attend a small Japanese church. The angry soldier sat in the back with a sneering countenance and begrudging attitude.
Can you imagine the mutual hatred and raw emotion that would have been present in that church service? Being a Japanese believer and seeing an American serviceman shortly after the A-bomb was dropped on your city or being an American who had seen his own service buddies die before his very eyes at the hands of the Japanese.
Yet through the joint realization of the power of the blood of Christ, an overcoming aspect of love was demonstrated in that small church in 1945. When the Communion elements were being distributed they did not pass him up, but they served him as well, and the process of healing and reconciliation in his life began.
Let us consider today's verse. "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins." The Apostle Peter's call was initially issued to persecuted believers whom he had called "God's elect, strangers in the world" in the very first verse of the epistle. Now, through the Holy Scriptures, we believers of all time read:
"Above all, love each other deeply." Oh, how this command is greatly neglected but wholly needed in every avenue of life; in marriages, families, churches, communities, nations and of course all over the world.
"Because love covers a multitude of sins." Love still covers and always will. Foundationally the love of God expressed in Christ's death on the cross covers our sin.
And in some remarkable way the power of God's love was at work in that Japanese church covering sin right after the horrors of World War 2. Thirty years later the bitter soldier, who was now a redeemed minister of the Gospel, was invited back to Nagasaki to share his testimony and the power of God's love to transform.
That same power is not diminished one bit and is being expressed all over the world. May God help each of us to live in the power of God's love today and generously communicate that love to others!
Be encouraged today,
Stephen & Brooksyne Weber
Daily Prayer: Father, we bow in prayer before You today, and ask that You, in Your great glory give us the power to be strong inwardly through Your Spirit. We pray that Christ will live in our hearts by faith and that our lives will be strong in love and be built on love. And we pray that we will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ's love – how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is. We pray for our loved ones who are struggling in their faith, that they would be able to experience Your inexhaustible love, that they might be filled with Your fullness, Father. With Your power working in and through us, You can do much, much more than anything we can ever ask or even imagine. So we thank You in advance for hearing our heart's cry and for answered prayer. Amen.
Prayer adapted from Ephesians 3
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