Theme of the Week: A Life of Purpose
Bible Verse: “…and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” 2 Peter 1:7 ESV
Scripture Reading: 2 Peter 1:7
Throughout this week, we have been looking at the spiritual muscles God wants us to make every effort to develop in order to be effective with our lives.
The final muscle is built around one word: love. How strong is your ability to love?
The first thing Peter wants us to develop is the muscle of loving each other well. When he talks about brotherly affection, he is speaking of an up-close and personal way of caring for others. You can only practice this kind of love when you are in the presence of other people.
COVID has created new habits for many of us – and not all of them are good. We have gotten comfortable staying home on Sunday mornings or watching Netflix instead of connecting with our small group. To develop the muscle of brotherly affection requires you to be intentional in putting yourself in the same places and spaces as other people. And then it also requires you to step out of your comfortable world in order to enter their areas of greatest need.
But Peter then challenges us to develop the second muscle of love. This muscle takes us beyond the comfort of the people we already know and like and into the world of every other person we interact with. This type of love is agape love. Mark Buchanan describes it as “unprovoked love: it seeks those who never saw it coming, who never had it coming, who never sought it out.”1
To God, love is not just a sentimental idea or feeling. When everything in your life screams for you to take care of yourself, Peter says to truly be effective, you must build the spiritual muscle of loving everyone else.
1 Buchanan, Mark. Hidden in Plain Sight: The Secret of More. Thomas Nelson, 2007. p. .
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