Tag Archives: Remain in His love

Complete Joy

Joy is a Person

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I’ve been a joy seeker from an early age. As a child, before life’s troubles crusted my heart, I tasted joy: Christmas smells and lights, waking up to freshly fallen snow, strawberries from my grandfather’s garden, family vacations in Vermont.

These whiffs awakened desires for lasting joy built into me by my Creator. I went searching for more,  but  lost the scent along the way, traveling many wrong roads.

  • Lasting joy isn’t found in buying your first car or going on your first date in said car.
  • Lasting joy doesn’t happen when you leave home and go to college. Nor does it happen when you finally graduate.
  • Lasting joy doesn’t come from drugs, sex and rock and roll.
  • Lasting joy doesn’t come from pleasing people or accumulating possessions
  • Lasting joy doesn’t happen when you get married and have children of your own.
  • Lasting joy doesn’t come from trying to be a great  husband or father.
  • Lasting joy doesn’t happen when you’re successful in your career, when you pay downs debts and build up your 401K.
  • Lasting joy doesn’t come from trying to live a life free from troubles and striving after smooth circumstances.

God doesn’t want us settling for finite pleasures to fulfill our need for eternal joy. He made us for much more. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “It would seem that our Lord finds our desire not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday the sea. We are too far to easily pleased.”[1]

Joy isn’t automatically realized when you give your life to Christ and invite Him to indwell you by His Holy Spirit. But this is where the journey begins.

Wrong pursuits  of joy require painful redirection of passions, making room for more Jesus in our lives. He is Joy Personified.  “In Your Presence is Fullness of Joy;”[2]

On the night before He died, Jesus laid out in clear, unmistakable terms, our path to complete Joy:

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.(John 15:9-12 NIV)

Verse 9 – A declaration of undeserved Love and a command to Remain

Verse 10 – A conditional for staying in the love of Jesus

Verse 12– A specific command, fulfilling the condition and becoming the true goal of every day

Verse 11– The astounding result of loving sacrificially – Complete Joy

Lord, help us receive Your love and give it away. How brilliant that the way we stay in Your love and experience Your Joy is by loving others the way you’ve loved us. This can only happen as we abide in You. Day by day guide us to those You want to love though us. Fill us with the Joy of Your presence as we love.

[1] The Weight of Glory, C.S.Lewis

[2] Psalm 16:11b NASB

Joy in the Journey is about the gladness of God’s nearness in the midst of life’s adventures. Subscribe below to get email notifications of new posts. We post once a week. Thank you for reading. 

 Novels by the Author:

Beyond Time

Hope Remains

Loved by God

Loving Others is More than Just a Nice Command

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A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. John 13:34-35

All of Scripture can be summed up in Jesus’ new command to love others as He’s loved us. But He’s Lord. We’re not. How can this quality of love be our norm, especially in the midst of life’s ups and downs? When life gets tough, loving others isn’t always our top priority. Yet, as we’ll see, loving others as He’s loved us is the key to our own fulfillment and Joy.

We Love Because He First Loved Us

We love because He first loved us. I John 4:19

Us loving  others has to start with God’s love for us. He is the source of all love. Human love is impure and self serving. We’re to be branches, yielding the fruit of love from Jesus, our vine.

But when the fact of God’s amazing love is hidden from us, we operate on our own, seeking love from others as we love.

What Quality of Love

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! I John 3:1

We’ll never fully grasp the enormity of God’s love for us, but the more we hear the truth and seek His understanding, the more our heart begins to grasp it’s enormity.

Jesus tells us He loves us as much as the Father loves Him (John 15:9)

Paul says God’s love for us and His supernatural power at work within us, is beyond  comprehension. (Ephesians 3:19)

God’s love is completely unselfish. Jesus demonstrated it when he washed the feet of men who would deny and betray Him, Peter and Judas. Then hours later, he died for us all,  His enemies.

Use your imagination a moment to consider this quality of God’s love for you. By faith, recon it true. Against all which would say otherwise, rest in His love. Shame has been destroyed. Striving has ceased. You’re in Christ and He’s in you. Rest.

From His Love, We love

Have you ever tried to love in your own strength? I have. It didn’t turn out well. Human love expects something in return. When we love without knowing God’s love, our love is self serving. But even if we experienced the greatest human love, we’d be left us incomplete and wanting. Only the  love of God completes us.

Christ did the work and in His love we’re to remain. Ours is not to strive, but to abide.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.  John 15:9-12

Jesus tells us how much he loves and commands us to remain  in His endless, relentless love. And the way we stay in His love is by loving others.

From His Love Springs Complete Joy

The great cadence of receiving God’s love and giving it away keeps us in the love of Christ and gives us great joy.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. John 15:11

Loving as Jesus has loved us, keeps us from needing anything from the world. We’re freed from circumstances,  success, the opinion of others and worldly peace. Loving others as Jesus loves us, completes our hearts and fills us to the brim and overflowing with God’s joy. Nothing remains for us to do but rejoice.

Why Knowing God’s love and Giving it Away is Harder than it Seems

Stay in God’s love. Love others sacrificially as we yield to His Indwelling Spirit. Rest in the complete joy of His presence and love.

It sounds easy, but we all know it’s not. That’s because our enemy knows he’s completely ineffective when we’re resting in Father God’s love. Keeping us from knowing God’s love is his primary goal.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, II Corinthians 10:3-5 

Our enemy specializes in raising speculations and lofty things to block us from the knowledge of God’s love. He deceives us into doubting God’s love and settling for the world’s “love” to try and satisfy our deep longings.

But remember this. When we call upon Him, God will fight for us and free us from the enemy’s lies.

Know therefore today that the Lord your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire.  Deuteronomy 9:3a

Prayer

Lord, I thank you for your incredible love for me. I thank you that you go before me, destroying all that would hide your love from me. I’m learning to rest in your love and it’s the sweetest place on earth. Please keep me from moving from your love. Help me to wait upon you as you go before me, destroying all speculations and lofty things which would hide your love from me.

Thank you

Home Remains – latest novel by the author

Exchanged Life

Victory is a Person (God’s not out to change us, but to exchange us)

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Victory, from the Old French word victor, means to triumph or overcome in a struggle. A personal victory might be losing weight, breaking a bad habit or making the dean’s list. There are team victories, political victories and victories in war. Most victories require tremendous strain and effort, but are extremely rewarding.

In Christian circles you hear of a “victorious Christian life,” a time when sin is conquered, fear is overthrown and love for God and other’s flows freely.

Our natural tendency is to think a “victorious Christian life,” is gained in the same pains taking efforts other victories have been won, giving it our all, trying as hard as we can to win. This could not be farther from the truth.

It is true, Jesus desires for us a life free from fear and sin, loving God and others in the same sacrificial way He has loved us, but He is not asking us to change.

God is not looking for a changed life. He is offering an exchanged life.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2nd Corinthians 5:21

Christ has exchanged His life for ours. Not only did He die in our place to rescue us from eternal separation from God, but He also imputed His righteousness to us. We have become the righteousness of God.

There is not trying hard to be righteous. In Christ we are righteousness.

But you say, “That might be true, but how is victory realized in my own life? How is sin defeated, fear banished, love unleashed and joy experienced?”

The answer is still the same. With His exchanged Life.

Consider the great summary verse Paul wrote about the Christian life:

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Galatians 2:20

The victory is not in trying harder. The victory is in embracing the death of our old nature on the cross and depending upon the newness of our life in Christ. Christ did not die so that we could be changed. He died so that we might die with Him and be raised with Him in newness of life.

Victory is in realizing our crucifixion with Christ and depending upon Christ in all we do. Yielding to His abiding Spirit, we bear fruit for the glory of God. Apart from His work in us, we can do nothing. ( See John 15:5)

We need to stop trying so hard to pattern our lives after what we read about Jesus in the Bible. There’s only one person who can truly live the victorious Christian life and it’s not us. It’s Jesus in us.

We have been made new. In Christ we have all the love, joy, peace, patience and hope we will ever need. Ours is to realize our newness in Him (counting as fact the death of our old self (See Romans 6:11) ) and yielding to Christ in us to love whoever get’s in our way.

Victory is not in trying harder. I’m pretty sure we’ve all tried that.

Victory is in remaining in the love of Christ and yielding to His Spirit.

The old has gone the new has come.

Challenge:  Consider an area of your life in which you feel defeated.  Trust that Jesus wants you to have victory in this area even more than you do.

Bring this area before the Lord right now:

Lord, you know  how discouraged I am in this area. I’ve tried so hard to be like you, but have failed miserably. I know now that victory is not in trying harder, but in resting in You. Open the eyes of my heart that I might know your great love for me. Teach me to remain in your love and yield to your Spirit in me as I allow you to become my victory in this area.

Lord, You are my Victory.

 

Exchanged Life

Victory is a Person

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Victory, from the Old French word victor, means to triumph or overcome in a struggle. A personal victory might be losing weight, breaking a bad habit or making the dean’s list. There are team victories, political victories and victories in war. Most victories require tremendous strain and effort, but are extremely rewarding.

In Christian circles you hear of a “victorious Christian life,” a time when sin is conquered, fear is overthrown and love for God and other’s flows freely.

Our natural tendency is to think a “victorious Christian life,” is gained in the same pains taking efforts other victories have been won, giving it our all, trying as hard as we can to win. This could not be farther from the truth.

It is true, Jesus desires for us a life free from fear and sin, loving God and others in the same sacrificial way He has loved us, but He is not asking us to change.

God is not looking for a changed life. He is offering an exchanged life.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2nd Corinthians 5:21

Christ has exchanged His life for ours. Not only did He die in our place to rescue us from eternal separation from God, but He also imputed His righteousness to us. We have become the righteousness of God.

There is not trying hard to be righteous. In Christ we are righteousness.

But you say, “That might be true, but how is victory realized in my own life? How is sin defeated, fear banished, love unleashed and joy experienced?”

The answer is still the same. With His exchanged Life.

Consider the great summary verse Paul wrote about the Christian life:

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Galatians 2:20

The victory is not in trying harder. The victory is in embracing the death of our old nature on the cross and depending upon the newness of our life in Christ. Christ did not die so that we could be changed. He died so that we might die with Him and be raised with Him in newness of life.

Victory is in realizing our crucifixion with Christ and depending upon Christ in all we do. Yielding to His abiding Spirit, we bear fruit for the glory of God. Apart from His work in us, we can do nothing. ( See John 15:5)

We need to stop trying so hard to pattern our lives after what we read about Jesus in the Bible. There’s only one person who can truly live the victorious Christian life and it’s not us. It’s Jesus in us.

We have been made new. In Christ we have all the love, joy, peace, patience and hope we will ever need. Ours is to realize our newness in Him (counting as fact the death of our old self (See Romans 6:11) ) and yielding to Christ in us to love whoever get’s in our way.

Victory is not in trying harder. I’m pretty sure we’ve all tried that.

Victory is in remaining in the love of Christ and yielding to His Spirit.

The old has gone the new has come.

Challenge:  Consider an area of your life in which you feel defeated.  Trust that Jesus wants you to have victory in this area even more than you do.

Bring this area before the Lord right now:

Lord, you know  how discouraged I am in this area. I’ve tried so hard to be like you, but have failed miserably. I know now that victory is not in trying harder, but in resting in You. Open the eyes of my heart that I might know your great love for me. Teach me to remain in your love and yield to your Spirit in me as I allow you to become my victory in this area.

You are my Victory.

 

Remain in His Love

Loving Without Expecting Anything in Return

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A few years ago, my oldest son Jonathan and I were tending a burn pile down by the barn. As we sat in camping chairs, water hose ready, watching the dried limbs and brush blaze, he had something to tell me that was very hard to hear.

As my eyes followed a black ember dancing upward in the billows of smoke, he said, “Dad, growing up I felt as if you cared more about the relationship than you did about me.” He went on to explain that he knew I loved him, but he could tell I cared a lot about being viewed as a successful Father.

Jonathan’s words pierced my heart. At that time my identity was very closely tied to success in all my roles. I feared failing as a husband, father, provider, brother and friend. This is exactly what he was pointing out to me. My love was not pure. I needed to know I was doing a good job and depended on the response of others for assurance and validation.

My conversation with Jonathan was very hard, but it was exactly what I needed.  I’m so glad he cared enough about our relationship to point out how he was feeling. His honesty helped me understand that I loved with a selfish love, expecting something in return.  I thanked him for his boldness and sincerely apologized. I asked God to heal this part of me which craved affirmation and the approval of others.

God has and is answering my prayer. I’m now much freer to love others with the sacrificial love of Jesus, but I also know He’s not through with me yet. At times, I still find myself expecting certain responses from others as I seek to love them.

My prayer is that I will love others as Christ loves me, not with a faulty human love, but with the love of His Indwelling Holy Spirit.

Consider the following verses:

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God,  gets up from supper, and lays aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.  Then He pours water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. John 13:3-5

Right before Jesus performs a service, done normally only by slaves, John, inspired by the Holy Spirit, gives us a peak into Jesus’ mind:

Jesus knew who He was and where He came from.  Jesus is the Son of God. His Father sent Him forth, giving all things into His hands so that He could rescue us and restore us to right relationship with God. Jesus didn’t need anything from those He came to rescue. He was completely filled with His Father’s love.

If we were sent to an ant colony to rescue the queen from an anteater, to return when the job was done, would we really care what the ants thought of us while we were there? No, we could care less how the ants felt, we were visiting from another place.

As believers, our citizenship is in heaven. Like Jesus, our true home is not this world. We are free to love others as Christ has loved us, needing nothing in return.

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; Philippians 3:20

Because this world is what we see, it’s easy for us to operate on its terms, looking to society to tell us how we’re doing. But consider the following amazing fact, spoken by Jesus concerning you and me.

Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; Remain in My love. John 15:9

Jesus loves us just as much as God the Father loves Him. Let this soak in before you read on.

Ours is to remain in this great love, a love we did nothing to deserve to begin with. Remaining in the love of Jesus allows us to love freely as He did.

If we remain saturated in the love of Christ, untethered from the need for human validation and approval, we love freely, expecting nothing in return.

But how do we remain in His love? Read the following verses carefully for the answer.

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. John 15:10-12

We remain in His love, by loving others as He has loved us. His love flowing through us, completes our Joy. Our life becomes a continual rhythm of receiving His love and giving it away. Free to love because He loves us..

  • Jesus loves us as much as God loves Him
  • We can do nothing apart from Jesus, including loving others

Challenge: Think about a time recently when a person didn’t respond to your love as you would have desired; a time when your feelings were hurt or when you found yourself fishing for a response.

Ask the Lord to wash away your expectations and hurt in His great love. Ask him to open the eyes of your heart that you might get a glimpse of how much God loves you. His love is wider and deeper and longer and higher than your mind can understand. But His can speak to our hearts and reveal His ocean of love.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19

Rick Velilla is the second biker on the right. He is now with the Lord.

The Cadence of Life (Receiving God’s love and Giving it Away)

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As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. John 15:9-12

A few years ago a friend of mine shared a secret he had learned during miles of cycling. “Don’t worry about the miles per hour,” Rick said. “It’s the cadence that matters. If you keep the cadence above 70 or 80, no matter how steep the hills, your miles per hour will take care of itself.”

What Rick told me turned out to be true. I had my bicycle computer set to always show me the Miles Per Hour. I  would strain, sometimes in very hard gears, to maintain my speed even on monster hills. But eventually my legs would wear out.

However, when I changed the computer to show my cadence, I paid attention only to how many times I pedaled in a minute. If it was at least 70 times, shifting gears as needed to accommodate changes in the gradient, my miles per hour worked out better at the end of the ride. It’s the key to endurance cycling.

As I think about how watching my cadence led to cycling success, I wonder if there’s a  cadence I can  focus on that will assist me in life. I want to be able to turn the computer of my life to a cadence which can be maintained during the ups and downs of life the way Rick’s suggestion kept me steady even during steep inclines in the road.

I think of  Matthew 22:37-40, where Jesus gives us a focus for our lives, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love. The Beatles had it right. All we need is Love. 

Love is to be the focus of our lives. Jesus says it summarizes the entire Bible,  forming  a  filter for our every word and deed.

But how?

As I ask the question, I get my answer.

I John 4:19: “We love because He first loved us.” 

God’s love is the only true love. I can grind out a human love by straining at the pedals of life, but my love will wear out.

My cadence is to be His love flowing through me, as Rivers of Living Water flowing from my innermost being. (John 7:38)  Receiving His love and giving it away. In spite of life’s difficulties, I’m to love God first and then my neighbor, but with His love, not mine.

And Jesus tells me how to do this in John 15:9-12.

  1. Know how much Jesus loves me. Verse 9 says He loves me as much as God loves Him.  The essence of this truth is beyond my understanding, yet Jesus tells me it’s true.
  2. Remain in His great love. Verse 10 commands me to stay, tarry, abide in God’s great love for me, not moving from where God has placed me in the love of Christ.
  3. Love as I have loved you.  Verses 10 and 12  tell me how to remain in His love. I’m to be caught up in the cadence of loving others as He has loved me, allowing His love to flow through me to others.
  4. My joy is completed.  Jesus says when I know his love, remain in it and love others as He has loved me, I will have His joy, fulfilling all my inner longings.

Receiving His love and giving it away.

Lord, thank you for showing me the great focus of my life, knowing your great love, remaining in it and loving others with it. I need you to maintain this as my focus. I so easily shift into a mode of worrying about all that has to be done.

Yet, I know now that by receiving your love and giving away it away, all you need me to accomplish will get done. I believe this, yet I forget it so easily. Please help me live out this cadence of love moment by moment and day by day. Amen.