The Letters of Love

I wrote this for my nephew's wedding, but wanted to share it with all of you.

The Letters of Love

A – aware: be aware of each other’s needs, desires, hopes, and dreams.
B – bear: bear one another’s burdens; carry and lift up the very heart of your love.
C – communicate: like the moving water of a stream, let your thoughts and words flow like a current, keeping the waters of your love deep and healthy.
D – devotion: your devotion to God will fuel and direct your devotion to each other.
E – encourage: urge each other on; strengthen and inspire each other toward holy greatness.
F – fellowship: embrace your partnership and the intimate familiarity God can bless you with.
G – growth: cultivate your love and discover how deep, how high, how wide and how long true love really is.
H – heart: be bold in the sharing of your hearts. It is the seat of your inmost thoughts and secret feelings and the center of your inner life.
I – intercession: be an advocate for each other. Bring each other before your heavenly Father daily. Stand for, fight for, and live for the one whom God has given you.
J – joy: let the strength of your holy joy be the strength of your relational joy.
K – know: appreciate, comprehend, discern, experience, grasp, perceive, prize, and realize. Deliberately grow in your understanding and knowledge of each other.
L – listen: pay attention to not only what the mouth is saying, but what the eyes and the body are saying as well. Listening is active and intentional. Hearing is what your ears are programmed to do. Do not confuse the two.
M – maturity: experience and time when combined with wisdom can cultivate a mature spirit between you that will make your life a living well where others will be refreshed.
N – nourish: appreciate, discern, grasp, perceive, prize and feed each other’s unique individuality.
O – obey: submit and surrender to love. Obey the Spirit, embrace His Word, and yield to the call to go deeper.
P – praise: praise and celebrate each other as you praise and celebrate the One who has given you life.
Q – quiet: find the calm in the midst of the storm. Take time to be still. It is in stillness that we can know that He is God.
R – rest: breathe and dream in quiet; be refreshed in the tranquil rest that comes from being joined to each other and to God.
S – safety: be a safe haven for each other. Create an atmosphere of security in your home, drawing on your knowledge and experience of the One who delivers all who call on Him.
T – time: find the tempo of your relationship. The God of timelessness is there to bring the unlimited possibilities of eternity into this day, this hour, and this minute of your lives.
U – understand: grasp the meaning of it all as you open your minds to this new journey. Because we are called to observe and seek the deeper meanings to life, seek understanding with all your heart.
V – victory: be open, wide and free in your desires. Go into battle for each other. Celebrate each other’s successes.
W – worship: treat each other with great honor and respect. Consider how extremely precious your life is. Hold each other in esteem. The depth of your worship and devotion to God will be reflected in your devotion to your partner.
X – x-ray: look beneath the surface of things. Just as an x-ray gives off radioactivity, Godly discernment can bring light, heat, and electricity to a relationship.
Y – yearning: ache, crave, hunger, pine, and thirst for each other. Let the passions of your heart drive you into each other’s arms.
Z – zeal: with fierceness and intensity, stoke the fire of your passion with perseverance; and sincerity. Let no one steal away or quench your devotion to God and to each other.

Day Twenty-Five: Give the Message of Hope

Give … The Message of Hope

The good news of Jesus Christ—The Message!-begins here… Mark 1:1

With many stories like these, he presented his message to them, fitting the stories to their experience and maturity. Mark 4:33

God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center--Christ on the Cross--be trivialized into mere words. 1Co 1:17

Stay with what you heard from the beginning, the original message. Let it sink into your life. If what you heard from the beginning lives deeply in you, you will live deeply in both Son and Father. 1Jo 2:24

Why do we do what we do? Why have we spent the last twenty-four days thinking and praying about giving? There is only one answer: it is because we believe that there is a message of hope that can save to the utmost all who call on the name of the Lord.

This good message brings life to those who are just existing; it brings hope to those who feel they are going down for the third time, and they are just too exhausted to try anymore; it brings peace to those tangled up in chaos and fear; it brings grace to those who think they have to earn God’s love and favor; it brings truth to those who have lived their lives believing a lie; and it brings forgiveness to those who are bound by their hurt and their sin.

Deliver, impart, provide, supply, and commit – give all you are, give all you have - give until you disappear and all that remains is Jesus.

Day Twenty-Four: Give Love

Give … Love

Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that. Eph 5:2

This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples--when they see the love you have for each other. John 13:35

I Corinthians 13 is considered the love chapter. Paul goes into great detail describing the intrinsic characteristics of love: unselfishness, kindness, patience, humility – the list goes on. We are even told that it is greater than faith and hope. Love is written about, sung about, and cried about. We all want love, but what is love?

We say things like, “I love that color,” or “I loved that book.” We use it on a daily basis to express our most basic feelings; but is love - true, deep, holy love - merely a one-dimensional, emotional response? I believe that love is a motivator, a catalyst, and a state of being.

Love motivated Christ to lay down his life. Love propelled him forward under the heavy burden of the cross. Love was born in human form and had a name: it was and still is Jesus.

Love must inspire us to give of ourselves; it must drive us forward, carrying the burdens of others; and it must distinguish us as we are born from above and grow in his likeness.

Father-God, deepen our understanding of Love. Let it never be just a word or an emotion. Let it be the identifiable mark of our relationship with You.

Day Twenty-Three: Give Truth

Give … Truth

God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love--like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. Eph 4:15

But anyone who examines this evidence will come to stake his life on this: that God himself is the truth. John 3:33

Make them holy--consecrated-with the truth; Your word is consecrating truth. John 17:17
Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. John 14:6

In the gospel of John, Jesus stands before Pilate and tells him that the reason he was born was “to testify to the truth.” Pilate then asks the question heard around the world: what is truth? (John 18:38) People have been searching to answer this question for thousands of years.

Today, truth has become an abstract, grayed into oblivion, left to wander through time and culture. Jesus answered Pilate’s question even before it was asked. After he had washed the disciples’ feet and predicted their betrayal, Jesus comforted them. He said not only was he Life and the only way to the Father, but that he was literally the Truth. Not a way to know the truth or a path to the truth – Jesus made the bold statement that he was the embodiment of Truth – period.

Giving truth is giving Jesus through your actions. Speaking truth is speaking love through your words. Living truth is living out the mission of His Life.

Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and it is that truth that will set you free. (John 8:32)

Father-God, You are the Truth that opens blind hearts and closed minds. You have given substance to abstraction and color to a graying world.

Day Twenty-Two: Give Wisdom

Give … Wisdom

Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here's what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It's the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. Jas 3:13,17

Knowing what is right is like deep water in the heart; a wise person draws from the well within. Pr 20:5

We all desire to be wise – make wise decisions, think wise thoughts, speak wise words. We sometimes think that if we can just gain enough knowledge, we’ll eventually become wiser. But knowledge is merely the circumference of wisdom, only coating the surface. Wisdom comes from a deeper place – a place of continuous spirituality, a place of deep, contemplative thought, and a place of prudent, ethical choices.

Wisdom is skillful intelligence that not only contains essential natural qualities, but contains the unnatural breath of the Eternal Creator. Wisdom is the place where heaven touches earth and the very essence of God is shared.

Father-God, fill me to overflowing with Your Spirit, create in me a clean, wise heart so that I may share with deep understanding and conviction.

Day Twenty-One: Give Guidance

Give … Guidance

You're my cave to hide in, my cliff to climb. Be my safe leader, be my true mountain guide. Ps 31:3

But I'll take the hand of those who don't know the way, who can't see where they're going. I'll be a personal guide to them, directing them through unknown country. I'll be right there to show them what roads to take, make sure they don't fall into the ditch. These are the things I'll be doing for them-- sticking with them, not leaving them for a minute." Isa 42:16

Have you ever been in a strange place and had to rely on a guide book? I have. It contains maps of highways to help you get around, reviews on hotels and restaurants, and critiques of places of interest– everything you need to know to have a good time.

As a Christian, our guide book is the Bible – it has everything we need to know to have a good time: life-maps that help us get around, reviews on rest and provision, and commentaries of the interesting places God will take us in our walk with Him.

If we follow God as our personal guide, we will never get lost. As others see us following Christ, we, in turn, become a guide for them and so on. Commit yourself to closely following Jesus – the direction and sureness of someone else’s path may depend on it.

Father-God, guide me in the way I should go. Minister your instruction to me as I travel on the path of life. May I guide as I am lead.

Day Twenty: Give Blessings

Give … Blessings

God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you're ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what needs to be done. 2Co 9:8
God's best to you! Christ's blessings on you! Phm 1:3

Give freely and spontaneously. Don't have a stingy heart. The way you handle matters like this triggers GOD, your God's, blessings in everything you do, all your work and ventures. De 15:10

And God bless Mommy and Daddy, and my brother, Jack, and my dog, Sam. From an early age, parents teach their children to pray before going off to bed. What do we begin with? We teach them to ask for God to bless others. Deep down we know that to be blessed is a good thing – it means peace, prosperity, and benefits.

In the Old Testament if you had good health, many children, and a plentiful harvest you were considered blessed by God. Ill health, however, barrenness and failed crops meant that you had somehow disobeyed God and were cursed. This direct “it is or it isn’t” was easy to identify. But today, it’s not always so cut and dried. Many devout Christians battle illnesses, are not able to have children and have dealt with financial difficulties.

Are these people excluded from God’s blessings? Certainly not! The blessings that come from God are not restricted to material possessions and outward signs. It is true that if we have committed our all to God that He will provide all of our needs. But the true nature of blessing encompasses the peace that passes all understanding, the prosperity of well-being and inner health, the benefit of Christ’s sacrifice, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. The call is to look beneath the surface and go deeper.

Father-God, I bless your name. You are the God of enough. Show me how to be a blessing to someone in need.