What Binds the Hands of Love?

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. (Colossians 1:3–5)

The problem with the church today is not that there are too many people who are passionately in love with heaven. The problem is not that professing Christians are retreating from the world, spending half their days reading Scripture and the other half singing about their pleasures in God all the while indifferent to the needs of the world. That’s not happening! The people of God are not so full of love to God that they spend half their days in his word.

The problem is that professing Christians are spending ten minutes reading Scripture and then half their day making money and the other half loving and repairing what they spend it on.

It’s not heavenly-mindedness that hinders love for the lost and hurting of this world. It is worldly-mindedness that hinders love, even when it is disguised by a religious routine on the weekend.

Where is the person whose heart is so passionately in love with the promised glory of heaven that he feels like an exile and a sojourner on the earth? Where is the person who has so tasted the beauty of the age to come that the diamonds of the world look like marbles from the dollar store, and the entertainment of the world feels empty, and the moral causes of the world are too small because they have no view to eternity? Where is this person?

To be sure, he is not in bondage to the Internet or eating or sleeping or drinking or partying or fishing or sailing or putzing around. He is a free man in a foreign land. And his one question is this: How can I maximize my enjoyment of God for all eternity while I am an exile on this earth? And his answer is always the same: by doing the labors of love. By expanding my joy in God, no matter the cost, if by any means possible I might include others in it.

Only one thing satisfies the heart whose treasure is in heaven: doing the works of heaven. And heaven is a world of love!

It is not the cords of heaven that bind the hands of love and make them ineffective. It is the love of money and leisure and comfort and praise — these are the cords of selfishness that bind the hands of love. And the power to sever these cords is Christian hope. “We heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:4–5).

I say it again with all the conviction that lies within me: it is not heavenly-mindedness that hinders love on this earth. It is worldly-mindedness. And therefore the great fountain of love is the powerful, freeing confidence of Christian hope.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Titus 1:2-3

[2] in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began [3] and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior;

Hebrews 3:6

[6] but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

2 Timothy 4:8

[8] Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

1 Peter 1:4-5

[4] to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, [5] who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Are You Easily Irritated?

PRAY OVER THIS

“(Love) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:5-7

 

PONDER THIS

Love is not irritable. Do you have a hair-trigger temper? Are you a person who easily flies off the handle or is easily irritated?

Years ago, when I was working my way through school, there was a deacon in our church who hired me to work for him. I thought he was one of the most wonderful men I’d ever known. I worked with this man, and on one occasion I saw this man I greatly respected get so angry. He picked up a tool and threw it all the way across the room, muttering something that I would not want to repeat. I was so hurt because I’d looked up to him. He was a leader in our church, and I was just a young person. I thought how sad that this man was so easily provoked.

We all have our faults. There have been those moments when I have taken my eyes off the Lord and gotten provoked, and the Holy Spirit has reminded me, “Adrian, the reason you did that is because that’s what you were full of.” What spills out is what you’re full of. We need to learn to drown insults in a river of love. One of the precious virtues of love is that it is not irritable.

How easily are you irritated? What are specific things that set you off?

How has someone’s patience made an impact on your life?

PRACTICE THIS

Ask someone you are close with to keep you accountable for times you are easily irritated. Resolve to drown insults you receive in a river of love.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

If He Calls, He Keeps

[The Lord] will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:8–9)

What are you depending on to ensure that your faith will last until Jesus comes?

The question is not, Do you believe in eternal security? The question is, How are we kept secure?

Does the perseverance of our faith rest decisively on the reliability of our own resolve? Or does it rest decisively on the work of God to “keep us trusting”?

It is a great and wonderful truth of Scripture that God is faithful and will keep forever those whom he has called. Our confidence that we are eternally secure is a confidence that God will do whatever is necessary to “keep us trusting!”

The certainty of eternity is no greater than the certainty God will keep us trusting now. But that certainty is very great for all whom God has called.

At least three passages put the call of God and the keeping of God together in this way.

“[The Lord] will sustain you (keep you) to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:8–9).

“May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24).

“Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you” (Jude 1–2). (See the same reality in Romans 8:30, Philippians 1:6, 1 Peter 1:5, and Jude 24.)

The “faithfulness” of God guarantees that he will keep safe forever all whom he has called.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Philippians 4:6

[6] do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Matthew 6:25

Do Not Be Anxious

[25] “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Proverbs 16:3

    [3] 

    Commit your work to the LORD,

        and your plans will be established.

Romans 1:8-10

Longing to Go to Rome

[8] First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. [9] For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you [10] always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you.

Does God’s Love Shine Through You?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up.” 1 Corinthians 13:4

 

PONDER THIS

A woman once told a preacher, “You have brought me to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.” And the preacher said, “I’m grateful for that. I like to know how God uses me. What was it I preached that brought you to Christ?” She said, “It was nothing you preached. I was standing around when somebody criticized you to your face, and I watched you respond to that person with kindness. I knew that what you had was real.”

Love is kind. There are many people who are religious, but not necessarily kind. That’s the reason a little girl prayed, “Lord, make all the bad people good, and all the good people nice.” Love enables us to be patient. It enables us to be kind. It enables us not to envy. Envy and love don’t dwell in the same heart. Do you know how to see if you have love or not? If somebody else is being blessed and you rejoice, then you have love. If you cringe when other people are being praised, there’s no love in your heart. Proverbs 14:30 says, “A sound heart is life to the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones.”

When have you felt justified to be unkind to someone else?

What causes you to envy others?

PRACTICE THIS

Assess where envy might live in your heart. Submit this before the Lord and ask Him to lead you to love others.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

As Sure as God’s Love for His Son

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

God strips every pain of its destructive power. You must believe this or you will not thrive, or perhaps even survive, as a Christian, in the pressures and temptations of modern life.

There is so much pain, so many setbacks and discouragements, so many controversies and pressures. I do not know where I would turn, if I did not believe that almighty God is taking every setback and every discouragement and every controversy and every pressure and every pain, and stripping it of its destructive power, and making it work for the enlargement of my joy in God.

Listen to Paul’s astonishing words in 1 Corinthians 3:21–23, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The world is ours. Life is ours. Death is ours. Which I take to mean: God reigns so supremely on behalf of his elect that everything which faces us in a lifetime of obedience and ministry will be subdued by the mighty hand of God and made the servant of our holiness and our everlasting joy in God.

If God is for us, and if God is God, then it is true that nothing can succeed against us. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all will infallibly and freely with him give us all things — all things — the world, life, death, and God himself.

Romans 8:32 is a precious friend. The promise of God’s future grace is simply overwhelming. But all-important is the foundation: I have called it the logic of heaven. Here is a place to stand against all obstacles. God did not spare his own Son! Therefore! Therefore! The logic of heaven! Therefore, how much more will he not spare any effort to give us all that Christ died to purchase — all things, all good, and all bad working for our good!

It is as sure as the certainty that he loved his Son!

John Piper