Joni And Friends Daily Devotional 6 June 2024, Thursday Message
TOPIC: A Family Affair
“He answered: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” – Luke 10:27
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:34-35
Notice a difference in these two verses? It’s subtle but powerful. In Luke, Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. In John, Jesus is talking not about our neighbors but about our brothers and sisters in the faith. He tells us to love fellow Christians “as I have loved you.”
How has God loved us? With everything. He held back nothing. Not even his own Son. God says of his children, this is the way “you must love one another” (emphasis added). No holding back. No reservations or second-guessing. No “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” but “loving your brothers and sisters as God loves them.”
We are to go the second mile for our neighbors, but we’re to go the third and fourth mile for those in the household of faith. What are the practical ways in which you can show love to other Christians? Listen to the advice of 1 Corinthians 13 from The Message:
“Love never gives up…Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always ‘me first,’ Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score…Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.”
I want to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ so I can love other Christians in the same way. This is how the world will know that you are real, Father—by our love for each other!
Joni Eareckson Tada is an American evangelical Christian author, radio host, artist, and founder of Joni and Friends, an organization “accelerating Christian ministry in the disability community”.