United Church of Christ Daily Devotional 18th August 2025 Monday Message
Three Strikes and You Are…Still Loved.
By Matt Laney
Discussion Questions
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- Read Luke 10:25-37. Then read the devotional, “Three Strikes and You Are…Still Loved.”
- Jesus answers the lawyer’s question by pointing to love—not belief. What does this suggest about how we understand salvation or “eternal life” today?
- Laney says that self-love is the “linchpin” of our ability to love God and others. Do you agree or disagree? Why do you think self-love is so difficult for many people?
- How do you recognize when your inner voice is harsh or unloving toward yourself? What practices help you speak to yourself with more compassion?
- Laney ends by reminding us that God’s love holds steady even when we fail. When have you experienced grace or love despite feeling like you “struck out”?
A lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to them, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” – Luke 10:25-26 (NRSV)
I asked AI to summarize the Christian Bible in one sentence. It said: “The Bible is the story of God’s ongoing work to redeem and restore creation through covenant, prophets, and finally Jesus Christ.” Not bad.
We don’t need AI to summarize the gospel. Jesus already did.
When a lawyer asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus didn’t say, “Believe in me.” He pointed away from himself and asked, “What’s written in the law?”
The lawyer answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus replied, “Exactly! Do this, and you will live.”
No altar call. No doctrinal test. Just wholehearted, embodied, difficult love.
What’s difficult? Those three loves are interconnected:
- – We can only love God to the degree we love self and others.
- – We can only love ourselves to the degree we love God and others.
- – We can only love others to the degree we love ourselves and God.
Self-love, I believe, is the linchpin.
Which is not exactly encouraging because most of us don’t love ourselves super well. We’re our own harshest critics. If someone spoke to us the way we sometimes speak to ourselves, we’d call it bullying. A lack of self-love reduces our capacity to love God and others.
Good news: Although our ability to love God and others begins at home, it’s God’s love for us that matters most, even when we strike out.
Prayer
Help me love myself as You do: unconditionally and without fail.
About the AuthorMatt Laney is co-Pastor of Virginia Highland Church UCC in Atlanta, GA and the author of Pride Wars, a fantasy series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for Young Readers. The first two books, The Spinner Prince and The Four Guardians are available now.
