"When You Get the Chance"

A friend and I were finishing a conversation the other day, and right before we ended it, he said "when you get the chance, come see us." It's one of those things you say full of more hope than substance, knowing that in this busy world, it might happen, but likely as not it won't. Good thing to do? Absolutely. Gonna get done? Pretty doubtful.

Call it a hunch, but it seems that's the nature of human interaction - Good intentions.

We so often fail to act on them that we just accept such a lack of love as "just the way it is." After all, we are all busy. "Who has time?", we'll say.

Yet we are the same people who say that we seek to pattern our lives after the One Who in His essential nature is love.

It hurt me to write that.

God's example is so clear.

43"You're familiar with the old written law, "Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, "Hate your enemy.' 44I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, 45for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best--the sun to warm and the rain to nourish--to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. Matthew 5:43-45 The Message

God loves. He loves those who refuse His love, and those who embrace His love. Even before any one of us now alive drew our first breath, or committed our first sin, God had already paid the price Himself for those wrong-doings.

7We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. 8But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. Romans 5:7-8 The Message

God put His love on the line- on the cross, so that whoever decided to turn away from their old life of lies and embrace the new life of love would have a home to come to, arms to run into, shoulders to cry on. And the Bible says that was His plan from the beginning.

He didn't wait until He "had a chance."

Friends, there are days like this that make me re-evaluate just who I am and what I'm doing. Right now it's busy here. Things are jumping, and I'm doing a lot for God. But am I doing it in love? Purposeing to let God's love flow through me? Letting Him use my hands, my feet, my speech to love others?

"If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing." 1 Cor. 13:2 The Message

So the preacher opened his Bible and His heart this morning friends, and God whacked me upside of the heart. Maybe you are there too. Maybe you are doing a lot, but loving a little. Or maybe you are living and loving on your schedule, and giving the people around you only that love you "get a chance" to give.

I don't know. But I know this - I want to be like Jesus.

When Jesus concluded his address, the crowd burst into applause. They had never heard teaching like this. 29It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying--quite a contrast to their religion teachers! This was the best teaching they had ever heard. Matthew 7:28-29 The Message

Don't you?

Grace!

David Wilson

This devotional is written by David Wilson, pastor of New Hope Baptist church in Valparaiso, FL. If you find you have received this via a forward and would like to receive it regularly, or find you no longer wish to receive it, drop me an email at dwilsonfl@earthlink.net and I'll make the change to the list. If you'd like to know more about New Hope, visit our website at www.newhopevalp.org . May God bless you.