Whatever You Do
SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
1 Corinthians 13:1

Recommended Reading: 1 Corinthians 8:1-3
Consider a cobbler who is so busy making shoes for other people that his own children go barefooted. That might speak to pride, selfish ambition, or negligence by the father. At the very least, it shows a lack of love for his children. When love is absent, life is unbalanced.

The apostle Paul began his chapter on love with illustrations of “ministry” replacing love in the church. He cites several commendable activities: using the gift of tongues or prophecy, having spiritual knowledge and faith, being generous to the poor, and dying for the sake of Christ (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). Then he says that if any, or all, of these ministries are performed without love—that is, for carnal or self-promoting reasons—then the ministries themselves are worthless. Better not to undertake such ministries at all than to undertake them without the motivation and practice of love.

Consider this paraphrase of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10:31: “Whatever you do, do it in the Spirit of love.” Clothe your words and deeds today with a cloak of true love.

Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.
C. S. Lewis

God’s Great River Project
SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Romans 5:5

Recommended Reading: Romans 5:1-5
Have you heard of the Great Man-Made River project? It’s the world’s largest irrigation project, a network of pipes and aqueducts that supplies fresh water across Libya. There are vast aquifers under the Sahara desert—enough water to last a thousand years, according to some estimates. Others aren’t so sure how long the supply will last, but this incredible engineering feat keeps the faucets of Libya running.

Have you heard of the great God-Made River project? It’s the outpouring of love, channeled into our heart by the Holy Spirit. When we accept Christ as Savior, God sends us the Holy Spirit—His love in us. This enables us to love others through situations we would have found impossible before. Give a prayer of thanks to God that He chose to send His love into us through the Holy Spirit, and ask Him to enable you to show others the love of Christ in you.

The reality of God’s love in a believer’s heart gives the assurance, even the guarantee, that the believer’s hope in God and His promise of glory is not misplaced and will not fail.
John A. Witmer

Unfailing
SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:26

Recommended Reading: 1 Corinthians 13
We all fail from time to time, even the biblical heroes did. The psalmist said, “My heart pants, my strength fails” (Psalm 38:10). Jeremiah wrote, “My eyes fail with tears” (Lamentations 2:11).

But not God! He never fails! Joshua 21:45 says, “Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken.” Psalm 89:33 says, “My lovingkindness I will not utterly take from him, nor allow My faithfulness to fail.” Isaiah 42:4 says the Lord “will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has established justice in the earth.” Lamentations 3:22 says, “His compassions fail not.”

His eternal existence cannot fail. We read in Hebrews 1:12 that even the heavens will be folded up like a garment, but as for God: “Your years will not fail.”

Zephaniah 3:5 says plainly: “The Lord is righteous…. He never fails.”

That’s why 1 Corinthians 13:8 says, “Love never fails.” We can be confident that love never fails because God never fails and God is love. Give thanks that we can always count on the love of God to see us through all things.

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail, in Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail.
Robert Grant

A Shield
SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

But You, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory, and the One who lifts up my head…. I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid.
Psalm 3:3-6

Recommended Reading: Psalm 3
King David’s darkest days were when he fled Jerusalem, pursued by his own army, which had come under the control of his rebellious son Absalom. David’s heart was broken by family problems, and his crown was threatened by national rebellion. In this setting, he wrote Psalm 3: “Lord, how they have increased who trouble me!” (verse 1)

But David had evidently been reading Genesis 15:1, where the Lord told Abraham, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield.” David claimed that concept for himself, visualizing his God as a shield that surrounded him in all directions like a globe of grace. Therefore, he could lay down and go to sleep, unafraid. He knew God loved him.

The Bible says love “hopes all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).

When a difficulty arises, remember we can remain hopeful because our loving God is a shield around us. There is no situation we cannot face with His divine love around and within us.

The Psalms are inexhaustible and deserve to be read, said, sung, chanted, whispered, learned by heart, and even shouted from the rooftops.
N. T. Wright

(Street Roots photo illustration)
Crumbling confidence: Some of America’s favorite snacks now made in Mexico
Bakery workers in Northeast Portland want consumers to make sure the Nabisco products they’re buying were manufactured in the U.S.
by Emily Green | 12 Jan 2018
Lamar Kennedy has worked at the Northeast Portland bakery that makes Oreo cookies and other Nabisco-brand snack products for more than 25 years.
The bakery, located on Northeast Columbia Boulevard just northeast of the Kenton neighborhood, employs 210 people full time, according to the bakers’ union that represents workers there.
During the first two decades he worked there, producing America’s top-selling cookies was a job Kennedy enjoyed. Morale was high, working conditions at the bakery were good, and fair wages with plenty of overtime allowed workers to support their families.
But in recent years, workers say, the environment at the bakery has been engulfed in fear – punctuated by top-down intimidation under the ever-looming threat that the plant may close so production can be moved to Mexico.
Adding to the uncertainty, their union’s contract with the company has not been renewed since it expired in March 2016.
“The feeling there is horrible,” said Cameron Taylor, a representative of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union (BCTGM) Local 364. “The people are going to work every day, but it’s not what it was. The company’s attitude has caused the morale to be as bad as I’ve ever seen it. The people there used to care about their job and care about working for that company. They don’t care anymore.”
FURTHER READING: The attack on labor unions – and why they matter (commentary)
During a news conference and roundtable discussion at St. Charles Borromeo Church in September, Kennedy and other bakery employees discussed how their working environment began to deteriorate in 2012, when the Kraft-owned