Love is the Power

“I know this is an evil world that we all live in. Full of pain strife and struggles and at times we hurt way down deep within. Jesus shed his blood for you and me on this journey He’s by my side. He has set a sinner like me free, love is the power, it makes everything alright. Forget about the heart aches and troubles leave them all behind. Let your hope joy and love its only in Jesus we can find. You love so much and want peace living in your lives. What a wonderful savior love is the power. It makes everything alright. I can’t help but love him, look at what he has done. On the cross shed His blood and died; A rose a power to save everyone. I can’t help but love Him, He’s been so good in my life. What a wonderful savior love is the power; it makes everything alright. Love, love, love, makes everything alright, alright. What a wonderful savior love is the power, it makes everything alright.” These are the words to a song recorded by the Acappella company. I have been sitting here pondering upon unity and the divisions which come about in congregations of the Lord’s Church. I remembered talking to the teenage class last Wednesday of how things don’t always go the way that we think they should in life and even in our congregations. I told of a good friend of mine who has basically stuck his lip out and given up on “church” because he doesn’t feel things are going the way that they should. And although I agree with him in some of the areas he has issues with, I have assured him that it doesn’t give him the right to just give up. In Tony’s lesson on Sunday, he read a passage from Philippians chapter 1 which stood out in my mind. Beginning in verses 3 he writes, “I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you, always in every supplication of mine on behalf of you all making my supplication with joy, for your fellowship in furtherance of the gospel from the first day until now; being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ…” I think it is important for us to realize that even as the body of Christ we are being “perfected” as Paul spoke of Christ perfecting the church in Philippi “until the day of Jesus Christ”. In all of the letters addressed to the churches we read of in the NT, we never read of a congregation in which hadn’t or wasn’t currently facing struggles. Neither Paul, nor any of the other writers give any one of us the right nor an excuse to give up. We are all human. Humans are fallible; even Christians. To state, as Paul did, that Christ “will prefect” constitutes imperfection. God loves us so much even in spite of all of our human imperfections. And he demands that we do the same (1 Cor. 13:13). Not one of us is above or without sin. And as we desire and need forgiveness, we likewise are to be willing to forgive. “Above all things being fervent in your love among yourselves; for love covereth a multitude of sins:”(1 Peter 4:8) In HIM,Kirt