Ablaze for God - Day 11 Devotional

“How Love Infects Us”
Submitted by Joan D. Correll
Key text: Matthew 25:40

Most changes in our lives take place when we are in crisis. As a young missionary wife God began to shine the light of the Holy Spirit on my heart and mind and I was found wanting. I would have done just about anything for the pain to go away. His light revealed an attitude of pride, selfishness, stubbornness, and hatred and fear. I didn’t like what I saw.

I remember the day I bowed before Him and asked Jesus to plant within my heart the seeds of love. I asked Him to teach me how to love as He loved. I sought His mind through study of the Word, and the more I read the more I realized that unless I was always connected to Him I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Some of the truths that I came to see and understand are:
He is the Vine…it is through and from Him we receive
our life. We can’t love if we aren’t connected to the Vine.
It’s His love flowing through me I came to long for.
Scriptures say, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” When you experience the mind of Christ you forgive…you lift up the fallen…you don’t condemn…you perform acts of kindness….you don’t see color, race, or condition you only see someone just like yourself for whom Jesus died…you challenge and confront with a humble spirit wanting only the best for the other. You learn to listen – to really listen – to hear the depth of the heart of someone. You let them know they matter, and when they see they matter to you then they begin to understand how much they matter to the Father.

Many, many years ago God gave me a special verse. It’s from the book of Samuel and from the King James Version. I Sam 2:5 - It’s a strange verse, but when I read it the first time I knew it was a message for me. “They that were full have hired themselves out for Bread and they that were hungry have ceased.” That has been my desire in God’s kingdom….to be bread to those who are hungry.