What is love?

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." - 1 John 4:16b (NIV)

"And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love." - 2 John 6 (NIV)

"Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God." - 3 John 11 (NIV)

ESV Reading for 2 Jan

"And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation." - Luke 1:50 (ESV)

Don't Waste Your Life

For me as a boy, one of the most gripping illustrations my fiery father used was the story of a man converted in old age. The church had prayed for this man for decades. He was hard and resistant. But this time, for some reason, he showed up when my father was preaching. At the end of the service, during a hymn, to everyone's amazement he came and took my father's hand. They sat down together on the front pew of the church as the people were dismissed. God opened his heart to the Gospel of Christ, and he was saved from his sins and given eternal life.

But that did not stop him from sobbing and saying, as the tears ran down his wrinkled face - and what an impact it made on me to hear my father say this through his own tears - "I've wasted it! I've wasted it!"

This was the story that gripped me more than all the stories of young people who died in car wrecks before they were converted - the story of an old man weeping that he had wasted his life. In those early years God awakened in me a fear and a passion not to waste my life. The thought of coming to my old age and saying through tears, "I've wasted it! I've wasted it!" was a fearful and horrible thought to me.

- John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." - Psalm 90:12 (NIV)

Only one life
'Twill soon be past
Only what's done
For Christ will last

Another Year is Dawning

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." - Hebrews 12:1-2 (NIV)

Another year is dawning
Dear Father, let it be
In working or in waiting
Another year with Thee

Another year of progress
Another year of praise
Another year of proving
Thy presence all the days