Lasting Love: A Story from History with Angela Breidenbach
Doesn’t everyone want lasting love?
We have just celebrated Valentine’s Day. Now everyone is either eating candy or watching their flowers wilt or wishing someone gave them candy and roses. Our society suffers from an obsession with love, and yet we can’t even define it. We love our homes, our cars, our pets, and our spouses. Whenever this emotion takes hold of us we must obey its bidding. We can fall in love and out of love quickly. Using Scripture, we can define love. (Of course, we have to go back to 30 a.d. to the time when the church began. the disciples wrote what they learned from Jesus.) The love God has for us is called agape. It’s a love that impacts the will, seeking the best for the one loved. Agape not based primarily
Using Scripture, however, we can define love. (Of course, we have to go back to 30 a.d. to the time when the church began. The disciples wrote what they learned from Jesus.) The love God has for us is called agape. It’s a love that impacts the will, seeking the best for the one loved. Agape is not based primarily in the emotions, although emotion comes along with it. Jesus demonstrated agape when he came to earth. He left his glory behind and came to die for our sins.
Agape love does unselfish acts of service regardless of what the emotions appear to dictate. This is the kind of love that lasts. Ladies, you and I know our emotions ride a roller coaster depending on the state of our hormones and the amount of sleep we get. If we truly care about someone, we will agape love them whether we feel the emotion or not. Many times, we choose to act, and those emotions come later.
Today Angela Breidenbach shares a story of love from the history of her family:
3:50 Your grandfather married your grandmother to keep her reputation?
Overcome Fears Holding You Back: Realize Your Full Potential
You are a special creation with a unique gift to share. Don’t allow fears to hold you back:
We live in a consumer-driven society, and it’s very easy for us to see the church as something that serves us. We already have our hardware store, our grocery store or maybe a farmer’s market, an appliance store, a place we buy clothes. We decide what we might need and go looking for that. Unfortunately, we approach a church exactly like that.
I’m going to turn that on its head because I firmly believe that every Christian should have a ministry. God speaks of us as a holy nation, a royal priesthood for his own possession. Yes, we should attend a church that has a great doctrinal stance, but its a place we can reach out to others.
Romans 12:3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function,
Did you notice that God doesn’t want us to get proud or self-centered? Instead, he wants us to focus on what we can give to the body.He gave every believer a spiritual gift and God wants us to use that right where we are. We are an essential part of the church body as a whole. We aren’t the whole body, but if we don’t function, the body would be handicapped, just like you’d be if you lost an eye or a foot. Your gift is essential and brings a needed skill to the body of Christ that only you can give. What a great prescription for emotional health. Valuable but not the most important!
Cynthia Cavanaugh wrote Unlocked: 5 Myths Holding Your Influence Captive. She’s going to share how we can find our ministry.
2:00 What are you trying to address in this book?
3:20 How did Rahab manage to lead from a place of uncertainty?
Prepare for the New Year: Make Your Life Count For God:
Have you ever thought about the end of your life? When you look back over all you’ve done, how will you view your choices? After I married, my husband talked about that a lot. At first, it seemed grim. After all, we were in our twenties. Over time, however, I changed my mind. Psalm 92 says, “Teach us to number our days that we may have a heart of wisdom.” Such good advice!
As we enter a new year, this is a great time to consider our purpose in life. Consider Romans 12:3: “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”
This verse commands us to have sober judgment, which means to think clearly about ourselves. I find it easy to be self-centered and to feel as if life revolves around me, but that’s not true. In fact, this passage tells us to acknowledge the measure of faith God has given us. If you keep reading Romans 12, you’ll discover Paul moves into spiritual gifts. He describes the church as a body and individuals as members. When you come to Christ, He gives you a spiritual gift. That’s the measure of faith Paul speaks of. When you think correctly, you realize your value in relationship to the rest of the body of Christ. The head needs the hands to do its bidding and feet for movement and balance. The body of Christ doesn’t have useless parts. You have a special gifting for your time that no one else can fill like you can. You aren’t the whole body, but a valuable part of the whole. (What a great recipe for self-esteem: doing God’s will.)
So how do you find your purpose, your gifting? Poppy Smith is my guest. She wrote: Go For It! Make Your Life Count For God. She helps women uncover their gifts and live up to their potential.
3:00 How can we live on purpose?
5:00 How does God prepare us to be used?
7:05 His shaping.
7:40 How can we learn what we are best suited for?
It’s really easy to worry about the future, but Christians know the end of the story. Several years ago on a Saturday morning, my husband slid into the floor and had a grand mal seizure. Wow! What a catastrophic event. In an adult, a seizure is a medical emergency. We suddenly went from normal living to crisis mode. A sense of unreality came over me as I discovered my husband’s illness was very serious. For the first few days, I stood by his bed and watched as doctors tried to treat his complex problem. Ultimately his full recovery took four years, and those years unsettled us all. In the same way, we live in a rapidly changing world. Events come at us so fast. These unbelievable events seemed impossible a few years ago. If anyone disagrees or questions, that person receives a nasty label. Intolerant. Bigot. Hater. I keep reminding myself that I live in America where we are supposed to have freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Many in the church are rattled and frightened. This election season had passed in a similar fashion. Americans are angry because no one listens to them in Washington.
I cannot imagine facing any of this without God. During that time when my husband was ill, the Lord sent me to the book of Daniel while I taught a class. There the Lord revealed that Daniel’s greatest dream was for his people to return to the land with a restored relationship with the father. However, God knew that wouldn’t happen in Daniel’s lifetime, so God allowed Daniel a peek into the future. Daniels greatest longing would come true, but not while he lived.
As Christians, we don’t wield control, but we can be assured that God does. The book of Revelation reveals God’s plan for the future, and we can be confident, regardless of what we see going on. God will accomplish his purpose.
My guest is Dr. Ken J. Burge, Sr. He has written Revelation on Fire a Bible study on the last book of the Bible.
2:15 Not everyone in the church believes like you do about the future. Can you give reasons why hold your position on future things?
5:00 Describe your Bible study method
9:15 Revelation said these things will ‘shortly take place.” That was written over 2000 years ago. What does that phrase mean?
11:00 What does the text mean when it says people will be blessed seven times?
12:00 Can you give reasons why you believe in the rapture of the church?
14:00 Who were the people in chapter 3 who are praising the lamb for redemption?
Learn more about Dr. Burge here. Find his book here.
[tweetthis]Believers shouldn’t fear the future [/tweetthis]
Have you ever been shunned? I’ve always been a little shy and studious. When I was in ninth grade, I took a Spanish class and found it challenging. A friend who was also learning Spanish and I wrote to each other in Spanish in order to learn faster. I was also taking a Home Ec class that year, and when we finished our sewing project, we could work on other things. Since I was free, I tackled my Spanish epistles home ec class.
I happened to sit near a group of girls who were very playful and silly. When they found out what I was doing, they found it quite funny. And they began to crack jokes and tease. I brushed them off at first. But as other girls watched, the number of participants grew and things got vicious. Pretty soon half the room was ridiculing me.
One day after class, I burst into tears and the teacher asked me why. I spilled out my story, and she was horrified.
But I will never forget the feeling of being laughed at. Being weird, odd
If you have a medical problem, people are compassionate, but if you have a mental illness, it’s a different story.
Ephesians 4:32 says we should be kind to each other, tenderhearted. I love that word. It means you ache for someone who hurts. You have compassion.
I have a friend who is bipolar, but she won’t tell anyone because she hears awful stories told of bipolar people. She doesn’t want the label. But these folk are ill, and they need us to be tenderhearted.
Today I have Leeann Jefferies who was a model for Eileen Ford, and author, Eva Marie Everson. Together they wrote Leeann’s story: The Bipolar Experience.
2:15 What is bipolar
3:40 Eva Marie, this is been part of your life too. Please share your story.
3:55 Describe cycling
6:00 Leeann, tell me how you feel
6:50 What does a high feel like?
10:15 What’s the answer for the manic phases?
[tweetthis]A bipolar person needs love and understanding[/tweetthis]
[tweetthis]Be part of the team for your bipolar friend[/tweetthis]
