Take out a pitcher from your cupboard today. Look at it, think of its purpose, and then fill that empty pitcher with water. Now slowly pour that water down the sink. Watch it leave the pitcher. Once empty, can the pitcher pour out anymore? ( you know the answer!)

Neither can we. We must be filled in order to be used by God.

Today’s Truth 2 Timothy 2:20-25

Instruments for noble purposes.

Useful to the Master, Prepared to do any good work.

• Flee evil desires of youth
• Pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace
• Have nothing to do with stupid arguments-quarrels
• Be kind to everyone
• Not resentful
• Gently instructing others in hope

Psalm 139:23

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

• Search me
• Cleanse me
• Fill me
• Use me

Pray the above. Allow God to show you what he is cleansing from you that is unloving towards others in attitude or action.

Today’s Prayer

Father, Fill me with your love, the promise of the Father.

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Less of me and more of Thee…this is one hard prayer! It’s easy to pray it, but when the evidence that God heard the prayer starts kicking in…it becomes the hardest thing I have ever prayed. Why? Because praying for less of me is in essence praying for the stripping of SELF. And, quite frankly, though I want this stripping, this type of stripping is hard, very hard.

This stripping of selfishness seems to hit most in our relationships with other people. God created us for relationship, so it makes sense that he strips us and changes us the most while in the context of relationship. I think it would be easy to follow the way of LOVE if I was in a cave by myself with no people to deal with. In that place I could come up with great theory and live large in my head with thoughts and words of love….blah, blah, blah….

Getting real, I live in a world with people, and so do you. People who rub us the wrong way, hurt us, push every last button…you know what I’m talking about…real life, real relationships, real people. WE DO need a Real God and the power of His love. We also need some practical instruction.

Today’s Truth: Luke 6: 27-31

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others at you would have them do to you.”

Get real, there are people who don’t like us….even hate us. There are people who feel like foe not friend. What to do?

• Love them ( agapao them) God’s love through you to them
• Do good to them. This takes an action step
• Bless them. Speak kindly of them and to them.
• Pray for them. Speak to the Father about them and for them
• Give to them. Seeds of kindness.

Do to them, what you would wish would be done to you

Today’s Prayer

Father, I can not live in your lovee without YOU in me doing it. I ask you to teach me to live IN YOU, in such a way as to Lose myself in your love, your way, your life. I desire to follow you, paying attention to things like your words to the Disciples so many years ago. I hear you. Now, help me obey you. Obedience and following is the WILD part of this journey. I want to be THAT kind of wild!

******To follow the WILD study, you can get free downloads of the teachings of the Different Kind of Wild class, held at Cornerstone Fellowship on Wednesdays. www.cornerstoneweb.org, or on itunes. You can also get a Wild book, we are on chapter 5 this week! God is calling us to a Different Kind of Wild…Wildly Surrendered to Following Him! In the Livermore area? Join us at Cornerstone Fellowship. Women’s Connection has Bible study classes at the Livermore Campus 9:30 am and 7:00 pm every Wednesday.

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There are women at Cornerstone Fellowship in Livermore, CA going through the WILD book and the WILD bible study right now. We have finished the first section and are now on Lesson 5, which is on Wild Women Loving Others.

This week’s blog will be dedicated to the women in the class, as we go through that subject a little piece at a time all week. If you are not in the class, get a WILD book ( A Different Kind of Wild: Is your faith too tame?) and join us, and download each weeks free podcast off of itunes or www.cornerstoneweb.org. Or, just log into the blog each day and digest the truth about loving others. Process it, challenge yourself with it, and allow God to speak to you about what in your life He is wanting to rearrange to make you more conformed into the image of His Son. Less of us, More of Him!

Today’s Truth: 1 John 1:9-11

“Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives int he light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know w here he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.”

Hate here is the Greek, miseo, which is to pursue with hatred or detest. That is strong isn’t it? Hate in our dictionary is to feel animosity, to have a distaste for.

None of us like to think we are women who “hate” anyone. We might just be “bugged” with them, bothered by something they did, disappointed. So, what leads us to the place of a complete distaste for someone?

There are many things but let’s just call out a few:

• They don’t like us. No one likes being disapproved of or judged, or the way it feels to be left out by someone. All of us want to be liked, and when we are not, we may begin to “hate” to some degree the person who is “making us feel” small.
• They have done something to “cross us” or upset us. It can be something large or small, doesn’t matter, but once we begin holding on to the “thing” that someone did or said to us that we did not appreciate, it can begin to form the seed of distaste and hate.
• We are secretly jealous of them. Hard to admit, but women are good at getting jealous of others, and not admitting it. This jealousy opens us up for every evil work in our heart and lives, and gives the devil a foothold in us.

Love is quite different than hate. Love here is agapao. which is the Greek word meaning, to have good will for and a preference towards good will towards someone, to wish them well. This is also from the word agape, which is God’s love, and to agapao someone, is to love them with Agape flowing in and through us. God’s love always believes the best in someone. God is love and has a preference towards people, not a hatred towards them.

How do we love someone who has crossed us, made us feel or look small, or that we are jealous of?

Confess your feelings to God

• Ask Jesus to work in your heart, making you open and willing to let go of the offense or the jealousy and competitiveness.
• Naming it and calling it what it is, is the first step towards pushing past the stuck place of “loving less” than God’s best for us.
• Pray for them ( Luke 6)
• Speak kindly about them
• Refuse to be critical
• Treat them as you would want to be treated ( even if it goes unnoticed)

And, if you don’t do this?

You will be in the DARK, and you will be blinded to things God might want to do in your life right now.

And, if you set your heart to love?

You will be in the LIGHT, and nothing will keep you from the full embrace of experiencing God. You will not stumble through your day with bitterness and ugliness. You will be lighter as you are in His Light.

Final thought:

If we want to walk with Jesus, we have to pay attention to walking in love. Even if…no one else around us is doing the same. Live according to WHO you are in Christ Jesus. Live Up in WHO he is making you to be today.

Today’s Prayer

Father, teach me to walk in the light as you are in the light. I confess that there are people I do not like much because I know they don’t like me. That is so carnal, immature but excused as being “normal” . Jesus, change my normal.

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