Welcome to today’s devotion.
The first reason is love
- 1 John 4:19-21
All behavior is for a reason. Every cause has an effect, and every effect is intended by a cause. Many people live under the wrong influence, because they deny what is making them that way. Trying to change the external effects without addressing the internal causes is completely futile. The world’s psychological and social welfare systems generally try to ignore the effects of sin on the world, without even realizing what it has produced.
Society is living with the effects of Adam’s cause, and it will take more than a carefully planned reform program to change it. All emotional disturbances are the result of receiving wrong stimuli. Counseling will not change the effects of a bad marriage, but it will change the cause of the marriage. -
God’s love for us causes us to be born again.
- The effect of salvation is to awaken a love for God and for the brothers. As God expresses the first cause of His love toward us, His life within us will become that effect. On the basis of that love He continues to mediate, never on the basis of our own earnings, or the effects of our own human nature. This is called the election of grace. God does not want our lives to be merely a result of our own efforts, but instead, to be a reflection of the first cause of His love for us. God’s love produced kingship in David’s life, and apostleship in Peter’s life. Despite all the inevitable effects of our old Adamic nature, God has predestined our lives to manifest the eternal effects of His first cause of love.
Today’s reading passage: Revelation 10-13