Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 John 2:15

Did you ever try to figure out whether or not someone you loved, loved you in return? Who knows when, but a long time ago some romantic had the idea that you could solve the dilemma by pulling petals off of a daisy. Remember how it works? She loves me, she loves me not . . . When you got to the last petal, you’d have it figured out. And, the beauty of it was, if you didn’t like the outcome, you could grab another flower and start over!

Sometimes I wonder if that’s how God feels about our love for Him. We know from Scripture that God’s love toward us is faithful, undaunted, and unchanging (Lamentations 3:22-23). But, quite frankly, our love for Him is often fickle and erratic. One day it’s we love Him, and a couple of days later it looks like we love him not. And while we would never say it that way, sometimes that’s really what it is! One day we resonate with intimacy toward God, and the next, we feel distant and disconnected.

I suspect that part of the problem is our understanding of the word love. We use the same English word to speak about so many things. I could say, I love the Chicago Cubs; I love deep-dish pizza; I love the family dog; and I love my wife using the same word for all, but meaning dramatically different things. Then we take that same word and say, I love God. No wonder the meaning gets lost!

That’s why I’m thankful for the writings of the apostle John. He moves the discussion about our love for God from the realm of our fickle feelings to tangible, practical ways that we can express our love to God regardless of how we feel. John tells us that God feels loved by us when we surrender to Him and obey (1 John 5:3). He also tells us that loving God is expressed to Him by loving our brothers and sisters in Christ (1 John 4:21). And in today’s verse we see that our love for God is also proven when we choose to love God more than the world! If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15).

So, thankfully, our love for God doesn’t need to rise and fall on how we feel on a given day. Loving Him is about our choice to put Him first and care about the things He cares about! And that is something we can do on a regular basis regardless.

If you’ve been caught in a petal-pulling love relationship with Jesus, set yourself free by choosing to express your love to Him in concrete ways every day. You’ll be surprised at how quickly the good feelings follow your good choices!

Have you struggled with understanding the Epistles to the Corinthians? I surely have, and 2 Corinthins seems so fragmented at times it’s hard to make sense of it.

I don’t know about you, but by and large I find 1 and 2 Corinthians a hard read. Some great quotes can be found in these Epistles, but it can be hard to understand the flow and purpose of the letters as a whole.

In 1978 I gave my father the book “Paul ” by Gunther Bornkamm, and I’ve just started reading it. (!)  At last the Letters to the Church at Corinth are beginning to make sense, and it’s wonderful to have an understanding of the events that gave rise to the flow of Paul’s thoughts as expressed in the two Epistles.

Bornkamm explains that the problem with Corinth arose because the Church there was under threat from certain members who regarded themselves as “spirit-filled”. These people were putting their own interpretations on the doctrines of the young church, and ultimately these free thinkers and others like them went on to mount a serious attack on Paul’s credentials as an apostle.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the discussion on 1 Corinthians:

“The present-day reader may be surprised to find that in Corinth the dominant question as to the Christian’s proper conduct in his own sphere of life, his freedom and its limits, what he might do without scruple and what was forbidden to him as a Christian, often arose in areas where one would not have expected it.

“A chief reason for this is that in the post-classical world in which Christianity grew up, the spheres of the cultic and the secular in paganism ran into one another in quite a different way from what they do today. This explains, for example, why, in 1 Corinthians 8-10 Paul was obliged to discuss at such length what was for the Corinthians anything but a captious question - whether a Christian might buy meat offered for sale in the market place which might have bem left over from the sacrifice in one of the nearby temples and found its way to the stalls. Or the question of whether a Christian might have an easy mind in joining heathen friends and relatives at a meal following a sacrifice.

“To these and other everyday questions the “spirit-filled” people had given a considered answer applicable to every case: “All things are lawful” (1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23). They paraded their freedom to the point of licentiousness, in contrast to the rest, whose scruples made them uneasy about any defilement and, to preserve their faith, forced them into a strict asceticism…

“Paul does not deal with the question by way of casuistry and law. He allows freedom where it is compatible with faith. But he also says “No, and no again” where there is notorious playing fast and loose with the Christian faith, where outrage is done to moral principles accepted on all hands - even by the heathen (1 Corinthians 5:1 et seq) - and where it involves betrayal of the new life available in Christ to believers (1 Corinthians 6:1 et seq).

“1 Corinthians 8-10 in particular is significant in that Paul resolutely brushes aside all the enthusiansts’ pseudo-theological arguments to justify themselves by taking the theme of responsibility for the others before God and the world as his line of approach to the questions. This is also very apparent in the detailed treatment of the serious abuses in the Corinthians’ worship.

“When they celebrated the Lord’s Supper, they were sincerely convinced that in the sacrament they participated in the redmption wrought by Christ. Yet, at the common meal accompanying it, those better off did not bother about the poorer who came later and had nothing with them.

“In Paul’s view this was profanation of the “body” of Christ - the church (1 Corinthians 20 and 11). He takes the same means of checking the tumultuous contests of the “spirituals” who broke out into ecstatic utterance during worship, and insists on the intelligible, clear word of preaching which might convince outsiders and unbelievers, and win them over…

“Paul took two ways of flinging himself into this chaos and reducing it to order. First, he sent 1 Corinthians, it being in fact, as shown by 1 Corinthians 5:9, at least his second letter to this church. Second, he sent his true helper Timothy to Corinth. Initially both seem to have had some effect. Nevertheless, as 2 Corinthians shows, this was not lasting, and Paul had soon to pass through a renewed and much more acute phase in the struggle with opponents who led the Church astray and stirred it to rebellion against the apostle himself.

“We can at least sketch the causes and course of these dramatic

Bornkamm goes on to discuss the fragmentary nature of 2 Corinthians , which he explains as not a single letter, but a collection of several of Paul’s letters to the Church at Corinth at various times during this struggle, put together (not even in chronological order) by someone else later so they could be transmitted to other churches.

This is a very scholarly book, dealing with the historical life of Saint Paul and his Epistles to the churches he founded, and it really is worth reading. I do have some reservations, particularly on his comments about the veracity of Luke’s account in Acts of events in Paul’s life.  Just from a common-sense point of view, we know that Luke spent a lot of time with Paul - why parts of his account of Paul’s life should be written off as stylistic invention I don’t know - maybe I need to read some other authors on the topic.  But even if one does not go along with everything the author says on Paul’s life, his explanation of the historical scene behind the writing of the Epistles is valuable.

It helps to remember that in Paul’s day there was no “scripture”, and that in some ways this great Saint, who was not one of the original 12 and who never knew Jesus in the flesh, developed his own version of Christianity based on his personal conversion by the risen Christ. He remained true to his vision through over 30 years of evangelising, gruelling travel, bodily suffering and danger. It also helps to remember that as the Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul found himself in the thick of some very troublesome issues around reconciling his Gentile converts with strict requirements of the Law of Hebrew religion. I have found this book very thought-provoking.

As a Christian living in the Western world can cloud your mind as consumerism and social imagery is pressed upon your mind each day. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is reality and fiction. Television presents us with created imagery that looks so real. Standards are constantly challenged on this medium and more so on the Internet. As people lives become more en-groused in Technology the boundaries are being blurred.

To be a devoted Christian comes with many challenges. The west has had it easy as we have not have much persecution from the secular world or the authorities. In the west I believe the time is coming when as a Christian there will times when just saying just are a Christian, a child of the light or a follower of Jesus will get killed. The rise of Islam is where most of this persecution will come from and the rest will be from Government authorities. People might think I am an alarmist, but just look at history. Governments and groups have risen to persecute the church of the Christ before and they will do it again. The Roman Empire tried to silence Christian by forming the Catholic church, silencing and controlling believer, yet the faithful still continued even under threat of death if they went against Rome. Islam has tired to wipe out Christians. It I am not talking about a religious organisation when I mean silencing and persecuting, they can be shutdown. People can still meet in house and in other areas. The ones who will persecuted are the ones who Believe Jesus is the Messiah who died for our sins and who believe in the authority and power of the Bible and publicly declaring it.

So my questions to all you Christians out there or more rightly so children of the light and sons and daughter of the most high God are you ready to be persecuted for your faith? The Global system is falling into place and the clock is counting down. Its time for the Church of God to rise and preach the Gospel, in season or out of season. The Devil Lucifer does not want anyone to be saved and keep Christians locked up in day to day living. Let’s rise up and helped open the eyes of many people so that Jesus sacrificed will not be in vain and there spirit and soul will be saved.

Its time to get out there now. Tougher times are ahead. Lets preach the Gospel. Being a Christian is not about religion is about a relationship with our creator and salvation from our sins and separation from God. Jesus died to cleanse us and bring back to communion with God. Its not about ritual. Rituals and man made religious practice will not save anyone, only Jesus sacrifice is enough. Lets preach the Good News before we are silenced.

Then when Jesus returns to take us into his kingdom He will say ‘well done good and faith servant’.

Rise up Church, Rise up.