Dear Reader, are you:

• disillusioned about some aspect of your life,
• struggling with unanswered questions of the heart and head,
• heart broken,
• struggling with hypocrisy of one form or another,
• feeling judgmental,
• angry with God,
• suffering from the fruits of false beliefs,
• going through the motions in life with a veneer exterior, but feeling a void in you soul because your life lacks substance.

If any of the foregoing describes you and what you are feeling, I just want you to know I am praying for you. As I pray, I want to encourage you to stand firm in your faith and do not let your love, the love that God has placed deep within you, to grow cold.

The bible says that, “And [in that day] many will be offended and repelled and will begin to distrust and desert one another and will stumble and fall away and betray one another and pursue one another with hatred. And many false prophets will rise up and deceive and lead many into error. And the love of [b]the great body of people will grow cold because of the multiplied lawlessness and iniquity, but he who endures, overcomes and stands firm to the end will be saved.” Matt. 24:10-13.

Life is full of many challenges and controversies. Indeed, in a day and age where it seems one evil or another abounds through out the world, it is easy to allow our hearts to be filled with fear. This fear manifests itself in different ways in different people, but it always leads a person to the same lonely place.

Many who allow fear a foothold into their heart and mind become isolated or distracted or busy with activity hoping that the fear will go away. Others seek to fill the void fear creates with some material thing or some unhealthy relationship.

Everyone who embraces fear in one form or another seeks to hide the fact that they are afraid, while simultaneously doing whatever it takes to find a place of safety and security. Hence, fear causes people to become “offended” by those who love them and those they are given to love and they become filled with distrust for one another.

Thereafter, a person who was once filled with faith, hope and love, is transformed into an unstable soul, hating everything that has eternal worth and cleaving to what ever temporal happiness that will numb the unrelenting pain. To be certain, there are many who claim to have insight, authority and special enlightenment and preach a convenient gospel of cheap grace and happy living, but these false prophets are setting the fearful up to become so cold to love – love for God and love for one another – that they become paralyzed and ineffectual.

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:18.

Fear is the opposite of love. Just like light and darkness, love and fear cannot occupy the same space. However, be encouraged, just like light always overcomes darkness, love always overcomes fear.

As I pray, I get the sense that someone who is reading this post needs to know that they are not alone. Today, that someone is me. And so from my prayer closet, I submit the following encouragement and exhortation:

• To the disillusioned: if your vision for life is blurred and you have lost your way, cleave to the love of God and he will speak peace to the tempest and the storm that brews with in you.

• To those tormented by questions: let love be your teacher and fill your heart and mind with wisdom.

• To the heart broken: let love flood into your heart to heal you, to restore you and to fill you with joy.

• To the hypocrites: let love be the plumb line by which you measure your actions. Do what you know to be right and turn away from what you know to be wrong.

• To those who have been injured by the hypocrite: let love remind you of your own failings and weakness so you can bestow grace upon grace to that double-minded person; forgive just as you have been forgiven. Unconditionally.

• To the judgmental: let love convert your critical thoughts into a prayer and intercession. May love give you strength to bear the burden of the sin you are judging as if it where you own. Don’t stop praying until you are both delivered.

• To those who are angry with God: let love remind you that you are precious to Him. Let love help you take every indictment you have against Him to the Cross. Indeed, measure everyone of frustrations about what God has done (or not done) against every wound, scare, and drop of blood shed for you. Rest. Quietly. He knows.

• To those suffering from the fruits of false beliefs: let love purify your soul and set you free from guilt and shame. You are accepted just as you are. There is nothing you have done or can do that can cause God to love you more than he does now. Let love cut through the cloud of doubt and give you clarity.

• To those who feel like they are faking it and who are longing for all that is real: let love become your identity. Find your significance in the perfect love of God and in sharing that love with those he brings into your life.

If you need any additional prayer and encouragement, please don’t hesitate to call or write.

(If you are struggling with what the meaning of “love” is, please read my post “Love = A Poured Out Life”)