Let God's love spill out of you today

Refreshing water - Let God's love spill out all over those around you.

Today I was reading from Philemon in The Message version Bible. I really liked what the sypnosis of Philemon said, and want to share its encouraging message here with you:

Every movement we make in response to God has a ripple effect, touching family, neighbors, friends, community. Belief in God alters our language. Love of God affects daily relationships. Hope in God enters into our work. Also their opposites - unbelief, indifference, and despair. None of these movements and responses, beliefs and prayers, gestures and searches, can be confined to the soul. They spill out and make history...Paul had no idea that believing in Jesus would involve them in radical social change.

Are you positively affecting those around you through your relationship with Christ? Is your faith in God greatly influencing your family, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors? I have a magnet on my refrigerator of water dripping into a pool, making ripples. It says, "If you can't make waves, make ripples."

Of course, I would love to be a tsunami wave of God's powerful influence on those who cross my path each day. But if I can't be that for now, then I want to be at least ripples of Jesus' love....a delightful splash of encouragement, joy, and peace. And as I am faithful with the little, then I pray God will give me increase....expanding my borders and sphere of influence for His glory and to further His kingdom. Yes, I want to be used in a GREAT way by God! How about you?

Do you want more of God? Are you hungry for Him? Would you like to have more of an impact on those around you, ministering to them? My desire is to be so saturated with God's presence, that my face shines as Moses' face did after he spent 40 days and nights with God, and he came down the mountain. (Exodus 34: 30). So filled with His Spirit, that His grace and forgiveness touches everyone around me and ministers to them. So deeply in love with Jesus, that the sweet aroma of His anointing that is within me fills an entire room of people...and breaks every yoke and bondage of darkness!

As this paragraph from The Message above says, wouldn't it be awesome - and what God really wants from us - to have His love and truth spilling out of you and me to even make history...to make radical social change, as Jesus and his disciples did, turning the world upside down?!

After all, Jesus Christ was the ultimate in social change. Eating with known sinners. Driving greedy merchants with a whip out of His Father's house of worship. Making no accusation against the woman caught in adultery. Touching and healing lepers. Saying children are the greatest in the Kingdom of God, and to become like them. Calling Pharisees - the religious and hypocritical teachers of the law - snakes and white-washed toombs. And finally, dying on the cross in our stead, so we could be saved and could spend eternity with God.

Here is both a challenge and a great encouragement to you and me today from Philemon 1: 4 -7 and 1:21-22:

Every time your name comes up in my prayers, I say, "Oh, thank you, God!" I keep hearing of the love and faith you have for the Master Jesus, which brims over to other believers. And I keep praying that this faith we hold in common keeps showing up in the good things we do, and that people recognize Christ in all of it. Friend, you have no idea how good your love makes me feel, doubly so when I see your hospitality to fellow believers..You'll be doing it for Christ, but it will also do my heart good. I know you well enough to know you will. You'll probably go far beyond what I've written. And by the way, get a room ready for me. Because of your prayers, I fully expect to be your guest again."

Today may we make more room in our hearts for Jesus, and may we brim over with His living waters of love, goodness, mercy and eternal truth, to all those around us...that people would clearly see Jesus in us.