Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Suppose it’s your duty to love someone (parent, child, spouse, or someone in the church) and the honest truth is you feel you can’t love that person. Too much negative water under the bridge. If the price of entering heaven is changing your heart toward that person, you’d have to stay outside—you feel that way.

 

Many are caught in this problem. Jesus said of our “time of the end,” “Because iniquiy shall abound, the love [agape] of many shall wax cold” (Matt. 24:12). “But,” you say, “that’s love, period—love for everybody; and there are still some people I do love! The problem is just certain ones I cannot love.” But if love [agape] doesn’t love the unlovely, it doesn’t really love anybody (1 Cor. 13:1-3), does it?

 

Paul describes this particular problem: “This know also, that in the last days.... men [anthropoi, both men and women] will be lovers of their own selves [philautoi] ,.... without natural affection [a-storgoi, that’s the word!]” (2 Tim. 3:1, 3, KJV).

 

In one form or another, this is the problem of the human race. We all have it. We love our cronies—period. But it’s exactly why Christ came to our dark world—to teach us what love [agape] is, and to “pour” into our empty, cold hearts the gift of the real thing (Rom. 5:5). Asking for the gift is good, but not good enough; we receive the gift through “comprehending” its grand dimensions—old-fashioned “beholding” (Eph. 3:14-18). How? Not by watching videos but “eating” the “body” of Christ—His word, the Bible (John 6:33, 35, 48, 53). When you eat a piece of bread, it enters you blood stream; what is bread today becomes you tomorrow. That’s how in a certain sense, the believer also becomes “the word.... made flesh.” There’s an answer to your (our!) problem!

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.