God made us to be creative and gave us an imagination to solve problems and develop new ideas. Jana and Sharon discuss the importance of creativity and our imagination in our lives as Christian Believers.
Love, the Motivation of Our Lives
First Corinthians Chapter 13:1-13
The Passion Translation
If I were to speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn’t express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing. And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value. Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.
.Perfect Love
Love never stops loving. It extends beyond the gift of prophecy, which eventually fades away. It is more enduring than tongues, which will one day fall silent. Love remains long after words of knowledge are forgotten. Our present knowledge and our prophecies are but partial, but when love’s perfection arrives, the partial will fade away. When I was a child, I spoke about childish matters, for I saw things like a child and reasoned like a child. But the day came when I matured, and I set aside my childish ways. For now we see but a faint reflection of riddles and mysteries as though reflected in a mirror, but one day we will see face-to-face. My understanding is incomplete now, but one day I will understand everything, just as everything about me has been fully understood. Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope, and love—yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.
In our everyday life we rush thru and often don’t have a heart reflection of our relationship skills. Our fast paced life blurs the finite details of loving ourselves, family, and neighbors. The passage above points to a heart check for loving.
When Paul wrote this, he was writing to the people of Corinth, who were very diverse yet had many pagan beliefs. There were many factions and obstacles towards the Good News of the Gospel. Paul was addressing the outcome of their spiritual immaturity in the form of divisiveness, lawsuits, selfishness, immorality, abuses in liturgy and spiritual gifts. The Corinthians were in danger of possible denial of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Today’s culture reflects many of the same things. Love is always the answer to living in peace and growing into the full stature of Jesus. We should strive to love. It is the glue that keeps everything together. Be Love!
He gave us resurrection life and drew us to himself by his holy calling on our lives. And it wasn’t because of any good we have done, but by his divine pleasure and marvelous grace that confirmed our union with the anointed Jesus, even before time began!
You’ll be reading an excerpt below from our current book project: Hardwired for Healing: Bringing Our Fractured Pieces Together. We’re planning on publishing the book later this year, and are very excited to share it with you.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s only natural that we would block our own healing in various ways. Why? Sometimes we aren’t ready to handle the process of healing. Our wounded and fractured parts need to come together. We as a whole person, may not be mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or physically ready for healing. Being ready for healing is half the battle. We must battle for healing by preparing ourselves. We can prepare ourselves through things like prayer, cognitive therapy, physical therapy, and other forms of proactive self-improvement. Preparing through self-improvement is critical. For the time being, we’ll focus on the blocks we have and why they happen.
The truth is that each component of our whole person (mental, emotional, spiritual and physical) can have multiple fractures. And several of those fractures can block our healing. Our fractures can also work together to form clusters to create significant blocks, like creating bricks walls. The bricks in our walls are the fractured pieces, and the mortar is made of different types of fear. Unfortunately, our fractured pieces work to protect ourselves for better or worse regardless of fear. We protect ourselves through things like denial, dissociation, and rebellion from the pain it can take to heal.
It is not our fault that we fracture from pain and trauma. We must consider that we do have a choice to remain fractured or to seek healing from the Lord. Healing from the Lord is permanent and eternal. We have freewill so we can choose to be set free permanently. The truth is, we can remain in denial or dissociation. We can also be outright rebellious of the healing process. Healing can be blocked by using defense mechanisms. Denial, dissociation and rebellion are all natural defense mechanisms. We use defense mechanisms to keep ourselves from feeling the pain involved in recovering and processing hurtful memories of traumatic events.
Just Sharon & Jana 
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