Love, the Well-Spring of Life

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” – Proverbs 4:23.

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” -Psalm 16:11. “The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.” -Matthew 12:35. (ESV).

We know that the vital organ of our body, our heart, is the well-spring of life itself. Let something happen to the heart and its steady beating to take life-giving blood to every part of our body and to provide our very life sustenance is sorely affected.

But the heart is also considered the center of our spiritual and emotional life. “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” we read in Proverbs 23:7. In context, the writer of this Proverb is using a stingy person who asks another to dine with him, but in his heart does not really want anyone to participate with him in what he has to offer. When we think about the heart and how open and sincere or, conversely, how calculating and ill toward others it can be, we can agree that “as one thinks in his heart, so is he.”

We are encouraged to keep our hearts vigilantly and faithfully. To seek the Lord God with all the heart, mind, soul and body is, foremost to loving the Lord God devotedly and following Him with total commitment. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself”  (Luke 10:27, quoting from Leviticus 19:18).

Our society has tended for some time to render love cheap, to take love up and make a commitment, or to decide that love is not enduring and to break the bonds of love. God’s intention was not thus to cheapen love and make it of little regard.  Instead from the heart comes the well-spring of life itself. True love is without dissimulation.  It is enduring. It brings fullness of joy. And love is a gift of God “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God…We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:7, 19. NKJV). - Ethelene Dyer Jones 10.09.2016

Prayer for Our Nation

“And His name will be the hope of all the world.” – Matthew 12:21 (citing “The Lord’s Chosen Servant” passage from Isaiah 42:1-4).  NLT

Our National Day of Prayer is set for Thursday, May 2, 2013. A national day of prayer was called in 1775 by the Continental Congress.  In 1952, Congress passed a bill calling for a National Day of Prayer.  President Harry S. Truman signed the bill into law.  In 1988, the law was amended to make the National Day of Prayer the first Thursday in May, annually. The 2013 observance will be the sixty-second consecutive annual National Day of Prayer.

“Pray for America” is the theme and the cry for the 2013 National Day of Prayer.  How desperately our nation needs the earnest, seeking, intercessory prayers of Christian people.  Mrs. Shirley Dobson, wife of the minister who has led in Faith for Families is serving as chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force.  She urges that prayer leads us to know God better, to experience a fuller relationship with Him, to model ourselves after Christ, and to give ourselves to continued prayer. In his book, Prayer on Fire, Fred Hartley states:  “Prayer is what we do.  It is our initiative to meet God.” 

May we pray earnestly for these areas of America, seeking God’s forgiveness, intervention and leadership in (1) government, (2) business, (3) education, (4) the media, (5) the military and national and international affairs, (6), churches and  (7) families.  Let us join in community groups and pray individually.  May we invest in hope through prayer and ask God to transform our nation to one that fears Him and seeks His will and way.  –Ethelene Dyer Jones  04.28.2013.