July 8, 2025
“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God Whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4:20)
Tradition tells us that the Apostle John escaped from the Isle of Patmos by swimming out to a ship that was bound for the city of Ephesus where he lived to a very old age and was buried. With white hair and a long white beard, he was so feeble they had to carry him to the meetings. While at the meetings he would bless those who attended and cry: “Little children, love one another, little children, love one another!”
As we have seen in this chapter, John gives us ten reasons why we must love one another. One reason is that God is love. If we plug into the love God is, we make contact with God, and as we become a conduit of God’s love, God makes contact with us.
John gives us a second reason that if we say we love God and we hate our brother we are liars. Because if we do not love the brother we can see, how can we love God Whom we cannot see? His point is that it’s not easy to love God because we cannot hug a Spirit. There is an inseparable vertical and horizontal dimension of this love that God is.
These two dimensions form a cross.
We cannot say we love God if we do not love one another.
Dick Woodward, 09 July 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
July 4, 2025
Heavenly Father, You tell us in Your Word that You can keep us in a state of perfect peace if we meet Your conditions for peace. Because I seek Your peace in my life, give me the wisdom to worry about nothing, and the faith to pray about everything. May I receive from You the mental discipline to think about all the good things and the integrity to do the right things.
May I always have that incurable optimism that believes in goodness. Give me such an insight into what You have been doing and what You are now doing in my life and in my world that I will give thanks always and in all things. May I never try to push You or run before You, but always wait on You, experiencing and expressing the gentleness and patience that are the evidence of Your Spirit living in me.
As I sort out my priorities, may I always value Your approval of who and what I am and what I do, and not walk before others to be seen by them or to please them. Never let me forget how near You are to me as I draw near to You, worshiping and enjoying You each day and forever.
And finally, Heavenly Father, realizing that it is not who I am, but who You are that is important; acknowledging that it is not what I can do, but what You can do that really matters; agreeing that it should never be what I want, but always what You want; and remembering that in the final analysis it will not be what I did, but what You did that will have lasting eternal results, give me that absolute trust in You and total dependence on You that will truly rest my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus.
Enable me to seek these conditions for peace in the name of Jesus Christ, for my peace and for Your glory. Amen.
Dick Woodward, 3 July 2009
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Posted by Dick Woodward
July 1, 2025
“…& mercy shall follow me all the days of my life...” (Psalm 23:6)
Mercy is the unconditional love of God. This word is found 366 times in the Bible. (Perhaps God wants us to know we need mercy and unconditional love every day of the year – and even Leap Year!) Many people think we don’t hear about God’s mercy until the Sermon on the Mount; however, we find 280 mercy references in the Old Testament. King David concludes Psalm 100 with the observation that God’s mercy is everlasting.
My favorite Old Testament reference to God’s mercy is found at the end of Psalm 23. David’s great psalm ends with the declaration that he is positively certain the mercy of God will follow him always. The Hebrew word he uses for ‘follow’ can also be translated as ‘pursue.’ David brings his profound description of the relationship between God and man to a conclusion by declaring the unconditional love of God will pursue him all the days of his life.
This is true for all who confess, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
There are many ways to fail. When we understand the meaning of God’s mercy, however, we should realize that we cannot possibly out-fail God’s mercy. No matter what your failures have been, God has sent you a message wrapped in this five-letter word “mercy.”
The amazing message is that you did not win God’s love by a positive performance, and you do not lose God’s love by a negative performance. God’s love and acceptance of you is unconditional. According to David, the mercy of God is not only there like a rock for you, but God is pursuing you with unconditional love and forgiveness.
Dick Woodward, Happiness that Doesn’t Make Good Sense
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 27, 2025
“Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy…” (Psalm 107:1-2)
Redemption means to get something back that has been lost. It is similar in meaning to the word “rehabilitation” which essentially means “to invest again with dignity.” The first words of Psalm 107’s marvelous hymn of redemption are quoted above. At the end of each of the five stanzas in this psalm, we are told that those who have been redeemed by the Lord should step up and say so.
Levels and dimensions of redemption are profiled in this psalm. Each description ends with the charge that we thank God for God’s goodness in redeeming us in this way.
God redeems us from our chaos when God finds us. God then redeems us from our chains when God sets us free from our sins. This is followed by the way God redeems us from our foolish and sinful choices. The psalmist emphasizes our responsibility for bringing on the consequences of our sins. The psalmist then describes the way God redeems us from our complacency by meeting us in our crises from which God redeems us when we are at our wits end and don’t know what to do.
As you meditate on these levels of redemption, ask God to continuously redeem you in all these ways. As you reflect on each dimension of redemption, step up and join the redeemed of the Lord in grateful worship. And say so!
Dick Woodward, 27 June 2012
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 24, 2025
“…for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10)
In Luke 19, verses 1–10, we encounter Jesus interacting with the tax collector, Zacchaeus. The beautiful part of the Zacchaeus story is that Jesus spends His only day in Jericho with this little crook, and all the people are griping about it.
It would make a great painting if an artist painted Jesus (who was a tall man according to Josephus) walking home with His arm around short and small Zacchaeus.
Here we see the strategy of Jesus. Jesus is passing through Jericho. He obviously wants to reach the man who can impact and reach Jericho for Him after he has passed beyond the city limits.
It must have made a big impact upon the city when Zacchaeus started calling in the people he had “ripped off.” Imagine their surprise, joy, and awe when they, thinking he was going to get into their purses even deeper, discovered that he wanted to pay them back 400% because he had met Jesus!
This is an illustration and an application of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) that the solution, the answer, the salt, the light – is something we are, and that we simply must hear His word and do it.
Dick Woodward, MBC New Testament Handbook
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 20, 2025
“For in fact the body is not one member but many.” (1 Corinthians 12:14)
The greatest Scripture in the New Testament about the way a church should function is Chapter 12 of First Corinthians. After the Apostle Paul uses the words diversity and oneness several times, he brings these two opposite concepts together in his inspired metaphor that the Church is to function as a body.
Paul writes that it is not either/or but both/and. Diversity should be celebrated rather than resolved. As diverse members of the body of Christ come together to have a ministry there are “let it happen people,” “make it happen people,” “don’t know what’s happening people,” and “don’t know anything is supposed to be happening people.”
Let it happen people desperately need make it happen people. And the other two kinds of people obviously need these first two kinds of people. The truth is they all need each other to function as a team, a body and a Church.
There are Mary and Martha kind of people and they both need each other. Often, Marthas do not appreciate Marys because they think they are unorganized. But Marys need Marthas and Marthas need to realize that if it were not for Marys there would not be anything to organize.
Are you fitting in with those kinds of people who have what you do not have and sharing with them what you have that they do not have?
When we experience unity while celebrating diversity, we do not have uniformity but a supernatural community that is in reality the body of our risen and living Jesus Christ.
Dick Woodward, 25 June 2013
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 17, 2025
Now it is required that those who have been given trust must prove faithful.” (1 Corinthians 4:2)
A story is told of a man who was told by God to push against a huge rock as his primary work for a lifetime. The man did that for years. Exhausted, burned out and discouraged he told God the rock had not moved a centimeter. God responded that God had not told the man to move the rock, but to push against it. God made the observation that pushing against the rock had given the man a strong healthy and muscular body. God knew all along that only God could move that rock.
This leads to an acrostic based on the word push:
P- Pray
U– Until
S– Something
H– Happens
I am now living in my 82nd year. One of the observations I have made in my life is that God is our Mentor. God is always teaching us, and God is fiercely committed to the proposition that we are going to grow spiritually and in every other way. God deliberately assigns us tasks that are not only difficult but impossible knowing that those tasks will grow and mature us into faithful servants God can use to do through us what only God can do in this world.
So, this week PUSH and keep praying until God does God’s works in and through you.
Dick Woodward, 20 June 2012
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 13, 2025
“We don’t know what to do but our eyes are on You.” (2 Chronicles 20:12)
No matter how gifted we may be, sooner or later we will hit a wall of crisis where we do not know what to do. The Scripture from Chronicles is taken from a time when the people of God were overwhelmingly outnumbered, and they simply did not know what to do. James later wrote that when we do not know what to do, we should ask God for the wisdom we confess we do not have. (James 1:5) He promises us that God will not hold back but will provide a truckload of wisdom for us.
Years ago I received a telephone call from my youngest daughter when she was a first year student at the University of Virginia. With many tears she informed me she had fallen down a flight of stairs and was sure she had broken her back. At the hospital they discovered mononucleosis and seriously infected tonsils that needed to be removed. She concluded her litany: “Finals begin tomorrow, and I just don’t know what to do, Daddy!”
Frankly, I was touched that my intelligent young daughter believed if she could just share her litany of woes and tap into the vast resources of my wisdom, I could tell her what to do when she did not know what to do.
According to James that is the way we make our Heavenly Father feel when we come to Him overwhelmed with problems and tell Him we don’t know what to do. A good way to begin some days is: “Lord, I don’t know what to do, but my eyes are on YOU!”
Dick Woodward, blog 2013
Editor’s Note: Blessings to all the fathers out there as we celebrate Father’s Day this weekend! For those of us who have fathers in Heaven – like my Papa – it’s comforting that our Heavenly Father is always here when we don’t know what to do.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 10, 2025
“For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart…” (1 John 3:20)
In the Bible the heart is often referring to our emotions. The Apostle John uses the heart in that sense in the verse above. What he is essentially writing is that if the way we feel condemns us, God is greater than the way we feel.
Before the Apostle John shares these words, he was challenging us to love in action and not merely in words. He follows the insight that God is greater than the way we feel with the prescription to keep the two great commandments of Jesus: to love God and love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. (Matthew 22:35-40)
We are to love when we look up, when we look around, and when we look in. John was teaching that we are to love God completely, love others unconditionally, and love ourselves correctly. Loving ourselves does not mean when we pass a mirror we should stop and have our devotions. Jesus taught that we should say the same thing about ourselves that God says about us: God loves you, and God loves me.
The prescription for depression the Apostle of Love gives devout disciples is that when our hearts condemn us, we should realize that our faith is not based on something as fickle as our feelings. Our faith should be based on the reality that we believe and apply the commandment to love.
The last thing we should do when our heart condemns us is to isolate ourselves into a pity party. We should get with people and love them.
Dick Woodward, 13 June 2011
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 6, 2025
“He gives power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increases strength… But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)
When the power of Pentecost came upon the apostles, there was a noise like a mighty rushing wind. As we read in the New Testament book of Acts how the apostles received the power of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost and began implementing the Great Commission amidst severe persecution, we should think of the eagle leaping off its nest directly into adverse winds to rise and soar above the storm enveloping it.
As you see in your mind’s eye the eagle sitting on the side of its nest, waiting for the velocity of the wind to become strong, you have a metaphor that allegorizes an important expression found many times in the Old Testament: “Wait on the Lord.”
It means we are not to go charging ahead without clear direction from the Lord. We are to wait on the Lord. We are exhorted to follow the example of an eagle by waiting until the wind of the Spirit is present to direct, support and empower us.
Then we should follow the eagle’s example and take the leap of faith off our nests directly into the adversity that is challenging us. As the power of the Holy Spirit drives us into the strong winds of a storm, the energizing unction of the Holy Spirit will give us the spiritual aerodynamics we need to lift us up and soar over it.
Dick Woodward, from As Eagles: How to be an Eagle Disciple
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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