On This Day: When Friendship Destroys a Church’s Love

   “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another." (John 15:12-17)

   This was quite the eye-opener for me this morning. I had never noticed before that Jesus had just told the apostles that they were his friends, but he never used the word for friend-love to describe the aim of all his teaching. The "love one another" was agapè-love, which means the same kind of love we receive from God.

   This makes sense that, if Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, the love that flows through us to others is the love that flows into us from the Triune God. And this is why Jesus has repeated the “agapè-love one another” command so many times!

   And yes, agapè-love is a “command” (friendship-love is not). So why do churches sacrifice agapè-love for friendship-love, or family-love?

   Part of the answer is that we have not been taught “the gospel OF THE KINGDOM”. People always hear about “the gospel”, and that this is a one-on-one interaction between us and Jesus. But Jesus and the apostles taught “the gospel of the kingdom”, meaning that the good news of salvation is not a solitary experience of Jesus coming to us, but an individual’s experience of coming to Jesus IN his kingdom and becoming one of his brothers in the brotherhood of believers.

   That’s why Jesus taught so many parables about “the kingdom”. It’s why he would tell the religious hypocrites, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes GO INTO the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31). Everyone understood that Jesus was calling people out of the kingdom of the world and into the kingdom of God.

   This is also why Paul would remind the churches, “He has delivered us FROM the domain of darkness and transferred us TO the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). When someone is born again, they are born INTO Jesus’ kingdom. When someone “comes” to Jesus, they come to him IN his kingdom. When someone “receives” Christ, they receive him as their King IN his kingdom.

   What Jesus kept telling his disciples (constantly affirming that he would need to be alive for the things he taught them to be experienced) was that agapè-love was the love of his kingdom. You could leave all your friends behind and come into the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could leave your whole family behind and come into the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could have friendships in the kingdom that were under the authority of the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could have family relationships in the kingdom that were under the authority of the agapè-love of his kingdom.

   But you could NOT cover your relationship with Jesus and his kingdom with friendship-love, or family-love, or self-love. When those lesser loves have authority over agapè-love, we end up with the divisions and schisms based on friendship, family, and self-rule that Satan freely promotes amongst church-goers.

   At my six-decades-of-knowing-God stage of life, I have come to cringe when people talk about their friendships but not their agapè-love for Jesus’ church. When I see people act as if the church is about friendship or family, but there is no talk about “the kingdom of his beloved Son”, I know we are in trouble.

   The fact is that we either topple the idols of friendship and family (as Gideon was required to do with his own father’s idolatry), or those idols of friendship and family will topple the agapè-love focus of Jesus and his kingdom. If a friendship has more authority over how we follow Christ than Jesus does, we are not following Christ. If family members have more authority over us than Christ the Lord, then they are the ones we are confessing as Lord.  

   Some of us will know what it is like to lose family and friends in our determination to follow Jesus wherever he leads. We understand that the agapè-love of Jesus still covers how we relate to those people when we see them, but we must keep pursuing the agapè-love of Jesus in his kingdom even if they keep rejecting us for doing so.

   When I look back at all my church experiences in both the institutional and home churches, when people changed from seeking the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace within the church to building private friendships and family alliances behind the scenes, we were already past the point of no return. I have some painful lessons of trying too hard to salvage what people had already rejected.

   Others of us may realize that we are the ones whose devotion to friends and family have kept us from following Christ in his kingdom. As Jesus said to the church of Ephesus when they had “abandoned the love you had at first” (the agapè-love of Jesus’ kingdom), “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Revelation 2:5).

   Yes, that’s how seriously Jesus takes it when we turn from agapè-love to any other kind of love. We cannot be his church (lampstand) unless we are receiving and expressing his agapè-love.

   When Peter wrote, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (I Peter 4:8), the “loving” and “love” are the agapè-love of his kingdom. Only when Jesus’ command to pursue THAT love is obeyed, can we “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved (agapèd) children. And walk in love (agapè), as Christ loved (agapèd) us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).

   I have heard so many stories of what it is like for someone to come to Christ in Muslim countries. They know that their family and friends will hate them, and maybe even be the ones trying to kill them if they confess Jesus Christ as Lord. But here in North America, if a young person can’t follow Jesus because they are afraid of losing friends or upsetting family, we just change our youth ministries to accommodate them. And then we wonder why they leave the church as adults when we never actually brought them to believe “the gospel of the kingdom”. They didn’t repent and trust in Jesus in the way described in God’s word, so once all the fun of youth group is over, the fun of the world awaits.

   For those who hear Jesus when he says, “These things I command you, so that you will love one another”, walk in “the obedience of faith” and leave the lesser relationships to him. This is part of the “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” characteristic of relationship with God. Friendship and family are optional; agapè-love is not.

   So look in the mirror of truth, admit any ways lesser loves constrict your agapè-love, repent if and how much is needed, and deliberately “pursue righteousness, faith, love (agapè), and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (II Timothy 2:22). It’s a command from Jesus.

 

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Higher-Deeper of Love and Prejudice

   Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

   A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) (John 4:1-9)

   Years ago, my journey through Jesus’ visit with the Samaritan woman led me to see the way Jesus would say something to her that made her thoughts go HIGHER than ever before, but that led to her having to look DEEPER into herself than she had ever done. Ever since, this HIGHER/DEEPER way of relating to God in his word has richly blessed me.

   So, coming again to John 4 is like a return trip to Ucluelet, BC. There is a history of visits to this passage of Scripture, an anticipation of seeing things I haven’t seen before, and the expectation of experiencing it as the person I am this time through the journey.

   The first Higher/Deeper experience came in the opening scene of the drama. We have what appears to be a typical Jewish man resting by the local well. Enter stage right is a not-typical Samaritan woman. Typical in being Samaritan, yes. Typical in being a woman, yes. But not-typical in coming to the well all alone.

   Think of the shock and strangeness to this woman when a lifetime of animosity between Jews and Samaritans is blasted with something she could never have expected. The cultural stereotype of prideful and hateful Jewish men relating to despised and hated Samaritans (and the feeling was mutual) was being utterly broken by Immanuel, God with us, the Word who became flesh to dwell among us.

   The first application of this is to encourage you to have a daily time with God in his word and prayer where you listen for what he is saying, look for how he is working to accomplish his will in those things, and diligently join him in his work as best as you know to do. As much as we can learn from someone else’s sharing from the word, we always learn more from attaching to God for ourselves in the two-way relationship of his word and our prayer.

   The second application is to consider our own experience with encountering God’s Highers and our Deepers. Every time we read God’s word, he will be revealing something to us that is Higher than what we have learned about him. When we say, “I’ve never noticed that before,” or “something stood out that I never considered,” or “Why have I never noticed that verse!”, or even just, “What stood out today was…”, we are describing a Higher. And, since God says that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9), we sure better expect that when we meet with him, seeing “higher” things is a way of life for his children.

   The Deepers to look for are always where God points his spotlight inside us. What do we suddenly see inside ourselves that tells us how we are doing? What clash do we feel between the Higher thing God is showing us in his word and our “blessed are the poor in spirit” acknowledgement of how sadly we aren’t experiencing what is written, or we just don’t know him like that. This is the gift of the Deeper, seeing where we are in relation to what God is saying and doing.

   In the case of the Samaritan woman, her Deeper was the inescapable feeling of being despised and rejected by the Jewish people. She had to feel that before discovering that this was the Messiah who “was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

   Do you see that? In the first-step of the Higher/Deeper she encounters a man who is willing to break all the barriers of custom and culture to give her the honor of helping him out with a drink of water, and she feels this strange event on the Deeper of a heart that has borne the shame and disgrace over her ethnicity in the eyes of Jewish men. And that, we will see, is the genius of the Savior who has compassion on the people living in darkness because he saw them as sheep without a shepherd.

   I am truly looking forward to the rest of this journey through John 4 and the gift of meeting with Jesus and this woman who becomes my sister in Christ before the scene is finished. I am in awe and wonder that John takes us from Jesus’ one-on-one with Nicodemus, a good, Jewish religious leader who struggled with Jesus’ teaching on being born again, and leads us through Jesus’ one-on-one visit with a sinful Samaritan woman who entered the kingdom of heaven on the same day she just went to the well for water.

   In all of this, as John put front and center in his prologue, “…we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace… No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known” (John 1:14-18).

   This is what was happening to this poor and unsuspecting Samaritan then, and it shines even more brightly for us today as we get to see the whole scene in just a few minutes of reading (and hour-upon-hour of meditating!). Can you see how God is doing this very thing with you today?

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: A Multitude With One Heart and Soul

   Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. (Acts 4:32)

   As soon as I saw Luke’s description of the early church as “of one heart and soul”, I felt two bursts of negative emotions. One was a sorrow that my 60+ years of church life betrayed that most church people do not want this. The other was that the period of my life when it felt like we had this was so short-lived.

   I don’t imagine we would benefit too much from a left-brain elaboration of what we believe about the unity and harmony of Jesus’ church. It’s all there in the Bible. And it is clearer than most church folks seem to notice!

   How would I summarize the reasons that so many church-going people have no interest in pursuing the “one heart and soul reality in the church?

   The shortest answer is: SELF!

   Yes, the selfish old heart loves to live in the flesh (“sark” in the Greek). This is the earthly part of us that has no attachment to God. The majority of church people I have ever known speak out of their sarks, their fleshly interests. And we all know there can be no oneness of heart and soul when everyone’s hearts are attached to the flesh and their souls are living nothing more than their earthly existence in a religious kind of way. Not only does everyone have their own ideas of what to do and how to do it, but they can never be in unity with the few who are seeking the “one heart and soul” experience through daily faith in Jesus Christ.

   There is good reason that Jesus summarized being his disciple as, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Only when we want to come after him, we want to deny ourselves, we want to take up our cross daily, and we want to follow Jesus, can we hope to have unity in the Spirit through the bond of peace (the cross that crucifies us to sin and makes us alive to Jesus).

   This is also a good explanation for the problem of disunity in the church. Church people want to attend church, not “come after” Jesus. They want what their sarky selves want, not denying themselves. They want safety, comfort, and acceptance in the world, not the notoriety of taking up their cross on a daily basis. And they want Jesus to follow them and bless them in what they are doing, not to follow Jesus wherever he leads and join him in whatever he does.

   How do I feel about this?

   Part of me can still feel the joy of when I saw people fall in love with God’s word, enjoy getting to know God for real, unite to know and do God’s will, and love one another in the love and life of Christ. When I heard people pouring out their hearts to God in repentance for leaving him out of church life for so long, and crying to know him the way the Scriptures were teaching them, it was the most wonderful feeling of realness I have ever known.

   Why did it end? And why has it been gone for such a long time in so many churches and denominations?

   Because people discovered something inside them that they would not include in their pursuit of knowing God. And as soon as they chose to start handling that in their sarks (flesh), relying on the old hearts that are deceitful and wicked instead of the new heart that longs to be like Jesus, the selfishness infected everything. We saw the cancer of self-centeredness and self-justification invade the church. We witnessed the lure of self-interest send people heading in so many different and divisive directions. And we experienced the horrible poison of self-protection turning people from loving one another to sacrificing anyone who got in their way.

   Yes, I’m talking about our home churches as much as any of the institutional churches we have been in. And yes, that all comes to mind as I see how the Spirit-filled early church was “of one heart and soul”. It makes me want to repent for everything we are doing to seek our own ways, and to let myself hunger and thirst for this righteousness.

   After all, if our Savior prayed, “that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11), even “that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:23), then we must let ourselves desire this to the fullest possible extent and then be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

On This Day: A Debt Cancelled; A Gift Received

   And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38)

   Spending time with God in his word and prayer is not only about learning facts and information. It is about getting to know God better than we have ever known him before. Sometimes that revolves around discovering things in his word that have never stood out to us which leads us to relate to God more deeply about those very things.

   But other times it is discovering a new facet of something we already know and feeling it touch on things going on in us and around us that are simply the present work of God in our lives.

   Today, my meditation on God’s word led me to see “forgiveness of your sins” and “the gift of the Holy Spirit” in a relational way that hadn’t stood out to me previously, or that just happened to be exactly what I needed today. Either way, it ministered to me the word of God, and it led me to trust him for the very things he was speaking to me about.

   Previously, when I would hear the word “sin”, I would think of it as a thing. It was a particular transgression. An act of wrongdoing. It was simply a thing that was bad, wrong… SINFUL!

   But today’s focus on Peter’s use of “sins” was the discovery that it was more about the effects of our wrongdoing. In other words, it was about the guilt that separates us from God. It wasn’t just doing bad things, but doing the very things that took us away from God.

   So, when Peter emphasized the “forgiveness” of our sins, it was about God dealing with our estrangement from him so there was no longer anything between us. Our sin-debt was cancelled. Our violation of relationship with him was forgiven. The guilt, shame, and fear of sin were removed. From God’s side, there is no longer any debt, any condemnation, any works that still need to be done to restore us to him. He has done it all in Jesus Christ, and repentance and faith (as expressed in baptism) bring us into this gift of God.

   On the other side, the “gift of the Holy Spirit” is all about attachment. Forgiveness heals the estrangement, and the gift of the Holy Spirit gives us restored attachment. God removes what took us away from him and gives us his own presence to bring us close to him.

   I share this, not only to satisfy the full-brained needs of our bodies, and the full-minded needs of our souls, but to testify that what God showed me today was what I needed today. I needed to be reminded, and to feel it more deeply, that there is no longer anything between me and God to justify feeling estranged from him. And I needed to be reminded that the free gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of attaching to us during this earthly life so we can keep getting to know him better than we have ever known him before.

   And all of that made this Scripture resonate in and around me like a friend God has given me to help me along my way: “and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). When God gives the Holy Spirit to his forgiven children, his love is poured into our hearts. We grow in our experience of that love (attachment) as we seek every day to be “filled with the Spirit”.

   To put this into practice, my primary focus will be on the “set your minds on the Spirit” activity of faith. The battle is for my mind. Satan is just as active to speak his lies to my mind as God is at work to speak his truth in love. But God has spoken his love into my heart today in the exact way I need, and I expect he will keep me focused on him throughout this whole day so that his love feels every bit as real as it really is.

 

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

On This Day: The Words That Comfort Richly

   “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. (Luke 16:13-15)

   While my first interest in seeking God in his word is always what he is teaching me (because however I put his words to me into practice affects everything I do in seeking to love and bless others), there are times when God’s ministry to me comes in the way of him telling me how he thinks of others. 

   Often this is positive, as in helping me see how to apply his word to me because he shows me his love for others, his forgiveness of others, his gifting of others, and he wants me to share that with him.

   Other times it is negative, as in identifying his view of what people have done to me by showing how he related to the same things himself, through his messengers, or especially through his Son. 

   All that to say that every word of today’s Scripture told me God’s view of people who were relating to Jesus a particular way. And by showing me God’s view, it comforted me so much about my experiences with similar people since God is good and will bring every wrong to justice one way or another.

   A Scripture that often guides me in how personally I interact with God’s word is this: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). When I picture what God has in mind for me to let his word dwell in me richly, I see a heart that treasures God above all others, that treasures God’s word above all words, and that treasures living by God’s words above any thoughts or opinions of men, me included! 

   When I come to a Scripture like this one in Luke, every phrase speaks comfort into my heart because it gives God’s view of real-life heartaches. To let those words dwell in me richly involves attaching to how personal God is with me. He sets a stage so familiar to my own. He reveals the hearts of people so I can see them in his own words. He presents them as they really are and answers them as he really is. It’s all so plain and clear that it comforts me as much as I will let it dwell in me richly.

   I hope that my sharing of this helps to do the “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” part. 

   I can’t think of any songs that capture this particular passage about Jesus rebuking the Pharisees that would fit “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God”, but I know we have songs that glorify God for his justice, mercy, and faithfulness in handling everything according to his sovereign goodness and working all things in our lives together for good. 

   Today, I already feel the richness of God’s comfort in telling me both sides of the story. Hypocritical narcissists are nothing new. They often look like they are winning, just as the Pharisees appeared to be victorious when they succeeded at putting Jesus to death. 

   But those who love God instead of money are the ones who live as “more than conquerors through him who loved us,” knowing that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:37-39). 

   And so, we set our hearts on God as our supreme treasure, we set out into the day to use our money, our time, our spiritual gifts, to serve others in love, and we do so in the hope that someone out there will be encouraged to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love their neighbor as themselves, including using our money for God’s glory and their good.

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: The Love of a Forgiven Soul

   “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:41-50)

   Because I believed in God from a young age, it tended to help me be a good kid. When that was combined with angry abuse that always told me I never did anything right, it nurtured a fear of admitting to doing anything wrong because the response would be more of the same.

   All that to say it has been quite a journey for me to attach to God in repentance so I could honestly say I was experiencing his love for me, his forgiveness of my sins, and his grace abounding to me no matter how many sins I had to confess. 

   Along the way, two words from the Bible have stood out. First, it was the Greek word for love, “agapè”. This is the word used for God’s love. When God calls us to love with agapè-love, he means to love others the way we have been loved by him. This might give insight into any difficulties we have loving others (even our enemies) when we realize that our expressions of loving others come from our experiences of God loving us!

   As the beloved disciple John wrote, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). We must begin here, that our love begins in God’s love. This also means that our personal experience of that love conditions our personal expressions of love. In other words, if we struggle to love, let’s get help attaching to God’s love!

   The second word that stands out in this is the Hebrew word for love, “hesed”. It is found throughout the Old Testament in English expressions like “steadfast love”, “unfailing love” and the like. It reveals what is called the “covenantal” love of God, the love that saturated God’s covenant relationship with his people. 

   And just in case anyone has ever told you that the Old Testament God was not as loving as the New Testament God, I assure you that they have never attached to this “hesed” love of God that is all through those Old Testament Scriptures!

   It is no accident that we have in Scripture this beautiful and convicting account of a “sinful” woman showing up her self-righteous critic. It continues to expose our hearts as we must ask ourselves how a sinful woman knew enough about Jesus before anyone knew of what he would do on the cross that she would have such assurance of forgiveness and such experience of his love that she would unabashedly love him in the “spirit and truth” worship God desires for us. 

   Some of us likely need to admit we do not know God’s love like that because we have never admitted the greatness of our debt of sin. Others may see that we have a judgmental problem where we judge others as more sinful than ourselves because we can’t admit how sinful we are. It may be that this is where we will get to know God’s love for us as we confess our sins and receive his forgiveness.

   Whatever the case, there was healing for me in this as I see why church folk can be so unloving, and conviction to keep short accounts with God about my failures to love because of my failures to repent. Whatever God is doing to change my mind about things, I want to fully join him in his work so that my experience of his love fuels my expressions of love to him and everyone else in my life today. 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: Love in the Absence of Forgiveness

   “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. (Luke 6:29-31)

   One of the most significant facets of being one “who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:5) is loving the words God chose to breathe out into the Scriptures (II Timothy 3:16-17). However, on the flip side, this includes loving the absence of words that people read into God’s word so that it corrupts what our Father in heaven has told us. 

   As I came to the above text, it stood out again that Jesus did not tell us to forgive our enemies, forgive our haters, forgive our cursers, or forgive our abusers. And since adding “forgive them” to such texts subtracts something from the full meaning of Jesus’ words, we must consider what these things look like without forgiving people. 

   This stands out so clearly in Paul’s rebuke, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4). People were “presuming” that God was okay with their sin because he was kind, forbearing, and patient in his dealings with them. Paul turns the picture around to show that his perceived blessings while we are sinning are not approval of our sin, but him loving us “to repentance”. 

   The next sentence makes it clear that without repentance there is no forgiveness, “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5). 

   So, when we know that no one can possibly be forgiven without repentance, we don’t say, “I forgive them” and move on. Instead, knowing that our enemies, our haters, our cursers, our abusers, and our persecutors cannot be forgiven without repentance, we keep loving them towards repentance. We keep doing good to them in the hope they will repent. We keep blessing them with our prayers for their repentance. 

   Now here’s an example of this. People often claim that the best example of God forgiving unrepentant people is what Jesus said from the cross. His words were, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). People say that was Jesus forgiving his enemies, haters, cursers, abusers, and persecutors. 

   HOWEVER!!!

   Jesus did NOT say, “Father, I forgive them…” He said, “Father, forgive them…” What is that called? It is called PRAYER. Jesus was praying for his enemies. What did he tell us to do? He said, “…pray for those who abuse you.” 

   What happens when we pray for our enemies to be forgiven? Answer: we’re not done until they repent. 

   I have learned by personal experience that it is far more loving and liberating to pray for God’s kindness to lead someone to repentance so he can forgive them than to do the “I forgive them, and I’m done” routine. Not only does it call for greater love than forgiving and moving on, but it is what is WRITTEN.

   The bottom line is that, if we are going to “live by every word that comes from the mouth of God” as Jesus taught, let’s not mess it up by trying to live by words that did NOT come from the mouth of God!

   And with all that said, God has brought some people to mind who fit the description of who to love, do good, bless, and pray for, so it is time for me to go downstairs and pray! And yes, I do hope he answers by letting me show love to them, do good to them, bless them, and let them know I am praying for their forgiveness.

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: A Father’s Pleasure in His Son

   Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22)

   Before I could write anything about this, I did a lot of introspective prayer about how father issues have affected me. Asking God to show me what to bring to him became a fresh discovery of my need to know him. But it also reinforced how clearly God reveals his desire for all believers to know we are the beloved children of God who are welcomed into God’s kingdom with joy.

   The biggest thing I can hope to accomplish by this sharing is that someone who has been turning away from God as Father because of dad-wounds would realize that he is the Father “in heaven” who heals our wounds from fathers “on earth”.    

   So, while others try to recreate a god in their own image to soothe the devastating effects of abusive dads, I want to shout from the rooftops that “our Father in heaven” is the person we must run to and know for who he is. It is the ultimate Father who heals our father-wounds. 

   When we do humble ourselves to run to God for help, we not only find out what he is like as the perfect Father, but we discover that what he said to Jesus at his baptism (and again at his transfiguration) was not only how he felt about his son, but what he was calling people into as his children. 

   Yes, a comprehensive understanding of Scripture shows us a God who adopts sinners as his “beloved children” and welcomes them with joy. One of the most beautiful prophecies of what God would do through the coming of Jesus Christ his Son is described like this, “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

   Jesus is “God with us”. He has proven himself mighty to save us out of the domain of darkness and bring us into his kingdom. He rejoices to find his lost sheep and bring us home. He quiets us with his love. And he tells us the things he breathed-out into his word, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). 

   It doesn’t matter whether New Year’s Day 2025 means anything to us or whether it’s just the same-old stuff. But God’s joyful love for his Son invites us to know his joy and love for us as we walk with Jesus Christ in faith.

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: The ‘Again he began to teach’ of Jesus

Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: (Mark 4:1-2)

 

   Before I looked at the next section of God’s word in the gospel of Mark, I was already wondering how God would break through my familiarity with the gospels to teach me what I needed to walk with him today. Some days that thought leans more toward despondency, and other days more toward excited expectation. But it is always there, that I am dependent on God to make known to me whatever he pleases through his word.

   As a bit of background, I learned a few years ago that our brains process information from the right-side to the left-side. The right-hemisphere is focused on bonding (who or what we are attached to) and the left-hemisphere on believing. 

   This is fascinating and explains so much of why people in churches struggle to attach to truth. It isn’t because the truth of God’s word doesn’t make sense, it’s because they have bonded to someone or something that is restricting their ability to believe the good news.

   For example, I have had many professing Christians in churches struggle to believe God loves them. For a long time, I didn’t understand why such obvious truths in Scripture as God’s love for his beloved children had virtually no impact on some people. When I heard that anything I taught was processed on the right side of the brain before it got to the left side, and that it was the deepest bonds that were filtering what a person could believe, I realized that these people needed help with their relationship with God (bonding) more than their instruction about God (believing). 

   I don’t have room to say more in this short post, but ever since I learned how our brains process the intel of our five senses, I have also helped myself by watching for signs of bonding issues that need ministry so my believing issues are free to “delight in truth in the inward being,” so God can “teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (Psalm 51:6). 

   For today, I simply loved the “inward being” feeling of my “secret heart” that delighted in the attachment I felt to Jesus “again” beginning “to teach beside the sea”. Aside from the fact that I grew up in Sandspit, BC, with the “sea” right outside my bedroom window, knowing that God has given me everything I need to meet with Jesus Christ my Creator, Savior, and Lord every morning and day of my life is awesome in the real sense. And knowing that through the word of God in the Bible, I can hear Jesus teaching me by his Spirit today as clearly as those people heard him then fills me with so much wonder and awe that I do not want to miss anything “the Spirit is saying to the churches”. 

   Part of the application for me is to “again” pass on to you those “wonderful words of life”, as the old hymn expressed it. And the verse that just came up with Psalm 51:6 seems like such a beautiful way to conclude, “The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth” (Ecclesiastes 12:10). 

   I’m going to head out on a prayer walk shortly. I will be praying for whoever reads this, that any right-brain bonding issues will be met and comforted and healed by the God who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). This will include praying that anyone who needs help and healing for their bonding issues will find it through the body of Christ expressing the love of Christ by serving one another in love just as our Savior does “again” and “again”.   

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

The Most Loving Standard of “Bringing”

This morning, I was going to focus my time in the word on these two phrases that stood out in my journey through Nehemiah. They were, “We obligate ourselves to…” and “We will not neglect the house of our God.”[1] The scene is that, when the people began returning to the land after their exile, Ezra had led the people in rebuilding the temple, Nehemiah had led them in rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem, and it was now time to return to their covenant-relationship with God. 

The first expression included a whole list of positive statements from the Law that the people were going to carry out as required. The second was the negative conclusion that they would not neglect God’s house, the temple that had now been restored to full use. The point was that, in returning to their homeland, the people were 100% ready to return to 100% of their covenant responsibilities. 

However, as I was meditating on this section, I couldn’t help noticing that one word applied to everything they were promising to do. It was the word “bring”. There were so many things under the old covenant the people were to bring to the temple as their worship (tithes, offerings, sacrifices, etc.), and the people were recommitting themselves to bringing everything their side of the covenant required. The leaders had been exemplary in shepherding the people with knowledge and understanding,[2] and the people were exemplary in fully joining God in his work. 

When I looked at what the counterpart is for us under the new covenant, it basically came down to what Paul summarized in I Corinthians, “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts”.[3] I even looked up the word “bring” and there wasn’t one reference in the New Testament to us bringing something as our part of the new covenant the way the Israelites had to do under the old covenant. 

This was not a surprise since, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”[4] The new covenant in Jesus’ blood has nothing we can bring as our contribution, and the good works we now do to express our new life in Christ amount to continually joining God in the work we see him doing rather than listing behaviors that are commanded. 

So, understanding that we don’t “bring” good works to the table as if that is our requirement for keeping the covenant, I was drawn to consider how Paul summarized the “love chapter” of I Corinthians 13 with the expression, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”[5] And I could see how these were the things we must “bring” to our participation in the new covenant. 

We bring “faith” to church with us because “the righteous shall live by faith”,[6] and, “without faith it is impossible to please” God.[7] We bring “hope” to all our activities and relationships in the kingdom because, “in this hope we were saved.”[8] And we bring “love” to all our interactions in the household of God because, if I “have not love (agapè), I am nothing.”[9] 

As I considered this, I couldn’t help replaying some negative experiences where church-folk rejected these qualities and then abandoned us because they did not have them (I saw this happen in both institutional and home church settings). I also remembered the positive experiences of those seasons where we did witness people bringing these qualities with them to church and how joyful we were to see the genuine experience of “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”.[10] Both the negative and the positive encounters encourage me to tune my heart to this life of “faith, hope, and love” as an absolutely inherent reality of the new covenant, not a suggestion for extra credits. 

What happens to us when we combine the earnestness we see in Nehemiah as the people return to their covenant-relationship with God, with all we know of the realities of living in the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ under the new covenant where “the righteous shall live by faith”? 

For me, I want to see any church assembly I am part of the way Paul described. Before we gather for anything as a church, I want to see God’s people fill our hearts with “faith, hope, and love”, and bring those characteristics with us so we are ready to build up one another in every way that is needed. I know that not everyone will have the capacity to do this at the start. I know we can’t necessarily maintain this every week if we are the ones who just got hit with something traumatic and need of ministry. 

However, if this were to become a way of life where people came to church bringing their faith, hope, and love to contribute rather than coming only to see what the church was going to give us, there would be an over-all quality of kingdom-and-covenant focus so that those who were running on empty that week would be built up by all the others who were maintaining the covenant-life of the church. It would be as Peter described, “Above all, keep loving (agapèing) one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”[11] The more people who live like “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love”, the more those who struggle with these will be built up in the Lord Jesus Christ with us and the world will know we are Jesus’ disciples by our love.[12] 

In conclusion, I return to Paul’s summary challenge of, “pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts”. When we treat that like it is our side of covenant-relationship with God and his people, we will always bring our “faith, hope, and love” to church gatherings, and then express those very thing as we use our spiritual gifts to glorify God and love his people. 

And I am now very eager to see what happens to me and our home church gathering when I devote myself to this the next time we meet.

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

 

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[1] Nehemiah 10:35,39

[2] What God had prophesied in Jeremiah 3:15

[3] I Corinthians 14:1

[4] Ephesians 2:8-10

[5] I Corinthians 13:13

[6] Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11

[7] Hebrews 11:6

[8] Romans 8:24

[9] I Corinthians 13:2 (we must keep in mind that this is the Greek word “agapè” which means the love of God in us, not family, marriage, or friendship kinds of love)

[10] Ephesians 4:3

[11] I Peter 4:8

[12] John 13:35

Morning Sharing: God Keeps Loving Those who Love Keeping

     I think that part of my place in the body of Christ is to share my delight in the words of God’s word. I clearly love words. I love learning the meanings of the words used in the original languages of the Bible. It truly blesses me to know that the Hebrew mind (which comes through in both the Old and New Testaments) hears and sees rhyming thoughts in the same way as our western mind delights in a songwriter’s rhyming of words.

     Plus, I am a testimony to the truth that, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”,[1] and so I want to know the word of Christ as if I was sitting at Jesus’ feet like Mary and hanging on his every word.[2]

     This morning, I have been captivated by Nehemiah’s expression about God that he “keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments”.[3] I have been learning from Nehemiah as my Mentor since he is one of the men that fulfilled God’s promise to his people, “‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.’”[4] My ongoing journey is not simply in the words I have already looked at, but in their impact on me in building my faith as I meditate on their meanings.

     Here are the definitions of the key words, “keep” and “love”.   

     First, on God’s side: 

Keeps (God) (somer): to keep (maintain) v. — to keep in a certain state, position, or activity.

Love (God’s) (hesed): loyal love n. — an unfailing kind of love, kindness, or goodness; often used of God’s love that is related to faithfulness to his covenant.

     On the people’s side: 

Love (those who love him) (ohabay): to love (care) v. — to have a great affection or care for or loyalty towards.

 

Keep (humans) (somre): to observe (conform) v. — to conform one’s action or practice to.

     The focus for me is on the way the words “keep” and “love” rhyme in thought even though what they mean from God’s side is somewhat different from their meaning on our side.

     On God’s side, he keeps covenant with his people from his supremacy as the one who initiates and maintains the covenant. It reminded me of Jesus as “the founder and perfecter of our faith”.[5] He keeps the covenant as the King and Lord in the relationship.

     On the other hand, God’s people keep the covenant by observing and putting into practice what is required of us. This is just as true under the New Covenant as it was under the Old Covenant, it’s just that the details of the covenants are different. In our case it is summarized as “the obedience of faith”.[6] We keep obeying God’s word in faith and keep nurturing the faith that walks with God as obedient children.

     There will be so much more in this, but that is the main thing. Because God keeps covenant with his people in hesed-love,[7] his people respond to his Fatherly love with our childlike love and seek to walk with him wherever he is going, and join him in whatever work he is doing.

     Now, doesn’t that makes sense of Paul saying, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”?[8] We are keeping the same covenant as the Triune God, but how different are the two sides! And we are loving God and others with the same love with which we are loved, but how different is what was required of God’s love from what is required of ours!

     And what a wonder that God has done all the keeping and loving from his side that makes it possible for us to love him and keep our side of the covenant by grace through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord!

 

© 2023 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

Definitions are from the Bible Sense Lexicon in Logos Bible Systems.

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[1] Romans 10:17

[2] Luke 10:39 (in context of Luke 10:38-42)

[3] Nehemiah 1:5

[4] Jeremiah 3:15

[5] Hebrews 12:2

[6] Romans 1:5; 16:26

[7] “Hesed” (חֶ֔סֶד) is the Hebrew word in the OT for God’s steadfast, loyal, faithful love that corresponds with the Greek agapè-love (αγάπη) that fills the NT.

[8] Ephesians 5:1-2