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Growing Joy May 13 Devotional

by David Joynt on May 13, 2023


PHILIPPIANS 1:9-11 | 9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

What a powerful three verse prayer! Notice that wisdom and love are interdependent elements. Wisdom and knowledge of others without love is cold and ineffectual. Love without wisdom is blind. Paul wants a loving wisdom, a wise love, to develop among his friends. This will allow them to invest themselves in ways that are fruitful, producing the “harvest of righteousness.”

 

Which do you long for more, wisdom or love? Pray for one or more of your friends in the manner of St. Paul.

 

 

Gracious God,

Make wise our efforts to love others. Confirm our knowledge with a love that acts to further the spiritual growth to those You entrust to our care.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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