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All You Need is Love Daily Devotional -21

by David Joynt on May 01, 2021


JOHN 15:12-14 | 12 This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.

 Genuine sacrifices, of resources, time, emotion, or life arise naturally from the love we have for one another. To “lay down your life” for another is natural when we care for someone. Time spent helping them is not a duty but a delight. Effort spent in their service does not feel like a burden, but like a special opportunity.

 Yet in fact, these moments are sacrifices, because we live in a world where our time and treasure and talent are limited. To choose one course is to forego another. To spend an hour alongside a sufferer is to lose an hour for personal advancement. Often genuine sacrifice is not a spectacular one off decision. It is a way of living that is consistently committing time and effort to helping and serving. It is a grateful and holy “martyrdom.”

 From whom are you “laying down” your life?

 Is it a burden or a joy?

 

Tags: joy, burden

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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