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Top X June 4, 2025 Devotional

by David Joynt on June 04, 2025


1 JOHN 4:18 | 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

 

Many forms of slavery are self-imposed, arising from our free choices. How many people do you know who’ve ended up broken or in jail or addicted? How many who pursue goals that preclude them from deep relationships or hurt diminish their capacity for love and generosity? Unfettered desire married to free choice often leads to dead ends.

 

Many people suffer from fear and anxiety, from doubt or self-hatred, from narcissism and solipsism, all of which can exist within settings of maximal social and political freedom, and all of which inhibit our capacity to be truly free.

 

Do you see how freedom has spiritual and psychological components?

 

 

Gracious God,

Grant me freedom from uncontrolled desire and from fear and anxiety. Give me the capacity to escape myself and to live for others.

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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