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VS. April 4, 2025 Devotional

by David Joynt on April 04, 2025


MATTHEW 5:43-44 | 43 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

 

This meditation may be a shocker to those who have grown up idolizing romantic love, as the highest and ultimate form of love. God’s view of sexuality and marriage is far deeper than that of our culture, since it connects to our characters, our spirituality, and to our covenants. But His design of sexuality is a gift with a limited lease. Intimacy is a keyway to form deep connections within a marriage, so that we can learn to love as God does, sacrificially and selflessly. Marriage is a training ground for love, a school for practicing unconditional commitment to someone else’s good. This training is a preparation so we can then extend this love to others, even to enemies!

 

Where in your life are you learning to love?

 

 

Gracious God,

Help me extend my love beyond family and friends to the wider community and to those who struggle.

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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