Latest / The Daily Word / April 13 – Faithful Are the Wounds of a Friend
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night, whatever time you are joining us. Welcome to the Daily Word podcast from Leashore Christian Fellowship. My name is Cory Barnes and it is my privilege to pastor our Catawba campus. I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another Daily Word episode where we're going to be going through a devotion from the New Testament portion of our Life Journal Bible reading plan that we are engaging in as a church. Today is April the 13th. That means we are reading second Corinthians 13 in our Bible reading plan today. This is the final chapter from second Corinthians 13 and the verses that stood out to me today come from the very last little ending Paul's benediction, his closing thoughts here in this letter, starting at verse 11, going through 14 reading from the NIV translation. Finally brothers and sisters rejoice, strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss, all God's people here send their greetings. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Now what stood out to me about this closing is that I think it really gives a picture of Paul's heart and his final words here behind his hopes and his desires for what would be happening in the church at Corinth. See this letter, if you've been following along with us and you've been reading through this, you will notice that there's a lot of things that Paul was a little hard on the church at Corinth about and for good reason. Paul brought a lot of correction. He spoke a lot of hard things to them. He dealt with the fact that they were tolerating false apostles. He handled the fact that they were questioning his authority, the lack of loyalty they were having for him, a failure to forgive and discipline, a lack of repentance for things that were going on in the church. Paul really dealt with a lot of hard issues. But here we see the purpose behind it all. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. See, Paul wasn't correcting all those things because he wanted things to be done his way or because he was prideful and arrogant and he thought he knew better than the church at Corinth. No, Paul loved the church at Corinth. He was the one who initially planted it. He spent time there. He built this church. He is the one that introduced the first believers in this church to Jesus. And since he's left and has gone traveling on a minister and he's seen all these issues pop up and out of his love for them, out of his compassion for them, Paul just wanted to bring them back into alignment. back into pursuing the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit rightly. He wanted to restore them to relationship with the Father where they were erring off, where they were getting off track. the, Paul's just trying to get them back in line so that they can continue walking with God. And I think that One thing we can walk away with as we look at that is the fact that we all need people in our lives who are willing and able out of love for us to call us back into alignment when we get off. Now, I'm not talking about people that are criticizers and people that don't care about us, are jealous of us, that bring get pleasure from tearing other people down like Like that's not what I'm talking about. I am talking about people who are genuinely pursuing the Lord in their own life. However, imperfectly everybody makes mistakes, but they are genuinely seeking after him and they love us enough that when they see something that we're an error of, they recognize that that error, that way that we are getting off, it's causing disconnection between us and the Lord. And then they love us enough to call us back to the Lord, to call us back into connection with Jesus and to call out our mistakes and call us out and get us back on track, get us back aligned with the Father. And sometimes that can be really hard to hear. even when you know that someone loves you, even when you know that someone is for you, it can really sting sometimes to hear those things. ⁓ But that's why proverbs 27 six tells us that faithful are wounds of a friend ⁓ because sometimes a friend steps in and they tell us things that they know are going to cause us pain, but they genuinely love us enough to share those things and say those things out of a pure motivation of seeing us be closer with the Lord. And when we receive that kind of pain, it actually leads to life. It's like a surgeon's scalpel coming in. and cleaning things out. Sure, that scalpel, that stings, but it leads to life and it leads to healing and it leads to repairing what is damaged, what is broken, what is amiss, just like Paul did for the church at Corinth in this letter. So let's talk application. Do you have someone in your life that is in a place where they can speak into the situations that they see going on. Do you have someone that can call you back to Jesus? Do you have someone that can speak to you who you will receive from and hear when they tell you you're getting off track there? And on the other side of that coin, are you doing that for other people's in a loving way? See, even when I talk about doing this in a loving way, there are some people who think that they're doing it lovingly, but they just get some sort of sense of fulfillment about pointing other people's flaws out. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people that genuinely love you enough that they want you to be close with Jesus and they're willing to do uncomfortable conversations in order to help you get there. Are we doing that for other people and is our motivation behind doing it? that they may be in fellowship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Is that our motivation? So are we receiving? And are we in a place where we're willing to step out and give those things out of a pure heart when the occasion arises? Let's pray. Father, God, I just thank you. I thank you for who you are. And I thank you, Lord, that you are leading us deeper and deeper into your grace and into your love and into relationship with you. I thank you that you are the solid rock on which we can stand. And I thank you that when we start hearing things from people who have pure motives and who love us and genuinely want the best for us, I pray that you'd give us ears to hear. Give us the ears to at least hear them out and take what they're saying seriously, not just brush it off, not just move on, but to genuinely seek you. And when we hear something and they point it out, We assume there might be some truth to it. So we come and we pray and we ask you, Lord, when they said that, is that true father? Is that really what's going on? Am I really missing you? Am I really getting off? Lord, I thank you for helping us to walk in humility, both as we receive those kinds of corrections and as we give those kinds of corrections, because those things are only to help people to walk closer with you. Father, I pray that we would be a people that do walk in fellowship with you, that we do walk closely and lovingly with you. I pray that you would help us, that you would strengthen us, that you would give us grace to continue walking this walk with you. We think that every day we come to scripture, you start speaking through it and you make things new, you bring life. We love you, Jesus, we really do. Amen.