| “Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.” |
| —Philemon 1:7 |
One of the greatest compliments one person can give another is embodied in the title for this blog post: “Your love has given me great joy!” Love can heal a broken heart, soothe a troubled brow, comfort a grieving soul, bind up serious wounds, and do so many other significant things.
A great joy of belonging to God through His Son, Jesus, is that other believers can provide a God-breathed love at just the right time in one’s life. They can surround a hurting person with prayer. They can speak words of kindness and refreshment in a way that no other group of people can provide.
Over the course of my life, I have had the privilege of having the love of God’s people encircle me with such amazing kindness that it brings me to tears of gratitude just thinking about those times when it happened. My gratitude for the goodness of these dear fellow believers knows no bounds.
Beginning in 1998, I struggled with a diabetic infection in my right foot that finally resulted in a partial amputation of two toes and a surgical wound that simply would not heal. For more than three years, I had a significant open wound on my right foot.
The people in my church at the time frequently voiced words of encouragement. One of the more significant times came when the elders approached me and asked if they could pray with me and for me, and anoint me with oil. Please let me share that experience with you.
Following the instructions recorded in James 5:13-15, they met with me in a room at the back of the church. They had me sit on a chair in the center of the room. They surrounded me, placed their hands on my shoulders, gently applied anointing oil to my forehead, and prayed like I have never been prayed for before or since.
One of the elders, a young woman in her mid-twenties actually knelt on the floor and placed her hands gently around my right foot, bowed down, placed her forehead against the top of my foot and prayed a prayer of intense supplication, asking God to heal my foot. It was such a moving experience that I can hardly describe it without shedding tears.
Did my foot instantaneously become healed? No. But, that time of prayer was a turning point for me. From that day forward, I approached the issue of my foot with a renewed faith that God would heal my foot. And, eventually after nineteen long years, He did heal it through the skillful surgery of the amputation of my right leg below the knee.
The point I am making is that the love of God’s people has great power to bring deep, inner healing to those who are bathed in that love. That’s why unrestrained, God-breathed love is so important in our lives as “Christ’s-ones.”
The Apostle Paul recognized this and wrote about it in his letter addressed to Philemon, the master of the slave, Onesimus. As he begins his letter to plea for this runaway slave to be received once again by his master, Paul states how important Philemon has been to him with these words, found in Philemon 1:7:
Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.
Imagine what it would be like if we could receive such a commendation from someone. What joy it would bring to us to know that our love, expressed without restraint, had meant so much to someone in need.
As we begin another day, let’s allow God’s love to flow through us and touch the lives of those around us. Let’s become sources of encouragement to the people who cross our pathway. And, let’s remember, with thanksgiving, those who have shown God’s love to us and blessed us with such amazing refreshment.
Based on a blog originally posted on Friday, October 6, 2017
