Lent 2025 – A Reminder of Our First Love – Stations of the Cross 7 – Purity 1629
Purity 1629 04/10/2025 Purity 1629 Audio Podcast
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Good morning,
Today’s photo of a dead-leaf-covered forest trail comes to us from yours truly as I captured this scene somewhere within the Barberville Falls Nature Preserve back on May 4th, 2024.
Well, it’s Thursday, and I am sharing this pathway photo as a visual reminder to get on or to stay on the path of Christian Discipleship because in this world full of distraction, it is very easy to forget the blessings of our new life in Christ and be led astray.
Speaking of reminders, today’s Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah devotion provides us with a call to not forget our first love and to keep first things first spiritually. I am sharing it on the blog today to provide us with a reminder to remember what we have in Jesus. Dr. David Jeremiah writes:
“Remind and Return
Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
Revelation 2:4
Reminders are a part of daily life. We enter reminders into our phone or computer calendar, we stick notes on the refrigerator or the bathroom mirror and ask others, “Please remind me to…” Re means “again,” so remind means “to call to mind again.”
Just as we are in danger of forgetting practical things in our life, we are likely, if we are not careful, to forget our spiritual commitments. Christ admonished the church at Ephesus about that very thing—letting their love for Christ fade over time. They had forgotten the love they had for Christ when they first came to Him in faith. He exhorted them to “repent and do the first works” (Revelation 2:5)—the good works, motivated by love for Him, that characterized the early days of their faith. They needed to remind themselves of their love for Christ and return to it.
The same thing can happen to us if we are not careful. We can grow complacent, and our faith can grow cold. We must encourage ourselves and others to continue in the faith until Christ returns (Hebrews 10:23-25). Begin today by meditating on God’s love for you.” – David Jeremiah
“It is possible to be so active in the service of Christ as to forget to love Him.” – P. T. Forsyth
Last night at Celebrate Freedom, I offered the group a Gospel tract from Billy Graham Ministries that taught how we can find peace through putting our faith in Jesus. It leads the reader to consider their sin and God’s plan for redemption and a prayer to help seekers to make Jesus the Lord and Savior of their life.
At the end of the tract there was a short list of instructions, or suggestions, for the new believer to follow so they could grow and keep the peace they had just found in Jesus. The list included a recommendation for daily Bible study and prayer, joining a church where they could grow and serve, and a call to share the message of Jesus with others: A simple set of guidelines to help new believers to know and to grow in their faith.
Those first instructions are good ones because they cause us to be reminded of who we are now as followers of Jesus Christ.
If we don’t have a daily practice to remind ourselves that, “yes, we are actually Christians, like for real, now” – we can easily forget our first love and begin to be overcome by negative emotions like depression, anger, fear, or anxiety.
But when we remind ourselves of the love and new life, we received from God we can walk forward in peace, joy, hope, and love.
So don’t lose that loving feeling, remind yourself of what God did for you, who you are in Christ, and how you are to continue the journey God put you on to grow and to discover your place in His kingdom.
I consider it part of my purpose to be a voice for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to encourage others to follow the Lord with the ways they live their lives.
During this season of Lent, the Lord has put it on my heart to present the Stations of the Cross, one day at a time, to help us to never forget Christ’s sacrifice and the cost for our salvation. It is my hope that presenting the Stations of the Cross will help us to draw close to Jesus as we move toward Resurrection Sunday, aka Easter.
Today, we go to the seventh station, where Jesus falls for the second time on His way to Calvary. The prayers and liturgy of “The Way of the Cross” leads us to pray:
Figure 1 – Seventh Station of the Cross: Jesus Falls the Second Time – Catholictradition.org
(To examine and to pray through the Stations of the Cross, I will be utilizing “The Way of the Cross” PDF that you can download from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester and images from Catholictradition.org).
Amen. I pray that this contemplation of Jesus falling for the second time on His way to the cross, will cause you to remember that His suffering was for a purpose. Jesus carried the weight of the world’s sin on His back on that faithful day and even though we could easily see Jesus’s stumbling for weakness, and we can relate, to Jesus because He was fully human just like us, we should remember that although He fell down, He didn’t stay down. He had a job to do, and He rose to accomplish it. I pray that this reminder of what Jesus suffered for us will stir up the love for Him in your heart and cause you to pick up your cross and to follow Him with the way you live today, even if it causes you to suffer.
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For those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple encouragements provide, I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s website, https://crossexamined.org/.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By John G. Kruis.
(While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick Google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late author’s work. (The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling By John G. Kruis on Amazon )
This morning’s meditation verses come from the section on Loving God.
Romans 13:13–14 (ESV) Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Today’s verses fall under the eighth point of our counseling reference guide resource’s section on Loving God.
8. Motivated by love, reject partying and all sinful pleasures. Instead, put on Christ.
Today’s Bible verses tell us quite plainly that there are somethings we just are not supposed to do as redeemed children of God. Although the gospel is often distorted to dispense cheap grace and encourage the uninformed to live licentious lives of continual sin, the truth is that we are to be holy as God is holy and that even though our sins are forgiven, it doesn’t mean we are to continue in them.
And why should we obey what some would see as restrictions on our freedom (although the sins in this list are actually bondage)? The answer is always Jesus, and because He is God, we know that the answer is also love.
Why would I change the way I live? Because Jesus and the Living Word tells me it’s wrong and, perhaps more importantly, because I know that these truths are given to me in love and because I love the Lord, I will seek to please Him and reap the benefits for obediently applying His Way to my life.
So don’t let the love of the sinful pleasures of this life motivate how you live; instead, let God’s love motivate you to avoid their bondages and negative consequences and to represent God’s kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.
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As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.com where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from “Day by Day Along the Way” By Jay E. Adams.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage you all to purchase Adams’ books for your own private study and to support the late author’s work. This resource is available online for less than $20 at many sites.
Day 128
He opened the book and found the place. – Luke 4:17
He knew His Bible. He was able to “find the place” that He wanted in a scroll having neither chapter headings nor verses! Indeed, there probably weren’t any spaces between words, and the vowels had to be inserted into words on the spot as He read. It is so easy for us to use our Bibles, yet we know them so poorly. If you were to seek material found in various portions of Scripture, without using a concordance, would you be able to do so? That is to say, would you know that near the end of a Gospel is the crucifixion and resurrection? That’s an easy one. But where in the book of Romans would you read about Abraham? What about in Galatians? Learn to use your Bible well—become able to know where, in general, various sections pertaining to various subjects are. When you can do this, you will be able to use your Bible anywhere, a skill you will discover is very valuable to acquire.[1]
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[1] Jay E. Adams, Day by Day along the Way (Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020), 136.
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