Today's Rock Church (TRC) Daily Bread (DB) w/ Lena's Journalin' to 2 Cor 2

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

If the e-mail text you receive is encrypted at all, just scroll down to the end of all of the text and click on Lena’s Journalin’ , which will take you directly to the web-page where you will be able to read the text quite clearly in it’s purposed form.

2 Corinthians 2:1-17
1So I said to myself, "No, I won't do it. I won't make them unhappy with another painful visit." 2For if I cause you pain and make you sad, who is going to make me glad? 3That is why I wrote as I did in my last letter, so that when I do come, I will not be made sad by the very ones who ought to give me the greatest joy. Surely you know that my happiness depends on your happiness. 4How painful it was to write that letter! Heartbroken, I cried over it. I didn't want to hurt you, but I wanted you to know how very much I love you.
Forgiveness for the Sinner
5I am not overstating it when I say that the man who caused all the trouble hurt your entire church more than he hurt me. 6He was punished enough when most of you were united in your judgment against him. 7Now it is time to forgive him and comfort him. Otherwise he may become so discouraged that he won't be able to recover. 8Now show him that you still love him.
9I wrote to you as I did to find out how far you would go in obeying me. 10When you forgive this man, I forgive him, too. And when I forgive him (for whatever is to be forgiven), I do so with Christ's authority for your benefit, 11so that Satan will not outsmart us. For we are very familiar with his evil schemes.
Ministers of the New Covenant
12Well, when I came to the city of Troas to preach the Good News of Christ, the Lord gave me tremendous opportunities. 13But I couldn't rest because my dear brother Titus hadn't yet arrived with a report from you. So I said good-bye and went on to Macedonia to find him.
14But thanks be to God, who made us his captives and leads us along in Christ's triumphal procession. Now wherever we go he uses us to tell others about the Lord and to spread the Good News like a sweet perfume. 15Our lives are a fragrance presented by Christ to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those being saved and by those perishing. 16To those who are perishing we are a fearful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this? 17You see, we are not like those hucksters—and there are many of them—who preach just to make money. We preach God's message with sincerity and with Christ's authority. And we know that the God who sent us is watching us.
Copyright Statement: Holy Bible, The New Living TranslationCopyright © 1996 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.


Daily Repetitive Verses:

Proverbs 27:17-19
17 You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another. 18 If you care for your orchard, you'll enjoy its fruit; if you honor your boss, you'll be honored.
19 Just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.
Psalm 122:1
1 When they said, "Let's go to the house of God," my heart leaped for joy.

~Lena’s Journalin’ ~
Does true love ever hurt?
Does love hurt? I mean a good kind of hurt, not a destructive abusive hurt, an everyday discomfort, due to the need for change, evaluating, bite the bit type of hurt.
YES, true love hurts, because it calls for change. It calls for growth. It won’t leave us alone as we are. It will tell us truth we did not see and will cause us to walk in a different direction than we were headed in. It will change our plans that were self centered and temporary in nature to plans that are people and God centered and eternal. That is not always without pain, but the level of pain depends on us.
Are we willing to be loved by someone who will do this to us? The biggest lover of all time is God our Father. Many people are angry with Him for suggesting and leading them into change. Many feel He is forceful, as His passion for us and our welfare is expressed through people, of an insistent nature.
They’ll say God loves me as I am. You know that is so true, He loves us like we are, where we are. He loves us enough to bring us towards change. He loves us so much, He’ll never leave or forsake us. He won’t leave us alone to the extent of changing us into His loving life-giving image. That is not always naturally easy on us, our flesh nature does not desire it or initiate it normally, but as we learn more and more of God’s will for us and His true love desire for us and we learn to trust Him, we may welcome the lessons of change.
Sin hurts more than love does. Sin hurts eternally, long term. Love may hurt now, but will secure one’s future forever.
Love leads us into right standing with God, into relationship and into eternity, sin separates us from God, His will and the eternal realm of life with Him forever. That is what real hurt is about. If someone really loves someone else with the true love of God they will do all they can to help deliver them from the cage of sin, they’ll try all they can to get the keys and unlock the prison doors of lies laid out to trap one for eternity.
Sin is an eternal trap. If sin continues to be able to be exercised in a person’s life without change in behavior, that one will die eternally. Only trust in the shed blood sacrifice of Jesus for the penalty and judgment call of our sins can we be saved. When we are “saved” our desires and exercises of behaviors change. If the behaviors do not change, then change has not truly occurred. Maybe there is needed a greater revelation of the price paid for us or the penalty of the sins.
Any and all sin is an offense to God, separates us from Him eternally, but all sin can be covered by the shed blood of Jesus. Repentance is the way to righteousness. Repentance means I turn around, I change.
So say yesterday I found that fornication was sin that separates me from God’s plan for eternal life in Christ. That uncovenantal behavior separates me from God’s plan for me for eternity. I realize it offends God in that I can’t walk with Him into eternal life. I change, I stop fornicating. In stopping I’ve repented. I stop because I’ve repented. I did not think it was wrong, nor did I care if it offended anyone, let alone God. Now I realize the severity of the effect of my sin on my eternal choices, so I ask for God’s mercy. I receive His mercy because Jesus died so I could be forgiven by God for this very type of sin, any and all sin. He shed His blood for me, for me to be able to change. I’m covered by the forgiveness of the shed blood of the Lamb of God who died to take away the sins of the world. Do you think the shedding of His blood was easy? Not at all, yet He did it for the love of me, so that in my fornication I could see Him, receive Him, and be changed. Sin hurts.
Each one of us can endure pain differently, and the type of pain we endure can either lead us to change easily or not. Stubbornness can make us have to go through more pain than needed. Jesus bore our pain. Let’s accept that and not bear the pain anymore, ease the pain and go ahead and accept change, embrace change.
This is the incense, the crushing of the powders of our lives, the pressing of the fruits that bring the oils.
We bring who we are to God and to the Body, the church, we are mixed together with other members who are dealing with the need for change also, they are also being pressed into the mold of God or going through the fire of purging or the storms of life, or the re-routing of root systems, etc. This is all beautiful in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus whom we have made our Lord. What a beautiful sight when many people who are going through the same process of eternal change gather together in places all around the world to worship the One who loves us enough to speak truth to us, save us and change us.