Good morning. Welcome to this episode of Reflective Hour with Tammy Toney-Butler.
I'm your host today, but we all know who the real host of this show is, and that's Christ.
Today is a day of sadness for some, happiness for others, or joy.
Where does your joy come from?
Where does your hope come from?
Holy Spirit, come.
Have your way in this hour, in this time that we have together as we speak Your Truth and look for peace in the middle of our circumstances, joy in the middle of our circumstances.
As we tether into the Holy Vine of Truth, seeking Your wisdom, guidance, and understanding above all else, help us see the hidden Unveiled Truth as we listen to this episode of Reflective Hour with Tammy Toney-Butler.
The name of this episode is A Valentine's Message of Hope.
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Happy Valentine's Day.
My love affair with Christ is the greatest love I've ever known, a Father I've never known before, such love, peace, and strength.
As I tether to Him every day.
A message He put on my heart for today was about one of the greatest love stories in the Bible that can be found in the book of Philemon, Paul's love for Onesimus.
A slave, he looked to as a child, a brother, Paul's love for all Christians, regardless of free or bound, regardless of race, social stature, or political party.
Paul's love for a slave, a fellow brother in Christ, resembles the love that Jesus has for all of us.
We are all sinners and fall short of the Glory of the Lord.
They were equal, both slaves for the Truth, for the Gospel, equal and united under one Head, which is Christ, and we are the body unified in purpose.
It speaks to loving your brother as you love yourself.
And where does revival start in the hearts of the people with a heart posture of love and forgiveness, a heart posture of unity for our fellow brethren?
The book of Philemon speaks of reconciliation, freedom, love, and true forgiveness.
But we were all once slaves to sin, and now we have been set free to truly live, to truly be transformed by the Word of God, by the Promises of God's Word and Truth, for a lost and dying generation.
Let's read some of the Word now.
We will be reading in Philemon the New Living Translation:
Philemon
New Living Translation
Greetings from Paul
1: This letter is from Paul, a prisoner for preaching the Good News about Christ Jesus, and from our brother Timothy. I am writing to Philemon, our beloved co-worker,
2: and to our sister Apphia, and to our fellow soldier Archippus, and to the church that meets in your house.
3: May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.
Paul’s Thanksgiving and Prayer
4: I always thank my God when I pray for you, Philemon,
5: because I keep hearing about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all of God’s people.
6: And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ.
7: Your love has given me much joy and comfort, my brother, for your kindness has often refreshed the hearts of God’s people.
Paul’s Appeal for Onesimus
8: That is why I am boldly asking a favor of you. I could demand it in the name of Christ because it is the right thing for you to do.
9: But because of our love, I prefer simply to ask you. Consider this as a request from me—Paul, an old man and now also a prisoner for the sake of Christ Jesus.
10: I appeal to you to show kindness to my child, Onesimus. I became his father in the faith while here in prison.
11: Onesimus hasn’t been of much use to you in the past, but now he is very useful to both of us.
12: I am sending him back to you, and with him comes my own heart.
13: I wanted to keep him here with me while I am in these chains for preaching the Good News, and he would have helped me on your behalf.
14: But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent. I wanted you to help because you were willing, not because you were forced.
15: It seems you lost Onesimus for a little while so that you could have him back forever.
16: He is no longer like a slave to you. He is more than a slave, for he is a beloved brother, especially to me. Now he will mean much more to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17: So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.
18: If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge it to me.
19: I, PAUL, WRITE THIS WITH MY OWN HAND: I WILL REPAY IT. AND I WON’T MENTION THAT YOU OWE ME YOUR VERY SOUL!
20: Yes, my brother, please do me this favor[d] for the Lord’s sake. Give me this encouragement in Christ.
21: I am confident as I write this letter that you will do what I ask and even more!
22: One more thing—please prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that God will answer your prayers and let me return to you soon.
Paul’s Final Greetings
23: Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you his greetings.
24: So do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my co-workers.
25: May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Christ brought freedom and redemptive restoration from the grip of sin on the lives of people; rest assured, freedom is yours: freedom to love, freedom to forgive, freedom to give, freedom to live, one in Christ Jesus.
Have you not forgiven someone in your inner circle, someone close to you?
Does your heart harden when you think of them?
Ask Christ to open your heart to see them as He sees them, to unveil the Truth, and to let love reign in your hearts so you can truly be set free.
Christ can transform the most hopeless relationship into a deep, loving friendship.
Heartfelt obedience to the love of Christ. His will, not ours, a heart posture of obedient Truth.
Not out of duty or obligation.
Paul was trying to accomplish this by sending Onesimus back to Philemon.
So unresolved conflict, worry, and unforgiveness would not destroy the true message of the Gospel and the Word that was alive in both men, transforming both into the image of Christ.
A pure, uncompromising Gospel, full of freedom and unity that the true love of Christ brings to all who find their hope in Him.
Christ is saying to the church, remember Me in your hour of affliction, for I will be with thee in Spirit and Truth to free you from the bondage of sin, from death to life. That is what My blood shed on Calvary brought Life where there was death, spiritual death, and famine.
Eat of the Bread of Life, Christ, and never hunger again.
Drink from the Wellspring of Living Water and never thirst again.
Let's look at John 6: 53, the Tree of Life Version.
John 6:53
Tree of Life Version
53: So Yeshua said to them, “Amen, amen I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.
This is how much Christ loves us. Hope and healing are found in this Unfailing Truth.
If we eat of Him, drink of Him, and become one flesh with Him, that's what that was saying.
We are to sit and commune at a table with Christ, being one with Him.
Surrender to His will and His call for our life because that is where true freedom comes from and lives in us.
Working through us to transform lives as we preach the True Gospel: Pure Gospel, Uncompromised Truth of the Word of God.
Even if the 99 are safe, He always goes after the one. Are you that one?
Are you lonely? Depressed?
Full of shame, guilt, fear, regret, self-loathing?
Do the chains of the past bind you?
Bound by addiction?
Break free today by seeking His Truth, seeking the Cross, seeking Jesus, and finding true freedom as Onesimus and Paul in their love affair with Christ.
Even though both were slaves in chains, both were equals, brothers in Christ, and free: alive, even though they were in prison.
Look to Romans 8 for a further demonstration of the Truth and Life that Christ bestows upon all those who earnestly seek Him.
Romans 8, and I'll be reading out of the King James Version.
Romans 8
King James Version
8: There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
2: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
3: For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
4: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
5: For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
6: For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
7: Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
8: So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
9: But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
10: And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
11: But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
12: Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.
13: For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
14: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
15: For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
16: The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
17: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
18: For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
19: For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
20: For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
21: Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
22: For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
23: And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
24: For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
25: But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
26: Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
27: And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
29: For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30: Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
31: What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
32: He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
33: Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
34: Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
35: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36: As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37: Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
38: For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39: Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Christ came to set us free. We are one with Him, one body, unified under the Head, which is Christ.
United in a common purpose to bring freedom where there's been bondage.
Hope where there's been hopelessness—joy where there's been happiness based on circumstances.
We are to tether into the Holy Vine of Truth, knowing that we know that we know God has set us free and that He loves us.
He sent his Only Begotten Son so that we could have Life.
That is the true love, the pure love that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings to this world.
And that is what we celebrate today on Valentine's Day: His Redemptive, Loving Truth that frees us from the bondage of depression, addiction, loneliness, and Despair.
He who the Son sets free is free indeed!
Go forth today, walking in the freedom that this Word brings as soldiers united for Christ to set as many free as we can from the bondage of sin and to know the transformative, marvelous Truth and Light that loving Christ and surrendering to His will for our life brings to us as the body.
That's today's episode of Reflective Hour.
