Hello my friend Dr. Brad Miller here with the Daily Bible Refresh.

This is your daily reading of the Bible from a progressive point of view.

In a bit I will read the New Testament lessons selected from the Revised Common Lectionary for this very day.

The reading is understandable.

I use the Message version relatable.

Please listen to the points to ponder and applicable with action steps you can take.

We pray and are done in less than 10 minutes.

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Here's today's reading.

Reading today from the Epistle second John from the Message My dear congregation, I your Pastor love you in very truth and I'm not alone.

Everyone who knows the truth that has taken a permanent resident than us loves you.

Let grace, mercy and peace be with you in truth and love from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, Son of the Father.

I can tell you how happy I am to learn that many members of your congregation are diligent and living out the truth exactly as commanded by the Father.

But permit me a reminder friends.

This is not a new commandment but simply a repetition of our original and basic charter that we love each other.

Love means following his commandments and his unifying commandment is that you conduct your lives in love.

This is the first thing you heard and nothing has changed.

Don't walk out on God.

There's a lot of smooth talking con artists loose in the world who refuse to believe that Jesus Christ was truly human, a flesh and blood being.

Give them the true title Deceiver Antichrist.

Be very careful around them so you don't lose out on what you've worked so diligently on together once you get every reward that you have coming to you.

Anyone who gets so progressive in his thinking that he walks out on the teaching of Christ walks out on God.

But whoever stays within the teaching stays faithful to both the Father and the Son.

So if anyone shows up, it doesn't hold to this teaching, don't invite him in and give him the run of the place.

That would just give him a platform to perpetuate his evil ways, making you his partner.

I have a lot more things to tell you, but I'd rather not use paper and ink.

I Hope to be there soon in person, have a heart to heart talk with you.

This will be far more satisfying to both you and me.

Everyone here in your sister congregation sends greetings.

Well, that ends the reading, friends.

And so let's get into a couple points to ponder a little, go deeper on this passage.

The first one is this.

The center of the teaching is love.

And that's the key teaching that it says we can't walk away from.

So the writer of Second John here defines this teaching of Christ very specifically in this letter.

If you look at verses five and six, the commandment, the unifying commandment he calls it, is that we conduct our lives in love.

That's the charter.

In other words, that's the baseline.

So when the letter warns about walking away from the teaching of Christ, I think we have to ask, honestly, what does walking away from love actually look like?

So in my experience, the people most in danger of abandoning the way of Jesus aren't the ones asking hard questions or pushing theological boundaries.

They're the ones who stop centering on love altogether.

They're the ones who use doctrine as a weapon, who build systems that exclude and harm, who are so busy being right that they've forgotten to be kind.

I think about this on my cancer related podcast.

So when someone's in a hospital room or and are having a hard time with cancer, the theology that matters is an abstract, you know, kind of a.

It's am I anything abstract or anything like that?

It's simply, am I loved?

Am I seen?

Is somebody here for me?

And the teaching of Christ that this letter is protecting isn't a theological quiz.

It's the ethic of love.

And walking away from that, whether you walk left or right, that's the real danger.

Second point to ponder.

Love sometimes requires discernment, and that's not the same as judgment.

This letter ask us to hold something uncomfortable.

It says, love is the whole commandment.

And it says not everyone who shows up with smooth words deserves a platform.

So for progressive Christians, this can feel like a contradiction because we value radical inclusion.

But I think there's something wise here.

Love without discernment can be exploited.

My wife and I have been married for over 34 years and we've raised three kids, are now adults, and have a couple of great grandchildren.

And one thing you learn in family life is that loving people fiercely doesn't

mean having no boundaries.

So when our kids were growing up, there was.

There were moments where love meant saying, no, you can't do that.

Not here, not now, not because we stop loving them, but because we love them so much and too much to let harmful things run amok with them.

So this letter here isn't talking about shutting out people who think differently from us.

It's talking about people whose teaching actively undermines the love command.

The con artist, as the writer puts it, who used the language of love but do damage.

Discernment isn't the enemy of love.

Discernment is how love protects the vulnerable.

The trick, and this is a bit tricky, is to make sure our boundaries are in service to love and not in service to our own comfort or power.

Boundaries, you need them.

This is not the walls of exclusion.

It's helping give things shape so that love can actually flow toward people who need it most.

So here's your actions tip for this week.

The writer of two John says the original charter is to conduct our lives with love.

So this week I want you to do kind of an audit of your love.

Ask yourself two questions.

First, is there somewhere in my life that I've walked away from love when the love command without even realizing or maybe written off somebody else or maybe a group of people I've stopped seeing as fully human?

And second, is there somewhere I need healthier boundaries, not to shut people up, but to protect the love I'm trying to live in my life and write those down.

So it's about two things, love and discernment.

I think that's the lesson of 2 John here.

Something to do to take action.

We're going to pray here in just a minute.

Before we do, just a reminder, we've got an action step that you can take by going to our website, voiceofgoddaily.com and pick up our prayer guide, which is called the ABC 1, 2, 3 Prayer Guide.

Let's pray.

God, this is a short letter with a long reach.

And thank you that the charter hasn't changed that from the very beginning, love was the whole point.

Forgive us for the times when we have wandered away from it while thinking we were defending it.

Forgive us for the times when we've been so afraid of boundaries that we let harmful things run unchecked.

For the times we've built walls and called them faithfulness.

Give us the wisdom to know the difference.

And for anyone today who is listening, who feels caught between an open heart and their better judgment, walk with them this week.

Help them hold both.

And for all of us, help us keep us anchored to that original command.

Not.

Not anything that's new, not anything that's complicated.

Just love.

Conduct our whole lives that way day in, day out, even when it's messy, even when it's hard.

That's where you live and that's where we want to be.

Amen.

My friend, I am delighted you chose to join me for today's reading.

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My name is Dr. Brad Miller and I'll be right here tomorrow with your Daily Bible Refresh.

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Remember, God's loyal love doesn't run out.

His merciful love hasn't dried up yet, created new every morning.