Have you ever been touched by a love so profound it changed the very fabric of your being? My journey alongside Claudia through the darkest valleys of life—economic turmoil, temptation, and a brush with death—stands as a testament to the healing power of God’s love. Join us on Guiding Light as I, Jonathan Jon Cordero, delve into the heart of divine affection. Inspired by Charles F. Stanley's "God's Purpose for Your Life," we examine the unconditional sacrifice made by God through His Son, Jesus, and how this act of unparalleled love calls us to forgive and cherish others. This episode is not just a conversation; it's an invitation to let God's love permeate the wounded places within, offering hope and transformation.
The essence of today’s powerful message is rooted in faith's ability to renew and fortify the bonds of marriage, friendship, and community. We reflect on the importance of infusing Jesus' teachings into every facet of our existence, especially when facing life's inevitable challenges. By sharing my own story of redemption and renewal with Claudia, we highlight the profound impact that God's guiding hand can have on our lives. It's my honor to share with each of you the path to embracing Jesus' love and guidance, with the hope of illuminating the beauty and peace found within His eternal promise. So, as the host of Guidance Light, I extend my heartfelt blessings and invite you to join us on this spiritual expedition, seeking wisdom and comfort in the teachings of Christ.
Have you ever been touched by a love so profound it changed the very fabric of your being? My journey alongside Claudia through the darkest valleys of life—economic turmoil, temptation, and a brush with death—stands as a testament to the healing power of God’s love. Join us on Guiding Light as I, Jonathan Jon Cordero, delve into the heart of divine affection. Inspired by Charles F. Stanley's "God's Purpose for Your Life," we examine the unconditional sacrifice made by God through His Son, Jesus, and how this act of unparalleled love calls us to forgive and cherish others. This episode is not just a conversation; it's an invitation to let God's love permeate the wounded places within, offering hope and transformation.
The essence of today’s powerful message is rooted in faith's ability to renew and fortify the bonds of marriage, friendship, and community. We reflect on the importance of infusing Jesus' teachings into every facet of our existence, especially when facing life's inevitable challenges. By sharing my own story of redemption and renewal with Claudia, we highlight the profound impact that God's guiding hand can have on our lives. It's my honor to share with each of you the path to embracing Jesus' love and guidance, with the hope of illuminating the beauty and peace found within His eternal promise. So, as the host of Guidance Light, I extend my heartfelt blessings and invite you to join us on this spiritual expedition, seeking wisdom and comfort in the teachings of Christ.
Good day and thank you for listening to Guiding Light, the podcast channel that covers God's Gospel devotionals and talks about the love of Jesus Christ. I'm your host, jonathan John Cordero, and this is Season 1, episode 2, choosing His Love. Now, before we begin, I want to say first thank you to God for allowing me to be able to voice His words and thank you, god, for allowing you to be somewhere that you can hear them. May God's words lift you up, encourage you and give you peace on this day or night. In Jesus' name, I pray Amen.
Jon:
Today we're going to be looking at a daily devotional book called God's Purpose for your Life, by Charles F Stanley, and then we're going to talk a little bit about it, about the devotional that it states and how it makes us feel, perhaps what God is intending to say. The first page that I'm going to read here today says Choosing His Love, and it starts with the scripture John 3.16,. God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. The most important decision that you will ever make in life is a decision about love Whether or not to receive God's love in salvation. The choice that follows are like whether you will love God and, by extension, love others. However, what you should know about God's love is that it is absolute, divine, internal and sacrificial. His care for you does not waver, change over time. He is not influenced by circumstances or situations. His love for you cannot be diminished. Likewise, whatever we might say about God himself, we must say about His love it is wise, powerful and ever present with us. His love penetrates our deepest wounds and causes us to heal, change and grow, and if we allow His love access, it will overtake us completely Heart, soul, mind and strength. Are you willing? Have you accepted God's love? Have you allowed it to reach every area of your life and transform you? If not, you should, because absolutely nothing fills the emptiness like it or is better than His awesome love. Jesus, I receive your love and worship you as my Savior, my Lord and my God. You have all of me, amen. When you hear the word love, when you hear the terms I love you or someone talking about love, what's the first thing that comes to mind? I can tell you that most people aren't going to say Jesus. Most people are going to say their spouse or their loved ones or their family, however you want to word it, but most people won't refer to love as Jesus. See, I think that's where the message falls. Today. The Bible teaches us about the love that Jesus had for us and the love that God has for us. See, god loved us so much that he sent His only Son to earth to die on the cross for our sins, for the sins of somebody they didn't know yet, that wasn't born yet. That's just the tip of the iceberg of what Jesus' love for us means.
Jon:
I want you to take a moment and I want you to imagine something that you love dearly, someone that you love dearly. If you're a parent, maybe you're a kid. If you have no children, maybe you're a spouse or your partner. If you have no partner, perhaps it's a loved animal. But I want you to take that loved person or animal, that child, and I want you to look at them or think of them and say, god, I would be willing to give my child, my spouse, my dog, my cat, whatever it is that I love the most. I'm willing to willingly hand them over to somebody or a group of people who I know will not appreciate them, who I know will spit on them, will beat them, curse them, hate them, treat them poorly and ultimately kill them. And I'm going to do this because those same people I love and I'm going to do this for them. That's so deep, in the sense of how much love is being shown there, because God knew. God knew that Jesus was going to be sacrificed. Jesus knew it while he was here on earth. He knew that his time wasn't going to be as long as a full lifetime.
Jon:
See, I was recently watching a show called the Chosen, which is phenomenal, and if you haven't seen it, I would recommend it to anybody who is wanting to see and hear about God's works. The show covers Jesus of Nazareth as he is here on earth spreading his gospel and getting his followers, also known as the Twelve Disciples, to follow him around in the trials and tribulations that they go through, along with miracles. But the show itself follows what Scripture says and it's very, very, very good. In the show, jesus goes around giving miracles out to others, showing his love to everyone, and yet, out of jealousy, out of spite, out of rage and ignorance, people wouldn't accept who he was, even if the miracles were right in front of their face. The people that are around you, the people that love you, are your miracle. God has given us people to love, and he wants us to love him as the way he loved us.
Jon:
Too often do we get blinded by our fights with one another, with whether it's over finances, over stress, greed, ignorance. Maybe there's just not enough time being spent together, maybe there's just something that's getting in the way. Perhaps it's jealousy, depression. All these things get in the way of what God intended for us, and that's to love one another. God is a God of forgiveness, and his love also extends into forgiving one another.
Jon:
If today, or on this night that you're listening to this, you are in a position where you are fighting for love, you're fighting for a person or something that you truly love that's fallen out of your hands. Give it up to God first. Let God work his way in your life. If you're fighting with your spouse or your significant other, you say God, you read my heart, you know who I am on the inside, you know me, you made me and you know how I feel. Lord, I want to be able to love the way that you love me. I want your love to shine through me.
Jon:
And if this other person isn't willing to accept it. Lord, that's okay. I know that you have a purpose. I know that you are working in my life and, lord, if it's the devil's fault that this is falling apart, lord, I rebuke it in your name. Lord, let your love affect our hearts so that we may come together underneath you. Lord, let your light and your love be our rock of our foundation. Let our relationship grow and prosper in your name. That without you, god, there would be nothing, because there is nothing without you. You are all that's holy, lord. You're the one that showed us how to love. Help me accept that which I cannot control, and help me show the love that you've taught me to others each and every day. Fill my heart with nothing but kindness, hope and love, and let your peace rule my life each and every single day. Amen.
Jon:
If you've been praying for God to answer your call when it comes to your significant other, when it comes to your children, when it comes to people that you love in your life, I want you to know that God hears us. God doesn't want us to be alone. Just like he created Adam, he created Eve out of Adam's rib, not so Adam could stand above her, but for Eve to stand next to him and to encounter all that life has to offer the good and the bad. See, too many times do we get caught up in that bad and we let it drown us out. We forget to love one another.
Jon:
It's happened to me, see. I've been caught up in the mire of this world, in the everyday economic struggles, in the wanting to advance, in the rat race, in the blinders that I put myself in so that I can create my own goals and make it to where I'm trying to get to, and I completely forgot what God teaches us. I completely forgot the love that he's shown us. I thought I can make it on my own strength, and over time I came to realize that I was weaker than the weakest of all. See, when I gave my life over to God and I gave my everything to him, things started changing around me, and one of the main things that changed around me was my relationship. My beautiful wife, claudia, has been more than patient with me through each and every hurdle that life has thrown at us. She has watched me be the happiest and she's also seen me at my lowest point, but yet the devil wanted us apart. See, there is a point in time that my wife and I almost went our separate ways Actually, it's been more than once, and for anyone who's ever known me and known my family, this would probably come out of shock, because you would look in from the outside and you would see a perfect family.
Jon:
But you cannot see what God sees. And God sees our hearts and he could have painted the picture that we were broken beyond repair because we did not have God in our hearts first and God's love wasn't being allowed by us to prosper. We kept getting in our own way. Once we decided to give our lives over to God and we gave everything to him, our relationship started to take huge strides and huge leaps in the right direction. We started caring more about each other. We started helping each other out. We started coming together, praying over whether it was breakfast, lunch or dinner, praying on the car rides. Let your will, let us arrive safely. But these little itty-bitty things that we would do allowed us to start loving each other more and more, because we chose to love God, because we chose to give our lives to him.
Jon:
See, the devil knows what you want and he's going to tempt you. He's going to tempt you to take you away from what God has given you, because he revels in destroying everything he's made. You may have a wonderful, loving spouse, but yet you'll scroll on social media and like and see posts from women or men and seek it out and allow the sin of lust to take place. See, wherever there is sin, god cannot exist, for he is so holy, he is perfect and clean. And we mire ourselves with our own sin because we are not tying our love to God, we are not giving our relationships and our life over to God the way that he's asking us to, and that's allowing for sin to come in, that's allowing for the temptation to come in, and you have to stop. You have to stop and realize that that temptation is an attempt by the devil to take you away from what God has planned for us, for the love that he wants to show you in the peace that you feel when you accept his love.
Jon:
See, god loves us so much that he is a wonderful shepherd. If there were a hundred of us and one of us went astray, he would leave the 99 to find that one, because each of us matter time. God loves us so much that he knows how many hairs are on your head. He knows how many tears you've cried. He knows your wants, he knows your needs and he's there to guide you in the way that he chose for you. You just have to learn to love and to accept love. You cannot force love. Love comes naturally because God put it in our hearts. Let his love shine each and every day.
Jon:
If you are in a position in your life right now that you are struggling with compassion, when you are struggling with kindness, when you feel like your heart has been broken into a million pieces, give it to the one who made us. Give it to God. He's the one that put it together in the first place. Only he knows the pattern. Only he knows how to make you whole again. I've been there in one of my darkest times that I've ever been through. In my heart, I got mad at God. I looked up to the heavens and I screamed and I said, god, there's no way that you can exist if you're letting me go through what I'm going through. See, at this time I thought that I can make it out on my own.
Jon:
I knew God existed from a very young age, but at this point in time, so many things had happened that the relationship I was in was falling apart. I was going through divorce. I was losing my house. I was on my way to my mother's house to do a load of laundry on the only vehicle I had left, which was a motorcycle. On the way there, a man ran a stop sign and I was in a motorcycle accident, and I thank God to this very day that I was okay. I was able to go home that very same day with a road rash on my hands and my knees, but aside from that, I was able to walk away and even the doctors told me that I had a miracle, because I had no helmet, I had no safety gear and I hit a vehicle going 60 miles an hour.
Jon:
My life was falling apart and I felt so defeated, I felt down. I felt like the world was ending that there was no purpose for anything. I stood outside and I looked to the heavens and I screamed and I said, god, there's no way, there is absolutely no way that you exist if you're allowing me to go through what I'm going through. At that point in time I didn't hear anything. I just heard silence. It's taken years to go back and realize that at that point in time, god's silence is what was leading me out of that place, because he knew that I had to give my life to him and I had to turn the page and move in the direction that he was asking me to go towards his love, because his love is eternal. His love won't change from one day to the next Because you had a disagreement or because you just couldn't meet eye to eye, or because things just didn't work out the way that you had envisioned them to work out. His love persists through it all.
Jon:
I found God again years down the road and I went through some of the hardest periods of my life. In that timeframe I have never been more angry at God and when I look back now, I realize the ignorance in my words. I realize how sorry I am for having ever said that, because he's never failed me and he's never failed you, and though it looks as if you're walking alone, god's love has never left you. It's preserving you, it's guiding you. He is patient, he is kind, he is loving and he is guiding you to where you need to go. You just have to let him do it.
Jon:
You have to understand that not everything is meant for us. We are in a day and age and time that we believe that we can get anything we want, that we deserve everything, that we are entitled to absolutely everything. And the truth to be told is that we are entitled to nothing if it is not under God's will. We are not worth the dust beneath God's feet, but yet he loves us. See, it's incredible how we stop loving one another because of all these trials and tribulations that we go through, but we need to think about how Jesus loved us. See when they were whipping Jesus with the cat9 tails, drawing blood from his flesh, he loved us. When they pressed a thorn crown onto his head, he loved us. As each and every single nail was driven into his hands and his feet, he loved us.
Jon:
See in the movie the Passion of Christ, which, if you haven't seen it, I advise against for children to watch it. It is a very, very strong presented movie. It's very graphic. If you are of age, I highly recommend watching it. The actor Jim Caviesal, who plays the role of Jesus Christ in the movie, to me hit the nail on the head, as they were in the scenes of crucifying him. They laid back the cross with him on it and he leans back and says God, forgive him, for they know not what they do.
Jon:
Which one of us, being tortured, being crucified, would ask for forgiveness? For those who are committing the sins and crimes against us, the ones who are drawing the blood? Which one of us could do it? Not one. I know that I couldn't. And that's the love that he shares for us. He shares enough love and teaches us that love is forgiveness, that love is understanding, its patience, its unity, and it makes us stronger. We are stronger together because we are loved. We are stronger together because we are loved by him, and accepting his love in our life allows us to love others. In your time of desperation and in your time of feeling broken, fall to your knees and ask for God to deliver you with his love. Ask him to show you what it's like to feel that way again. Don't let the world's problems get in the way of what God has intended for you. If God can forgive us, then we can forgive others. There is a way, as long as you trust in God.
Jon:
I want to say a prayer for all those who have never accepted God into your life, for those who are hearing this and want to know what it feels like, wants to get closer to that love, because there's nothing better. See, the love that you can have towards your kids is grand, but the love that you feel from God, and the one that you feel towards him once you get to know who he is, is even bigger than that of a love of a parent to a child. It is awe-inspiring, it is worthy of praise, it is reverence. There's no words that I can say that justify the love that he gives us, and I want you to know what it's like. Are you going to feel his love from day one, from saying the prayer? It takes time. Your faith will grow, much like a seed that is planted in the earth. It'll grow and it'll bear fruit, and that fruit will be love, compassion, patience, understanding, strength, all given to us by God.
Jon:
So if you haven't accepted Jesus into your heart yet, feel free to pray along with me. If you are driving, please pay attention to the road and feel free to say the prayer out loud. If you are somewhere safe, in the comfort of your home, in silence, know that God hears you and reads your hearts. And as long as we say our prayers with a humble heart, with a willing heart, we can ask God's love to fill us through and through. He will go into your heart and he will leave room for no other, because he is all you need. He is all you need to hold on to in the times of turbulence, in the times of tribulation, in the times that you feel like the world is falling apart. So long as you have the love of Jesus Christ in your heart, the rock in which you stand shall not be shaken. He shall not be shaken and he will not let you fall. If you let his love in, if you choose his love, he will teach you how to spread it to those that you want to spread it to. He will teach you how to do it the right way, the way that lasts.
Jon:
So, as we go into this, ask yourself, god, do I feel your love the way that I should? Am I showing others how to love the way you've loved me? Ask yourself, god have I asked you how to truly come into my heart, to allow your love to spread through me and reach the deepest parts of who I am? Or have I forgotten how to love because the world's trials have just beat me down so much. So I ask God restore my heart. If I've known your love, forgive me for falling away.
Jon:
If I've never known who you are, help me understand you and for those who want to get to know who Jesus Christ is, for those who want to accept him into your heart as your Lord and Savior, as your light, as your guide, you can repeat after me or you can say your own prayer. Remember that God hears our hearts, he hears the intent and the willingness. So repeat after me, god. I am a sinner. I know that. I fail each and every day and a lot of times in ways that I don't even understand. But, lord, if there is something that I do that is separating me from you, I give it to you. Be my Savior, god. Come into my heart and redeem me to be the person that you made me out to be. Help me walk by your side so that I may learn to love others as if you have loved me. Thank you, god. All glory be to your name. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. If you said that prayer with me, or if you said any prayer, thank you, god for that.
Jon:
You guys have taken a step closer to knowing the love of Jesus Christ and all that he has to give. Thank you so much for being a part of this channel. May God bless you and keep you and remember that Jesus is a Prince of Peace and, through His name, no fear, anxiety, depression or negativity may prevail. Have a wonderful day or night, and I hope that you tune into that one of the next episodes. Again, this channel is going to be airing episodes on Fridays and Sundays, and I apologize that I wasn't able to upload my last one yesterday on Sunday. That's because I was a little bit under the weather. But either way, I will continue to air episodes. As long as you guys are listening and you guys are wanting to hear the Lord of God, and as long as God, who has me in this position, and I have a voice, I will voice it in His name. God bless you all and I look forward to hearing from you. This is Jonathan, with Guidance Light signing out.