LOVE

If I had to define one of the biggest things the Lord has been teaching me in the past eight months, it would be love. What does it mean to love God? Here are some of my thoughts and the things the Lord has been revealing and challenging me on love.

     Something I think many of us Christians do is that we want to honor and glorify God; to love Him with all of our heart soul, mind and strength. We often do this by living a "moral" lifestyle, or by going around the world evangelizing, or fighting for those that are weak. Now don't misunderstand me, those things are important and great, but what we often don't realize is that the biggest way we can glorify God and love Him, is by loving people. If we aren't truly loving people, than all those "moral" and "good" things or acts of service we do, don't really matter. I Corinthians 13 says that you can be the wisest and most "servant hearted" Christian, but if you don't have love, than you are just a noisy gong or clanging symbol. It doesn't count or last if there is not love. Jesus says the greatest and most important commandment of the Bible is this:
       

      Mark 12:29-31 "Jesus answered, "The most important is this, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

     Sorry this is kind of random, but basically I'm going to focus on the way of loving people. What that looks like. Hod Jesus loved and spoke truth at the same time and how we're suppose to imitate that. It's a bit long, but I hope and pray that you would take a few minutes to read it and ask the Holy Spirit to convict you where conviction is needed, and that you'd be so set free and changed by the love of Christ that it changes your perspective of loving people. And please know, I am not saying I got this down. I never will perfectly here on this earth and I fail at truly loving people every single day. But if I desire to love Jesus with all my being, this is where I must start...

   Have you ever notice that the most predominant love in scripture is between a father and son? In all the ways love can be expressed; love between a man and woman, between brothers, between a friend, between a neighbor, etc. As scripture shows us God's love, the most predominant is a father to son (parents to child). Because parent to child, father to son, that kind of love is most clearly and instinctively unconditionally, complete self-giving, looking without anything in return.

The Lord really got me thinking about love back in October. One of my pastors asked me, "Camille...do you think you are a lover of people?" I said I didn't know but wanted to be. He said to me, "One of the ways you can measure whether you're a lover of people or not is by asking yourself this question: 'how am I at loving the people that are hard to love?'" Wow, that hit me hard. I began to be humbled by the fact that I don't love people well. I've been studying the Gospels all the ways that Jesus loves people and how He does it. He is ALWAYS risking Himself. He is often spending so much time with the unlovable. The "worst" of sinners. Lets look at some of the ways that Jesus chose to show love to people:

      The woman at the well: Jesus' love is unconditional, self-giving, looking for nothing in return. In her day, she was known as a whore; she had 5 husbands and was living with a man that wasn't her husband. And what does Jesus do? He goes to her at a time of day when a man and woman shouldn't even be speaking to each other at the well,. So His reputation is all on the line. And what does he than do? He connects with her. Loves her unconditionally and  basically says, "I know your empty, I know you thirst... that's what all that relational carnage in your life is all about. Enter into a love relationship with me and you'll never thirst again." It's an unconditional love and He puts Himself at risk by even speaking to her.

How about another time: When He disrobed to wash His disciple's feet? He's not getting anything in return to become the servant who washed their feet. It's unconditional, self-giving.

  The woman caught in adultery. He just saves her life. Jesus was the only one there who could have thrown the stone, but He says; "Neither do I condemn you. Leave your life of sin." -unconditional love. Notice that is TRUTH AND LOVE. He first loves her by saving her and not condemning her, yet, He still speaks truth to her saying that she needs to leave her life of sin.

But that's not how we operate as the church theses days. Our message is more like this: "We condemn you and your sin. When you leave it, I (we) may take the risk to love you." But Jesus says, "I don't condemn you, leave your life of sin."....wow, I don't get that and most of the time I don't do that...that's unconditional, self-giving love.

How about the widow of Naim: She lost her complete lively hood when her son died. Jesus isn't doing a magic show. He's restoring to her, her lively hood- the life that had been taken away.

    Or how He loved Peter when Peter denied Him three times in the gravest hour of all history of the world. The question is never "Peter, do I love you?" but, "Peter, you know I love you? In my love will You love me? Will you love me back?"

    Then the ultimate way we see this deep, unconditional love is in the cross: Jesus loves you so much that He wants to so have you as His child that He's willing to give up Himself. That the Son is willing to be orphaned from the Father that we might be called the children of God. And for three hours what does God do? He turns off the lights of the universe, because the Son/Father relationship, that perfect picture of love, was disrupted. Christ was orphaned that you might be a son/daughter of God. It means that if I put my faith in Jesus Christ that what God says, feels, thinks about the Son, He says, feels and thinks about me....On my best day and worst day. It never changes. What does the Father say? "This is my son, whom I love, with whom I am well pleased." Do I dare believe that? Not because of me, but because of Christ?
     

1 John says, "How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us..."

We need to be honest. We can begin to love people that way. We need to stop playing with all the rules. We need to measure our walk by love. If we're not loving other people maybe we don't truly love Jesus. Maybe we don't know Him the way we think we know Him. All the laws, rules, everything in our lives is fulfilled in love and if it's not, we need to pull back. We need to either say, "Jesus I don't know You the way I think I know You." Or fall on our knees saying "Jesus, I need more of You. I need more of You!"

   If we wrestle with what it looks like to love people we will begin to look like Jesus. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control... these are the marks of love. That's how you'll know. We'll begin to bear the family image. :) That's what it's all about. Jesus was the perfect image of God and we get to bare that family image in our own lives. That's so awesome because we see Jesus, who was born to us, died for us, and then began to be born IN us.

    Lastly I want to end this post with what Elizabeth Elliot said in her book 'Passion and Purity'.
"Love interprets things in favor of the one loved....Paul's description: 'love is patient...never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs...there is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.' The trouble, or course, is that we must learn to love people. People are sinners. Love must be patient when it is tempted (by the delays of other people) to be impatient. Love must not be selfish, even if other people are. Love does not take offence, though people are offensive sometimes. There are wrongs, but love won't keep score. There are things to be faced, but nothing love can't face, things to try love's faith, discourage its hope, and call for its endurance. But it keeps right on trusting, hoping and enduring. Love never ends."