Tag Archive: Love

Hard to love?

August 11, 2022 0 Comments

Read John 15:9-17

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.”

The revelation Jesus makes here of the relationship between the Father and Him seems to be filled with ease. However, their union was not one without testing in this world. Remember Jesus is being tempted. Not only that, he has the vulnerability of being hungry, thirsty, and wearied by the devastations wrought by sin in this world. Yet His temptation is what is common to us all: to turn from reliance on God instead of relying on His love.

Jesus remained in the Father’s love, keeping the Father’s commands, and experiencing joy.

Oh how I wander and forget the Presence of God. It makes me wonder, am I hard to love? Hamzaa asks this question in her song, Hard to Love. Yet the story of God’s love across the Scripture is of His faithfulness experienced in loving kindness.

Heavenly Father, Send your Spirit to me that I might think and act according to your loving kindness even in this broken and beautiful world. How will I love as you love unless I am drawn into your love? Come Lord Jesus Come. Amen.

Jeremiah 31:3 “The LORD appeared to us on the past saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness’.”

Daily Readings, Jesus

,

Marriage is a crisis

March 11, 2020 0 Comments

Mike Mason has written one of the most powerful and reflective books on marriage: The Mystery of Marriage — As Iron Sharpens Iron. I love his way with language. He plunges into the depths seeking to give words to what happens when a man and a women marry. He writes that marriage is a crisis.

Is it any wonder if some people will do everything in their power to keep love away from them? For we know instinctively that love is like some violent revolutionary, head stuffed with wild dreams instead of brains, a dangerous idealist who would like nothing better than to grab hold of us and shake us right down to our boots, overthrowing all our old ideas and ambition, drastically renovating our hearts from the ground up, filling us with entirely new motives for living. To give into such a force, for one moment, is to be quite, quite swept away. Give love an inch and it will take our whole lives, and it will all happen like lightning, in the twinkling of an eye.

This is what makes marriage such a thrilling enterprise: that it has the power, much more than other more obviously disruptive forces, to change the entire course of a life. Some people go into marriage thinking that they will not have to change much, or perhaps only a little bit along lines that are perfectly foreseeable and within their control. Such people are in for a rough ride. When the terrifying and inexorable process of change sets in, they dig in their heels and refuse to budge, and the ensuing tug-of-war wreaks havoc in every department of their previously comfortable existence.

Marriage, even under the best of circumstances is a crisis–one of the major crisis of life–and it is a dangerous thing not be aware of this. Whether it turns out to be a healthy, challenging, and constructive crisis or a disastrous nightmare depends largely upon how willing the partners are to be changed, how malleable they are. Yet ironically, it is some of the most hardened and crusty and unlikely people in the world who plunge themselves into the arms of marriage and thereby submit in almost total naïveté to the two most transforming powers known to the human heart: the love of another person and the gracious love of God. So be prepared for change! Be prepared for the most sweeping and revolutionary reforms of a lifetime.

Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage, p. 60-62.

Quotes, Relationships

,

Loving first again and again and again and again

December 14, 2017 0 Comments

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 John 4:10

 

I have long been delighted with the prevenience of God. God acts first. God moves first. God loves first. Before I awaken, He is awakening me. Such grace abounds. This view of God’s pre – action, before my awareness, is evident even in Mark 4 in the parable of the sower or soils. God is sowing good seed into our lives; in fact God is always sowing good seed that would awaken us to Him and His Kingdom.

 

Recently while reading James Bryan Smith’s book Embracing the Love of God, I was introduced to one of Soren Kierkegard’s prayers. I’ve been reflecting on it and praying it for the past week as an advent reminder. Here it is for you. I hope you will be reminded of God’s ever-present unceasing kindness and faithful love towards you.

 

You have loved us first, O God, alas! We speak of it in terms of history as if You loved us first but a single time, rather than that without ceasing. You have loved us first many times and everyday and our whole life through. When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul toward You — You are there first — You have loved us first; if I rise at dawn and at the same second turn my soul toward You in prayer, You are there ahead of me, You have loved me first. When I withdraw from the distractions of the day and turn my soul toward You, You are there first and thus forever. And we speak ungratefully as if You have loved us first only once.

Discipleship

, ,

Did I tell you about Monday?

September 27, 2017 2 Comments

Did I tell you about Monday, when I a wore a shirt inside out all day long and nobody said anything till the end of the day; till like 10 PM, “Did you know you shirt is inside out?” By that time, I had been a lot of places and had a lot of meetings.

 

I didn’t know.

 

It wasn’t a purposeful act of rebellion. It wasn’t even an act of style.

 

I just didn’t know. And to look closely — you would know.

 

So here’s what I’m left trying to figure out:

Did all those people who I sat directly in front of and talked with me for about 45 minutes at a time

also not notice or not care?

or feel too embarrassed to point out a problem?

 

Or maybe its me. Am I not approachable, accessible, and receptive to questions and criticism?

Have I created a culture around me that is reluctant to point out what might be wrong?

There’s a proverb that says, “He who builds a high gate invites destruction.” (Proverbs 17:19)

 

This is a problem. We live in a day when “our insides are out” a lot! Words are showing what is in the heart. But are we reluctant to do the Gospel work of inquiring about what is on display. It appears that criticism and truth-telling is considered disloyalty… even if the emperor has no clothes on. Perhaps the most valued capacity for the future is moral courage.

 

Well at least I had clothes on.

 

These are the things a leader must wonder about.

So here’s permission: next time you see me with my shirt on inside out, please tell me. I’ll appreciate you. I’ll probably go change it because it means I did my whole morning routine without my glasses, and didn’t notice!

You know who said something? My wife. She knows she has permission! Plus, she loves me.

 

Leadership

, ,

The Users’ Guide for Becoming Lovers

February 21, 2017 0 Comments

We are all known by our worship. Jesus Christ comes from the Father seeking true worshippers who worship in truth and in spirit. (John 4) Worship is the application of ultimate worth to something or someone. When we worship people, or ourselves, or the stuff of earth, we will become users not lovers. I do find the classical sense of idolatry helpful; idolatry is the misappropriation of that which has been created as a substitute for God. These false gods have powerful shaping influence in our relationships and in our brokenness. We mirror these gods. The Psalmist highlights the “mirror factor” when he says,

 

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear; noses but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their their throat.
Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them.
(Psalm 115:4-8)

The mirroring factor is at work in our worship. The explosion of visual enticement through our screens is cueing up not just our brains, but also our souls — to worship. And when we do, our souls are being hollowed out. All too often, death inhabits the desperate scroll, not life. For that idolatry also works to create false views of God and a false view of living well. A living, dynamic, grace-filled life is what God intends for us. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life of the sheep.” (John 10:10-11)

One of the beautiful observations we can make about King David is that he is more widely known for his worship of God than any other aspect of his life. The evidence of his relationship with God is recorded within the Psalms. The diversity and breadth of these prayers covers the spectrum of human emotion. David honoured God even as he talked, complained, questioned, and cried out to HIm. When I read the Psalms as an act of worship, I am drawn into deeper conversations and worship of God.

 

King David’s confession and prayer in Psalm 23 is a profound departure from the idolatry of his day and of ours.  David is following a personal and relational real God who is sufficient for the trials and brokenness of each day.

Psalm 23 — A PSALM OF DAVID.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

 

Worship matters. Jesus Christ is our Shepherd. He is our guide. Jesus doesn’t use people. He shows us who the Father is. He is the lover of our souls. He is the one who turns “users” into “lovers.” And for that we need grace! We need the Gospel truth of God’s pursuit of us through the life and work of Jesus Christ.

Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us — eternal life… And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are are… Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
(1 John 2:23-25, 28-3:1, 2-3)

Discipleship

, , ,