How Dare You?

Are you an investor?  I think it must take a lot of nerve to put large sums of money into stuff and then hope that someday it’ll pay off! I suppose it’s kind of like the lottery, they say you can’t win if you don’t play but there are others who believe that you can’t lose what you don’t bet…I’ve been told that relationships are work, as if they’re a task or a job that has to be done and that may be true…it would explain why so many don’t work! I think it’s also true that you first must venture something before it’s possible to see a return of it, let alone to see a return on it! We sow seeds hoping for a crop and although there’s a reasonable expectation of a result it’s still not a for sure thing. I’m drawing comparisons here to various things that involve risk so that I can talk about what most people perceive to be the greatest one of all,

loving people!

Allow me to clarify, I feel as though I need to because there are so many concepts people have about what that means. I’m talking about the type of love that can and most likely will cost you everything. The type that never stops to count the cost before acting or that leaves no room for compromise or half measures.  It’s an all consuming obsession that’s primarily characterized by selflessness and a concern for what’s in the best interest of it’s “object” which of course is so much more than a thing to them…

it’s their everything! 

Many people practice a much more conditional definition of love as in,

“I love you as  long as times are good or until you do something I disapprove of.”

Another common example is the idea that I love you until it becomes inconvenient for me or until my feelings for you result in a “heartache” on my part at which point we’re through. Some people do see love as an investment, and as such they have some very definite ideas about what they expect in return and while I do believe that love always comes back to us I don’t think that anyone truly gives love only because of what they expect to receive in return.

Having said that I’d also like to say that even though expecting a return on our love investment is not in character, that when we do give, sow, invest, or commit ourselves to truly loving someone the return is guaranteed! Perhaps not in the way we might expect or from the person whom we’ve loved but just as the rising sea levels of a harbor lifts all ships we benefit from bringing more love into the world! Like am electrical wire with current flowing through it, we’re warmed by it’s passage!

I’d like to be able to say that I’ve loved that way, but what Robin Williams said about loving something more than yourself kind of left me hollow, I find it’s quite a struggle for me to love something more than I fear being rejected by it…

I’m also floored to know that this is how God loves each of us, except it’s actually so much more than I can even comprehend. He sent His only Son Jesus to be our redeemer even though I’m sure He knew that many would reject this supreme act of love!

Thank You Father for Your infinite love, please change my heart to allow Your love to shine through me more, and for me to see the fear in my life for the liar that it is!

Do I dare?

How dare you?

The Problem…

In some ways it’s the height of comical irony that a culture such as ours so steeped in the worship and reverence of love could have it so wrong…

but it does.

It’s often confused with sex, perhaps as a result of the perception that it’s somehow inherently explained by the misleading commonly used expression

“make love”.

Sadly, many settle for the red-headed step-child of love “attention” primarily because we don’t really know the difference. Children, both young and old, act out in bad behaviors that are really just cries for help or for “love”.

It’s sometimes described as a feeling, but that’s kind of like saying Gods creation is God and then worshiping “it” instead of Him. We’re told that love is a choice, which is true, but how does that help us to make loving choices? We’re inundated with a constant flow of dis-functional concepts and examples from every possible source! Through the song lyrics that brainwash us daily all the way back to the fairytale stories that were read to us as children.

I feel very comfortable in saying that all of the most screwed up things that you and I have done in our lives are directly related to our misunderstanding of God and of love, and our search for both.

Almost invariably, mans search for love and his quest for the understanding of it are motivated only by his selfish desires to marshal it’s great power for his own purposes. Man has become a master at peddling illusions and perpetrating lies on his fellow man in order to get what he wants. One is seen as being successful in this life by demonstrating an ability to manipulate others and more importantly to convince themselves that it’s love that they’re offering. None of which would be possible apart from the basic ignorance about the true nature of love that’s so prevalent. We’re like blind people feeling around in the dark who are stung, bitten and burned as a result of working through a process of elimination hoping to find the real thing.

As unfortunate as ignorance is,there’s still cause for hope in that ignorance can be dealt with through simple knowledge. Whats most unfortunate are those of us who have allowed fear to take hold of our spirits. In acting out of fear we acknowledge our own personal insufficiency by believing that we are the source of our limited provision. We’ve been taught to look out for number one which is of course ourselves because if we don’t who will? certainly not a benevolent God, afterall, everyone knows that God helps those who help themselves right?. But in truth, God helps or comes to save those who absolutely cannot help or save themselves!

And that’s exactly the work I believe God is wanting to use His church to accomplish!

God Is Love!

As His representatives and ambassadors, disciples and followers, evangelist’s and ministers, church members and children, shouldn’t we have, based on our personal relationship with Jesus, a much greater familiarity with love than those who don’t or who aren’t any of those things?

Love is the answer!

Perhaps we as the church have forgotten that. We live in the midst of a world full of people who are crying out for answers, are we prepared to give them? Shouldn’t we be the ones teaching the world about love?  This world is a vineyard ripe for harvest, and the only real preparation necessary for us as Christians is to truly receive that love and those answers first ourselves! How can we say that we know the Lord, or that we’ve accepted Christ as our Savior, and then stand idly by in the presence of so much need in our own assigned area’s of mission field earth?

We’ve been given the perfect example of what love is in Christ.

I don’t think there’s any way that I personally could ever be thankful enough for what He did for me. If I really mean that, then what does it mean?

We need more than a “revival” what we need is a revolution! A love revolution…

And since love is an action word, a “verb”, that means we need to shift our focus away from merely talking about it week in and week out to one of making some thoughtful plans to implement it in some way scratch that, every way possible! I’m not talking about some token “feel good” project that doesn’t require much from us. What I’m suggesting here is that we work in earnest the great harvest that’s been prepared before us! Just as Christ held nothing back on our behalf, How can we do any less?

We can make the most of the opportunity before us by bringing everything we have to bear on this Kingdom battle for the souls of those around us who our Heavenly Father dearly loves!

Or we can listen to fear…

It’s a choice each of us has to make,there is no way to “abstain”

We can either choose to live in love or be imprisoned by fear.

We can choose to serve the One True God and His Kingdom…

Or be a slave to the one who opposed Him and who is also our enemy.

Is that a problem?

Without A Net

Whether we realize it or not all of us are walking a tight wire of some kind in our lives and our balancing act is always at risk given the thin nature of the “reality” we subscribe to.  Everyday, people in this hard little world fall off that wire, land hard, and are injured in way’s that can be hard to heal. The repercussions of that fall are what we sometimes call a “crisis” which interestingly enough is a word that’s based on the Greek term Krinein which means to decide.

Decide what?

Any trapeze artist you happen to meet will most likely tell you that a certain level of fear or respect is essential to the performance of their craft, but that if you allow that fear to take center stage walking that wire becomes impossible. And while a net can be something that catch’s us and keeps us safe from a fall, it can also be used to keep us in bondage after we’ve lost our balance and fallen into a trap or snare of some type! Safety is of the Lord, but fear is a symptom of spiritual bondage to sin. How is it that after thousands of years we’re still hiding in the bush’s just as Adam did in the garden from a loving God?

I think that the deepest fear any of us have is that of not being loved. Why does it seem as though we run from the thing we need the most or pretend to be above it in some way? Perhaps it’s because in lieu of being able to procure it, we’ve taken on the mantle of god in our own lives and have arrogantly chosen to express or exercise our “divinity” by making god-like choice’s about our lives that no one else can change, even if we’re the one’s that suffer as a result.

Isn’t that a shame?

Ultimately it isn’t us who make our choices, but instead they, who make us!

It’s at these familiar crossroads, these moments of sudden confusing complexity, that like any other subscription we’ve signed up for our fear delivers to us our default answer….

What about me?

Our lives become a frustrating failure when we try to take on Gods role in our lives or when we project onto God our flawed human understanding of love. Most of these misguided actions and bad choices flow from a core belief that the universe we live in is a decidedly unfriendly place, that real love is a lie, and that if there is a God He’s probably mad at us!

No wonder we’re anxious and afraid to step out!  We’re walking on a wire and we believe that we’re working…

Without a net!

Why am I saying all of this? Because there are way too many people who go through their lives making decisions that originate from thoughts sponsored by fear, not love. Who instead of living the life God had planned for them are tangled up in the net of this world and are presently miserable as a result! If hell is an eternal separation from God, Who is love, then you might say they’ve already started doing their time here on earth! In fact, I’ve heard more than a few people refer to their lives as being a “living hell”…I don’t believe that Gods pleased with any of those things at all, actually I think it break’s His heart, mine too…and since I’m trying to be on His team I’m interested in doing whatever He enables me to do to help others choose Him instead!  Being a Christian is simply an ever growing awareness of who we are in Christ and the joyful acknowledgment of Gods saving love that has freed us from the necessity of fear in each and every moment and circumstance of life!

What it means for each of us is that,

Above all we are greatly loved!

Come what may, we do have a safety net…

Jesus caught each of us when we cried out for Him to save us!

You’ve done that right?…Is your life going to suddenly become perfect after you come to know the Lord? NO! what it does mean is that whatever you go through in this life He’s in the midst of it with you! God never promised us a smooth ride, but He has promised us a safe landing! We don’t have to live a life of fear, shame and doubt, or be prisoners to things like worry and anxiety and there’s no reason this life has to be an empty meaningless existence without a hope for eternity when all we really have to do is stop and simply reason this thing we call faith out!

Have YOU traded in fear for faith!

That’s a choice I’m committed to making every day!

“Faith is that state of being in which we’re able to find present comfort in the arms that have held us up all along, and future peace based on the past and the present.”