Love

Yesterday a.m. I was praying that the spirit of religion would be broken off of my community in Jesus' name. And He came and He broke a little more of it off of me. I was overwhelmed with gratitude yesterday at the outpouring of love in my neighborhood. There is a large church here that comes every year and heads up an outreach to Como. They join with our church and several other churches in Como. The Lord revealed my prideful attitude toward the volunteers who come to help - this is yuck, but sometimes it's easy to think that doing something like this outreach is just one more thing that people can check off their lists and then they get to go home while we're still here. (I told you this was a yucky attitude - brought out into the light, it loses its power). Anyway, yesterday when I was praying, I was asking once again for His love to be poured out on me so that I could really see and love the people in my hood. I suddenly saw that my neighbors aren't just strangers or the recipients of my condescending benevolence. They are MY people, like my family. When He showed me this, I was overwhelmed that so many volunteers would come and work their tails off to bless my people. This may sound simple and not that earthshattering, but it was a huge shift in my heart. More confession and repentance. I love the Body of Christ.

So I'm pondering the love of God again this morning....Seeing how little of my life has been spent actually obeying the Word of God. Let me explain what I mean. A couple of weeks ago in CORE a guy was teaching about the Great Commission and asked us what the last commandment was in that little section of Scripture. Several said "teach". He said "that's not what it says." He pointed out that it says "teaching them to OBEY". There is a real difference in teaching someone and in teaching someone to obey. One is a pouring in of information and quite necessary and good, but teaching someone to obey is discipleship and this is much harder. It is a pouring out of your own life. A guy in our class said that it's like the difference between a school teacher and a parent. One is in a classroom; the other is life on life. This was a huge revelation to me. Our culture in general is all about acquiring information, but actually pouring out your life to help someone follow Jesus - that's H-A-R-D. Simple, but very difficult to do. One of the last things the speaker said that night was that so much of what Jesus says in the Word is simple to understand, but hard to actually obey. So what we tend to do is make His teaching complex so that we can make it easier on ourselves.

So I've been thinking about "loving your neighbor as yourself." "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 22:36-40

As I sit here this a.m. I have a picture on my piano of a man named Stanley Shipp. He's with Jesus now, but he greatly shaped who Randy and I are today because he was an amazing lover of people. In the picture he's sitting with a man in another country intently looking at him...sitting with him on the ground...getting in his world. Like Jesus. Stanley always said, "People will either be in your life or in your way." People were rarely in Stanley's way. So, yes, I do believe I'm rambling. LOL! But what I'm trying to say in all of this is that I want to know the love of God. And in knowing it, I want to love people. I have deceived myself into thinking I was doing this so many times, but God (in His GREAT mercy) is speaking through His Word and through the Body right now to show me that there is SO much MORE! And I want it...at least in theory. It. Is. Hard. And as I look at my life and realize how impossible it is to love like He has called us to love, I am encouraged. This is not an assignment for my dead flesh. Only the living Spirit of God in me can accomplish this unfathomable mission to love others as myself. Love this quote from John Piper's book, What Jesus Demands from the World: "We are in the company of incomparable superlatives - the two greatest commandments in the entire Word of God, and all of that Word hanging on them. We should take off our shoes in reverence here. There are few texts of Scripture greater than this....The second commandment seems to me to be an overwhelming commandment. It seems to demand that I tear the skin off my body and wrap it around another person so that I feel that i am that other person; and all the longings that I have for my own safety and health and success and happiness I now feel for that other person as though he were me. It is an absolutely staggering commandment. If this is what it means, then something unbelievably powerful and earthshaking and reconstructing and overturning and upending will have to happen in our souls. Something supernatural. Something well beyond what a self-preserving, self-enhancing, self-exalting, self-esteeming, self-advancing, fallen hunan being like me can do on their own."

And only when we see and receive the love of God for us can we even begin to be the expression of that love to others. I'm LOVING the love of Christ right now. And I'm beginning to see and enjoy and be fascinated with His creation, the beat of His heart. People. Sensing that the coming months will be more laying down of our rights for the sake of the Body and the lost. He is beautiful and I can't wait to see what He does as we just try to walk further in with Jesus. He is good. He is good. He. Is. Love.