....so we can love

(from pinterest)

 I was pondering the part of the Bible, made famous because it’s often read at weddings. Commonly called the Love Chapter: 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, tells us that:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails….” (NIV)

Maybe it was read at your wedding, suggesting of course, that this is how you and your spouse will love each other.

There is so much there it would take a lengthy book to explore, and even then, we could miss some of the most important points.

This kind of love is Agape Love; the kind of love that comes only from our heavenly Father. Once we allow His love into our hearts, we get to love with it too.

I want to ponder one short portion today. “Love keeps no record of wrongs.”

Think about that; chew on it.

(from pinterest)

God keeps no record of wrongs! God’s love isn’t something He has or does, God IS love. He is perfect love. And of the many attributes there are to His love and Who He is – one declares that He keeps no record of wrongs.

Remember, this is how the world knows we’re His children, by our love. This crazy, limitless, outrageous love that God has for us, that now lives inside of us – this phenomenal, powerful, forgiving love is the love we’re supposed to be sharing with everyone around us. (Yes, even those we perceive to be our enemies. In Matthew 25:43-44 Jesus tells us, “You have heard it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you….” Okay, go ahead, swallow hard, but keep reading.)

So, if the love we’re sharing with each other is the same love God loves us with, that means we keep no record of wrongs.

I’ll admit that caught in my throat for a few minutes as I realized there were people I had ledgers for in my heart, and yes, that’s where I kept their record of wrongs. As I pictured those studious hardback notebooks, I didn’t even open them. They felt heavy in my mind’s eye, as I momentarily held them. Knowing that God’s love doesn’t keep or approve of books like this, I quickly handed them over to Him to do with as He would.

If we are keeping a record of wrongs, we haven’t forgiven. And we’re certainly not loving these people with the love of God.

(from pinterest)

Let me say that again.

If we are keeping a record of wrongs, we haven’t forgiven. And we’re certainly not loving these people with the love of God.

The only reason to keep a record of how we’ve been wronged is so that we can justify our hatred and unforgiveness. Neither is acceptable to God our Father. Jesus didn’t die and rise from the dead to empower us to hate and resent or avenge ourselves. Everything He does is so that we can love.

“Forgive me, Father. Here are those records of wrong. You’re the only just judge. I trust You. Amen.”

(from pinterest)

Cutting Each Other Out

(mesmerizingquotes.com)

With all the memes on social media suggesting we “let go” of the dead weight of people who’ve hurt us; of broken or damaged relationships – we all interpret those messages in our own personal way, in the sights of our own brokenness. 

We may defensively share the meme and throw out a defiant, “Heck yeah! Curse so-and-so!” Do we honestly think that agreeing with the memes or blasting those who’ve wounded us can “seal the deal” and put our pain behind us?

(pinterest.com)

OR – we may roll our eyes and blow past the memes with any measure of scoffing.

OR – we may ponder the meme and its implications in our struggles.

What does it entail to let go of the important people in our lives? And why are they so important in the first place? Can we truly let them go?

To “let someone go” doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll “go away” or that the effects of their behavior will no longer be present in our lives.

Do some of these memes perhaps hint that we can cut people out of our lives in the simple way we can cut them out of our social media world; by “unfriending” them – or by “blocking” them from our social media pages?

When the offender is a parent or spouse or a friend you’ve had since childhood, with whom you’ve shared most everything, except perhaps, that they’re hurting you, or someone else integrally tied to your world, is it, or should it be as simple as a “click of a button”?

(wackybuttons.com)

Looking at the smiles on the faces of so many of our friends (real or on social media) may deceive us into thinking we’re alone in our pain and suffering. Who knows, social media may even undermine our healthy relationships with imagined problems because - “everyone else is miserable”. We may jump to conclusions about each other’s happiness or lack thereof.

John Bevere wrote a great book (with DVD) called, The Bait of Satan: Living Free From the Deadly Trap of Offense. Available here, if you’d like to take a peek at it. I’ll come back to it in a minute.

(amazon.com)

Sometimes we’re too easily convinced we’re wrong or selfish for looking at ourselves; our own lives and our own needs. As if self-care is a selfish thing. But, how can we effectively help others if we’re all bound-up, ourselves? How can we un-cuff the wrists of those around us, if our own hands are tied?

When the plumb line in our own lives is not straight, no matter how many decorations we hang on our walls to make us more appealing, or even healthier people, they’ll all be hung crooked. Eventually our masks will fall off; people will see right through us. 

(aristidesateliers.com)

(plumb line: a tool that consists of a small, heavy object attached to a string or rope and that is used especially to see if something (such as a wall) is perfectly vertical. Merriam-Webster dictionary)

If I don’t believe swallowing this little green pill will help me enough to take it, why would I insist that you take it? This could be deception at its best; perhaps for both of us.

Does our pain, suffering, anger, sorrow, struggling, loneliness or our need to attack others, even within our defensiveness, have more to do with what’s going on in us as opposed to what others are doing around us?

Can our plumb lines be so skewed, that not seeing it yet – we defensively blame others for our misery?

To refer you to someone who’s looked at this much more closely than I have, I’ll point you back to the book I mentioned by John Bevere, The Bait of Satan. It might be something you’re meant to read (or watch on DVD). He’ll back up what he’s saying with much more than a short blog post. I’m pulling it off the shelf as soon as I’m done here, to reread it myself.

If we’re taking on garbage that doesn’t belong in our trash cans, it’s bending us and breaking us beneath the weight of the load, skewing that plumb line of ours.

If we refuse other people’s trash, perhaps we’ll have less need to cut them out of our lives.

(thekingdomlifenow.com)

If we take back the power and influence over us that we’ve let slip through our fingers (sometimes not so willingly, but reluctantly, in exchange for something we needed or thought we needed at the time) – if we can do that and begin to stand up straighter, our plumb line should begin to align itself. In so doing, I believe our defensiveness will fade, our anger can subside and our need to cut people out of our lives may begin to take on a different feel.

People are not our enemies.

(biblehub.net)

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood…

…but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." - Ephesians 6:12 (NIV)

I propose that many of our struggles are orchestrated within our own hearts.

Open Heart

(Picture from walterlogeman.com)

God sees my heart! He sees me struggle, He sees me fall. But, praise His Name, He doesn’t base my future on the mistakes of my past. Yes, He sees my heart!

God sees beyond the occasional bad word that slips through my lips when I indulge in fits of anger. He sees past the selfishness of my taste buds when I just have to have a piece of chocolate that’s not on my diet. He looks through the fears that sometime prompts less than proper or acceptable behavior; and He gazes on my heart.

And what does my heart look like? Is it black with sin? Is it ugly and angry and filled with hate that motivates inexcusable temper tantrums?

No, because I’ve yielded to the power of His Holy Spirit. In me, He sees a heart that is hungry for more of Him; hungry for more of His Word and for more of His power.

Does that make my mistakes okay? No. But, they are forgivable. And He freely forgives. The only hang-up is when we refuse to accept His forgiveness; when we’re too proud to acknowledge that we need it, and we choose not to receive it.

More than thirty years ago I gave my heart to Him. It was a night of divine revelation, when He broke through my fears and my pain and revealed to me His great and mighty and powerful and jealous love for me. Though the choice was mine, how could I refuse Him?

It wasn’t just the most overwhelming feeling in the world; it was the most incredible knowledge in the world! And I now possess that knowledge! I can deny it; I can hide it or try to ignore it, and can discard it as if it were a lie. It’s mine to do with as I please.

I choose to live in this knowledge; to walk in it daily. I choose to embrace it, to engage with it, to prosper in it, to explore it and to find eternal salvation in it.

I choose life!

When you watch a love story unfold before you on the silver screen, what happens to your heart as you see the star lovers miss each other? Why is our heart in our hands when the man and the woman seem destined to meet on that rooftop or on that subway ride or in that park – and something comes up to keep one from making it? The other is left, alone, believing the lie that the other had no intention of showing up.

But, God always shows up.    Right on time.    Always.

What holds you back?

“For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. – 1 John 3:20 (KJV)

Crumbling Rock

Photo courtesy of www.pbase.com

“For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:14 (NIV)

One among the ten verses I pull up when searching for “love your neighbor” in the Bible (NIV).  

Of course, those aren’t the only scriptures that instruct us to love each other, there are many. 

Mark 12:30-31 tell us to: 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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

This is God’s Word for us. If we have not love, we have nothing. If we say we loveGod but hate our brother, we make ourselves liars.  

Our entire foundation is on shifting sand if we cannot love our neighbors. If once we believed we could, but now find ourselves hating someone, our foundation is broken and our entire world will fall apart without serious repair. Once we’ve given ourselves permission to hate, our foundation is really no foundation at all, merely crumbling rock, good for nothing.

As Christians, our foundation is Jesus Christ – The Rock, the only true foundation. He is the source we are to be found in; we are in Him and He lives through us – from inside of us!

God is love, He doesn’t just have love or do love; He is love. The song from First John 4:7-8 claims my mind, we have to go to the KJV for this: 

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

The crack in our foundation that will crumble our world, is hatred. It’s a strong word, but like water seeps into rock, freezes, swells and produces fissures that become enormous cracks…..so hatred destroys our foundation, which brings down our house.

Ponder this, who among us do I not love, and why?

Unsettling Vision

I shared this with a dear friend the other day, and thought I’d share it with you, too.

Years ago I had a vision of a little girl, maybe 9 or 10 years old. She was huddled in the hallway of a ghetto building I apparently helping a woman move from. We carried boxes down stairs and saw her in underneath the steps too afraid to even cry. She’d been violated and was badly hurt. I wept for her and held her in my arms. I was angry at the boy that did this to her. I wanted him to pay, I wanted him to die. I was then whisked away to the top of a fence overlooking a nearby ghetto neighborhood. I was standing on a pipe. Two women approached me, wearing colorful skirts, but naked to the waist, one with a child on her hip. They asked why I stood on the water pipe, insisting that I was going to break it. They told me that this pipe was their lifeline – and if I remained on it and it broke, they would die.

I looked out into the nasty apartments, clotheslines strewn from one to another sporting dingy clothes not worth washing. The wall to the apartment complex disappeared and I could see into the apartments. There he was; the boy that had trashed the little girl in the stairwell. My anger flared when I saw him. A big man with a shirtless pot belly was beating the boy with a cord or belt. His screams were blood-curdling. At first I thought, “Good, he deserves it! How did the man know what the boy had done already?” But then I noticed a half dressed, heavy set woman smoking a cigarette and laughing at the boy. Somehow I knew that his beating was for her sexual pleasure. I grieved for the boy and longed to take him in my arms and hold him like I had the little girl, but couldn’t get to him.

The topless women still beckoned me to get off the pipe before it broke. I climbed down and they hugged me.

 

I’m not sure what the whole vision means. But I know there’s healing in it for me, and perhaps for you. I know the water in the pipeline is the life-giving Living Water that only Jesus can provide..... Can you lend insight?

Romans 3:10 - As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one…” (NKJV)

RFDS - Part 3 - The Dream

If you've not read the previous two posts - this one may seem quite out of the blue...

This is one of two dreams I had one right after the other, with the same interpretation.

It took place at night on a country cinder-road. A man was buried in the road up to his neck. He was completely defenseless. Somehow I knew that he didn’t deserve to be where he was, he was an innocent man. There stood over him a man who appeared to be a mafia type character, mocking him and talking harshly to him, swearing, accusing him of things, putting him down and snickering at him as he swung a large golf club at his head, hitting him repeatedly. The man’s head became bloody and disfigured. He cried, he screamed and begged for mercy. The man ignored his pleas, laughing louder with every whack of the golf club, seemingly taking great pleasure in tormenting the man. From the side of the road I cried and begged for mercy for the man, insisting that he hadn’t done anything wrong. I went unheard. I was invisible.
A semi-truck approached, his headlights shined brightly in the darkness. There was no way the driver would see this bloody little head sticking up in the road. The mafia man laughed loudly as he calmly and confidently walked off to the other side of the road to watch, gleefully, as the man was killed.
I screamed to the truck driver, unheard. I ran out and jumped in front of the man’s head putting my hands up as if to stop the truck. In an instant, the truck stopped just before hitting us, inches from my hand.
I woke up, frightened.

The interpretation:
Since I am all the characters in the dream, it's gross to think that I am not only the innocent man in the ground being bloodied, but I am also the man swinging the golf club, laughing!
The man buried in the road represents me – innocent because I am washed in the blood of the Lamb, buried with Christ. Defenseless, because my only defense is Jesus, there is nothing I can do for myself.
The mafia man represents the me that is always beating myself up and putting myself down. The blows to the head represent the battlefield of my mind, the fights I've allowed to go on in there. I torment myself with the lies of the devil by allowing his lies into my mind and believing them. Lies that say I’m unworthy, I’m worthless, I’m guilty, I’m fat, I’m ugly and a waste of time – all the insults the mafia man hurled at the man in the ground.
The semi-truck represents sure death.
The invisible me represents the spirit of God that lives within me that came to my defense, able even to stop a racing semi-truck on a dime, preventing my needless, pointless death.