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?

We Are Precious In His Sight.....

We don’t judge a pillow by the pretty case it’s tucked into. No, we hold it; we notice how it feels in our arms, snuggled under our head.

So why do we tend to judge each other by the flesh that encases who we are? We are spirits, with souls (mind, will and emotion), wrapped in a body.

Maybe, just maybe, if we took the same care in looking past the pillowcase to choose the pillow that will allow us rest and bring us peace, to look into each other, perhaps peace and rest would prevail in our hearts and lives.

All sorts of divisions exist because we look at the shell that contains us, rather than the common spirit we share. Hatred rears its ugly head over race or gender or wealth or beauty. We take offense because someone looks or behaves differently than we do. Why do some of us insist that we’re better than others? Quite seriously, I couldn’t handle a world full of Helens that look and behave just as I do.

We all received life from God the creator of everything. He didn’t create one to be loved more, or one to be despised. We’re simply encased differently – equipped with varying gifts with which we can edify each other – but instead, choose to turn everything into a competition and are driven to come out on top.

You’re a part of me – and I’m a part of you. We are part of a much bigger picture. We make it “all about me” when we fail to look for that bigger picture, and we miss out on some of the very best things in life.

We were created for intimacy, with each other and with God Himself.

Intimacy – into-me-see! Just do it.

A Loving Promise

A familiar scripture makes its way to our ears from sermon after sermon, but until Sunday – I missed such a very important piece of it. In 2 Chronicles 7:14 we read: “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

When discussions of how the world is ‘going to hell-in-a-hand-basket’ and spiraling out of control, it’s easy to give examples of things that are going wrong, violence that is off the charts, man’s evil devices bringing down mankind and speculation of impending disasters. It’s easy to sometimes panic, asking ourselves questions like, “What will we do? What’s to become of our children and their children? Are we close to the end of the world as we know it?” No president or world leader has the power it takes to fix all the things that are wrong. Nations war against each other, hatred is rampant and our lands are bruised and bloodied beyond repair. Or are they?

Sunday morning at church we had a special speaker, Fred Markert, share a few things with us that opened my eyes to incredible possibilities. He made me aware of a lot of things that made me marvel. But my biggest take away was when he pointed out a two letter word in that famous scripture I mentioned earlier.

How in the world can we get an entire nation – let alone the whole world to turn to God, to repent of their wrong doing and get right with Him? A great majority of the people on this planet don’t even acknowledge God – why would they cry out to Him?

That two letter word is the word “My”. The scripture doesn’t indicate at all that we need to rally the world and turn their hearts to heaven. God says, “if My people….” We are focusing on the wrong group of people. If WE – God’s people, the people who already profess to be children of God, if WE … who are called by God’s Name WILL HUMBLE OURSELVES, and PRAY and SEEK HIS FACE, and TURN FROM OUR WICKED WAYS, then HE WILL hear from heaven, and will FORGIVE OUR SIN AND HEAL OUR LAND!

~~~~~WE~~~~~ can DO this!

(Another link to Fred Markert )