Love on the Balance Sheet

What Love is and What Love Isn’t – Love on the balance

What is love? A word used so much, embracing so many things. Everyone wants it at their core.

But what is Love? How do we express Love? How do we show it? How do we receive it? Love is thoughts expressed. Love is actions. Love is adoration. Love is experienced. Love is received. Love is given.

We want to know what love is.

The lyrics from a song performed by the 70’s and 80’s rock group “Foreigner” come to mind;

I Want To Know What Love Is ~ Foreigner

I gotta take a little time
A little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
In case I need it when I'm older

Now this mountain I must climb
Feels like a world upon my shoulders
And through the clouds I see love shine
It keeps me warm as life grows colder

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me

I'm gonna take a little time
A little time to look around me,
I've got nowhere left to hide
It looks like love has finally found me

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
I can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me
I wanna know what love is

I want you to show me …

According to these lyrics; Love finds us. Love replaces loneliness. Loves shines and warms. Love helps us face life. Love can be shown to us. I think those lyrics sum up a world-view notion of what love is or what the world wants it to be.

To the question, “what is love?”, the Apostle John covers the topic very well in his first epistle in chapters 3&4. Jesus Himself said that “greater love has no one than this; than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13).

Most everyone has read the “Love verses” found in 1^st Corinthians 13. But have we - really?  We build entire wedding ceremonies around that chapter. What does it really say about love?

In 1^st Corinthians, Chapter 13 verse 4 thru 8 (I’ve listed the words presented in the NKJV, NIV and the ESV) there is a balance sheet of sorts of what love IS and what Love is NOT;

What Love IS:

·         It suffers long/it is patient

·         It is kind

·         It rejoices in the truth

·         It bears all things/it always protects

·         It believes all things/it always trusts

·         It hopes all things

·         It endures all things/it always perseveres

·         It is unfailing/it never fails/it never ends

What Love is NOT:

·         It does not envy

·         It does not parade itself/it does not boast

·         It is not puffed up/it is not proud/it is not arrogant

·         It does not behave rudely/it is not rude/it does not dishonor others

·         It does not seek its own/it is not self-seeking/it does not insist on its own way

·         It is not provoked/it is not irritable/it is not easily angered/it is not resentful

·         It thinks no evil/it does not keep a record of wrongs

·         It does not rejoice in inequity/it does not rejoice in wrongdoing/it does not delight in evil

Love IS eight things and there are eight things that love is NOT.

To know what love IS is also to know what love is NOT.

If I were to boil down the character of love from this contrast of characteristics I come up with one leveling word – Selfless.

You might refine that to unconditional blind trust and true faith.

Love isn’t giving and receiving things, or attention or preference or something to be proud of or to show off. It is about respect and giving of self. I also see that Love believes, bears and has a capacity to endure which are the characteristics and essence of grace.

Love does not take a relationship for granted but operates out of respect. Love bridles its tongue.

Love exercises restraint in all things – even favor – if that benefits the greater good and the longer term.

Love is not provoked, it resists the temptation of taking offenses and believes the best in the other regardless of accusations and spirits of division that endeavor to tear down a relationship.

To express love is to show it by what you are and what you are not in the relationship.

One more thing. The Bible tells of a character trait, a capacity, that God has that us human beings do not and it makes our struggle with love all the more difficult to work out in our lives. That thing is found in Isaiah 43:25 – God forgives and God FORGETS. Yes – God FORGETS! God blots out our transgressions and He forgets our sins. He forgets FOR HIS OWN SAKE. Transgression is something that God will NOT hold onto - FOR HIS OWN SAKE.

God is perfect, I am not. I have memories and experiences and I may forgive but I am loathe to forget. Perhaps that is central to our sin nature - this "holding on" to offenses.

God help me.

And may the peace of the Lord be with you.

Blessings,

Bill

Congregation of ONE vs. the counterfeit god

 “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

On your human journey, who is influencing whom? Are you the influencer or the one being influenced?

Jesus  said, “They (the followers of Jesus) are not of this world, even as I am not of it.” (John 17:16)

We are sojourners, strangers in a strange land, ignorant of our reality until our re-birth conversion awakens us to it and the Holy Spirit quickens us to it, guides us and leads us until we go home.

Our adversary, satan, is the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of this world (at least for now, as God in His sovereignty orders it). As Christians, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”(Ephesians 6:12)

In the end we will “overcome the accuser by the blood of the Lamb and the word (power) of our testimony.”(Revelation 12:11)

What is my testimony? What is your testimony? What is OUR testimony? It is NOT simply our conversion experience - it is our whole life lived-out for Christ as His witness on the witness-stand before the accuser who prosecutes us before his watching world. It is not just words, it is actions, reactions, responses, our disposition, our attitude. It is faithfulness to Him, for better for worse, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in destitution – that is our testimony.

Does your testimony have power? Does it display the capacity to endure which is the essence of grace? When you suffer loss and disappointment and grieve, do you grieve as those who have no hope? (1 Thessalonians 4:13)

Who are you influencing and who is influencing you?

R.C. Sproul, in his book Willing To Believe, wrote this,

“There is a price to be paid for nonconformity; a severe cost for resistance to government and cultural mandates to acquiesce to the customs of paganism. It was a historical setting conducive to the practice of what Friedrich Nietzsche would later call a “herd morality”.

Adjusting to the customs and worldview of one’s environment is one of the strongest pressures people experience. To be “out of it” culturally is often considered the nadir of social achievement. People tend to seek acceptance and popularity in the forum of public opinion. The applause of men is the siren call, the Lorelei of paganism. Few are they who display the moral courage required for fidelity to God when it is unpopular or even dangerous to march to His drumbeat.

We remember Joseph (Genesis), who was treacherously sold into foreign captivity and spent his younger years in a prison cell, but who nevertheless remained faithful to the God of his fathers, to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (his Father). In Egypt Joseph was a congregation of one. Without the support of church or national custom, he resolved to be faithful to a God no one around him believed in except those converted by his testimony.” (R.C. Sproul, Willing To Believe, ©1997, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI ISBN 978-0-8010-7583-4 pp.14)

Wow! Where have you or I had to be a congregation of ONE? How about EVERY DAY!

Have you ever thought of it that way?

How often are we a congregation of one whether we like it or not at work or even in our home? That is when our testimony speaks loudest and profoundest. That is where the contrast of our light to their darkness is most apparent.

Don’t doubt for one minute that the “herd” of existentialist, relativistic conformists is watching. They watch with averted eyes lest they be caught in their herd conformity with a non conforming thought or notion. But they watch nonetheless with spirits that yearn for freedom from bondage and being tossed to a fro by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes (Ephesians 4). God has placed eternity in every man and women's heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11) – every heart yearns for truth.

How many have you or I converted by the power of our testimony and the example of our congregation of ONE? We attend church, maybe we serve there. By the power of the Word (preached or read) and the Holy Spirit we are WEAPONIZED there. we are the  "sent out" as it were. In what theater and in what formation do we sortie into battle and actually launch those weapons? Answer: Usually as a strike team of ONE.

Winston Churchill wrote, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”

Most hurry off. What if “we”, as a “congregation of one”, picked those up and walked off with them from the battlefield?

1) If our body has now become the temple of the Holy Spirit, we, at an elemental level, first become a congregation of one and He is present in and through us where ever we are.

2) Whenever two or more are gathered in His name we are a local congregation and He is present with us. As the Body of Christ we are a congregation of all of us in His presence.

Our adversary.

He is a congregation of one at his elemental level - with a cowering host gathered in guilt-ridden submission around him.

Let’s call him by his proper name. His name is fear and fear is the tool and the fuel of his rule.

Some call him satan, lucifer, prince of darkness, seducer, the accuser, Beelzebub, but he is the essence of fear.

His fear is that he will be found out for the masquerading fraud that he is. So he lies, he accuses and he speaks from the shadows where there is no light that might expose him. 

The Bible says that God has not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Those three remind me of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Together, they are the antithesis of the other – fear.

Satan's fear makes him lie to hide his charade. He is the father of all lies because he is afraid of being exposed as the imposter that he is. His power is not from compassion but from domination. He dominates through fear. He preys on our fears. He stirs fear up into a chain of bondage and girds our hearts with it.

Satan never states a claim, he never declares a truth. Rather, he poses questions to cast doubt and rouse suspicion and fans the flames of fear that we are being robbed of our worth. All the time he is afraid.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Fear always springs from ignorance.” The counterfeit god leverages ignorance mixed with doubt, regret and untruth to drive us like a herd of cattle into his stockyard.

A poet musing over the true state of the power of the Roman Empire wrote, “He who strikes terror in others is himself continually in fear.” The infamous Napoleon Bonaparte who plunged Europe into war in search of world domination might be classed as such a person who wished to strike terror in others and he is quoted as saying, “Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self-interest.” Are not fear and self-interest really the same thing in the end?

The counterfeit god knows this and uses it. He uses doubt and self-interest stirred up into fear to command our servitude.

The counterfeit god preys on the things to which we cling. He preys on our pride, our self-image, our fleeting fortunes, our health, our lives, our future.

 

The counterfeit god distorts the truth, offering bitter fruit presented as good that leads us to shameful acts that ensnare us as conscripts in an army headed to his destination - which is hell. There he will reign his counterfeit reign of misery, darkness and separation from the true and living God surrounded by the trembling host he has yoked with fear.

Yes, he is fear and he flees from one word of truth and he flees from one speck of light. He waits, fearfully in the shadows, whispering from the shadows, calling us closer to the shadows until he can once again cast his hook and reel us into his darkness.

The counterfeit god is a coward. Fear is his name. Fear is his reign.

Know your enemy. Be ready for they day that you are called to testify as a congregation of ONE.

Blessings,

Bill