Chapter Five: LOVE
Have you ever been really thirsty? I once was hiking on the Appalachian Trail on an extremely hot day in North Carolina, and I was thirsty. When I arrived at a place where there was supposed to be a creek according to my map, there was none. I kept hiking, having no water. My map indicated there was another stream a few miles up the trail. I considered if that stream was dry then I would be in serious trouble. I hiked with hope. I reached that stream, and it was flowing fine. I swiftly filled up my water bottle, and then I put an iodine tablet in it to purify the water. After waiting an agonizing fifteen minutes for the tablet to dissolve, I chugged that quart of water straight down. I needed that water. For spiritual life, you need true love. If you were dropped in the middle of a wilderness, your first goal would be to journey until you found water. On our journey in this world, the Person with true love has come to us.
All people were and are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), thus people need love for eternal life. God is the ultimate and primary source of true love. Scripture states, as recorded in I John 4:8, “…God is love.” This is not only stated in the Bible, yet also shown in the Bible by the death of Jesus on the cross which was done because He loves people. Now some search for true love in this world from people. People can give love, but they themselves need to receive it before they can give it, and no person besides Jesus has loved his or her fellow human beings perfectly in this world. I claim that all people need love, and the Bible reveals that God is offering love to everyone.
Once I was driving down Wadsworth Boulevard in Arvada, Colorado, near 60th street. Sitting at a stoplight, I read the bumper sticker on the car in front of me: “Jesus loves you whether you like it or not.” Not a caring Christian bumper sticker. Yes Jesus does love everyone, but a person has a choice of whether to receive His love, and I do not think a cynical bumper sticker is helping promote the love of Jesus. Yet it got me thinking, why is it that if Jesus loves everyone, that some reject His love?
Obviously we would probably get different answers from different people who do not believe in Jesus. Yet a key deduction I made after thinking about my question is that some people do not want to change. Receiving love will change a person! If anyone receives Jesus, they will be changed, a consequence of their choice. Now the change in the heart of people who receive the love of Christ is good! Jesus brings good change to a soul!
Now love cannot be forced on someone. In fact, trying to force love on someone of-ten causes them to draw back. When people have tried to pressure me to receive anything, I have often drawn back, thinking that if what they had is so great then they would not need to pressure me to take it. But that is not what God does. God’s love is simply offered before you. His love is like a cup of water extended before you. You must accept the full cup, lift it before your lips, open up your mouth, and drink.
A commitment is necessary. Think of the statement, “I love you.” There are two individuals, one bonded to the other by love. But if there is not a commitment from both, there is no relationship of love. The bond must go both ways. For a person who commits to God, she or he joins in with God's complete commitment to a permanent loving relationship. Receiving God's love changes a person and ever increases his or her commitment. The more God changes us, the more we can be in Love.
So what is the realm of living in Love? Jesus, getting to the core of the Mosaic Law when teaching Israelites, taught we are to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, as is recorded in Matthew 22:37-39. Is this impossible? This is possible if you have the love of God! Having the love of Jesus, we are capable of loving God and people. If you love someone, you want the best for him or her. Also, you care about that person, and you are willing to share with that person.
Loving God involves worshiping Him, because He is Love among all of His other attributes. Giving Him our best is glorifying Him, the One who is Holy. Interaction with Him is constantly possible. And worship includes praising and thanking God, listening to and learning from Him, sharing concerns and hopes, and feeding from Him in the heart. Serving God is a way of loving God. Whenever a person does God’s will, that person is loving God, because God’s will is always good. Jesus makes this extremely clear in John 14:21. Doing the will of God is living by His true love. This is easy for me to write, yet loving God is not some-thing I have ever done perfectly. We human beings have problems, and to be enabled to love God is a growing process of learning to rely on Him. I do love Jesus, and living by His love, there have been oodles of blessings, even blessings I have not even realize in these past years.
What about loving people? I propose the reason there is so much pain, tragedy, and despair in this world is because of people failing to love other people. I am simply going to touch on three things about loving people. First, in the midst of so much tragedy in the world, the love of Jesus is radical, because He is not only saying you should love your family, or people in your neighborhood, or people in your country. Jesus states you should love all human beings. Jesus went so far as to teach that you must love your enemies, as recorded in Matthew 5:44. Yes I am serious.
Back to what I said earlier in this chapter, we must rely on the love of God to be enabled to do this. And loving enemies often involves is doing what I said in the previous chapter; we must forgive. A huge problem in Christian “church” history is that certain Christians, or people who claimed to be followers of Jesus, have hated their enemies. There has even been hate by Christians against Christians with different beliefs. Now I am not saying that we Christians, in loving people, are supposed to succumb to the false views of other people. Quite the opposite. I love people, thus I want them to know the truth about Jesus. I love people, so I want to correct them concerning their false and thus harmful beliefs. I was reminded in a sermon yesterday that Paul even rebuked people in some churches for having wrong beliefs or doing wrong stuff. Never approve of anything a person is doing that is wrong, because doing so is not loving the person.
If a child is about to run in a street to get a soccer ball, I yell for the kid to stop so that she will not be hit by a car, because I care about that child. It is actually an act of love to warn someone when they are doing something sinful so they will not get hurt. Yet hating a person is always wrong. Do remember that we are to always tell the truth in love. Love does require caring for the best for all people. Think of someone you really dislike. Would you hug that person if you had an opportunity to this day? That is the radical love of Jesus Christ.
Secondly, loving other people is not necessarily dramatic to your peers. It can be dramatic. Jesus died for people giving love that human beings would not even have been capable of giving. And there have been people who have died because of their devotion to Jesus. Yet loving God and loving people should be done every single day here on earth even if it does not seem so sacrificial. The extent of the sacrifice is not the issue; the issue is acting in love. Some of your peers may not think much of your loving ways. Yet God knows, and you will know, when you are truly loving people! I remember listening to a janitor in an elementary school saying how he knew when he cleaned up milk which had been spilled by elementary students that he was carrying out an act of love to Jesus. And I know it was also an act of love to the students.
I will give you an example of everyday love from my dad. When I was in college, after a holiday break, my dad drove me back to my university. I had stayed up late the night before working on a paper. Soon after we started out on the drive, I fell asleep. When I woke up, we were already approaching the campus. My dad had driven for four and a half hours without getting any company from me, and then he had to drive all the way back alone. Yet he was simply glad that he could get me to where I needed to be. That is what I call an act of love.
Thirdly, in a chapter entitled “Love,” I am not going to leave out the subject of romantic love. I am single, and I have long wanted to be married. My unusual ministry calling has resulted in singleness for a longer period than I ever would have imagined years ago, yet I still hope to be married one day. Often weeks and weeks before Valentine’s Day, I look at the Valentine’s gifts in a store, considering what I would buy if I had a girlfriend. I have probably done more Valentine’s Day window shopping than people who have purchased Valentine’s Day gifts for their wives for years. That is a bit disheartening for me. In spite of lack of romance, I am still convinced God cares about romantic relationships.
One blessing for me still being single is that God has been making me a better person; a person more able to love. When I get married, I will be a better husband than if I would have been married ten years ago, because I will be more prepared. If you are single, allow God to prepare you to be a great husband or wife, and when the time comes, you will be ready for blessings galore. And if you are married now, know that your marriage can keep improving as you, and hopefully your spouse, rely on God. Being someone who was hurt by my parent’s divorce, one thing I did not realize is that when you get married, there is the possibility to continue to improve as individuals and to grow in goodness as a couple. No married couples are perfect. What married couples are in for is much work, since a relationship requires work. Yet what fruit can result from devoting yourself to improving your marriage relationship. You will be a better spouse as you grow in your dependence on Jesus.
Even in the years since I first started this book, the culture has been rapidly shifting to a preoccupation with you know what. On television, the Internet, and in music, that three letter word is a consistent obsession. I once heard someone say sex is the greatest expression of love. Scripture states in John 15:13 that laying down your life is the greatest gift of love. And that is precisely what Jesus did for us sinful people. In my years of following Jesus, one truth I have come to realize more and more is that we sinful people have a tendency to go after things of the world to try and fill the need of love. They end up being no substitute. Sex is one of the big pursuits in our culture now that birth control and pornography are readily available. The culture in America at this time is that sex outside of marriage can bring happiness. Yet sex is not the same thing as love. That is the reason a person can have much sex and yet be getting worse in their heart. God clearly teaches in Scripture that sex is to be an expression of love in marriage. The ignorance of His way is not resulting in people being more happy. The ignorance of His way is resulting in much hurt.
Do you want to have great sex? Then go for such God’s way. He created sex to be an act of love within the commitment of marriage. God wants making love as a part of the love and romance in marriage. True love begins and is maintained by relying on God, and great romance begins and is maintained with living in the love of God. The end result can be great.
The summary is that children of God, who are followers of Jesus, are called by God to love Him and to love people. Loving Jesus always means remaining in His will, which is perfectly good. In loving people, the interaction will vary in each relationship. Maybe loving someone at the grocery store this week will involve simply smiling at the person behind a counter and saying "God bless you," in a sincerity of the heart.
I have said much about love, yet nothing about parents. To be completely open, I sometimes even find loving my parents hard. There have been hurts in the past, especially surrounding the divorce, and my parents have done things since the divorce I thought were wrong. Yet thanks to God’s love, I love Dad, and I love Mom. Especially with one of my parents, there have been numerous struggles in our relationship. There have been times when I know that Jesus was "carrying me." Yet if you rely on God's love, you can love your parents, even if you do not have much interaction with one or both!
Just as I said above that loving people does not mean approving of their actions, loving parents does not mean you approve of their wrong actions. Any wrongdoing by a parent or parents is definitely wrong. And a parent does not have to realize his or her actions are inflicting hurt in order for it to be wrong. God loves your parents. God hates wrongdoing. And you are not responsible for the sins of your parent or parents. Whatever a parent has done, responsibility is not in the hands of a child. Do know that your parents are responsible before God like everyone else. They will be accountable to Him for their own actions.
Do know divorce is not a sin if carried out for reasons permitted by Christ, since Christ did give grounds for divorce. The ground for divorce stated by Jesus Christ is unfaithfulness. Unfaithfulness is a wrongdoing fostered in the heart which leads to wrong actions. What is going on in people’s hearts cannot always be clearly known by people and is not for a human to judge. The prime instance of unfaithfulness is when a spouse has sex with someone other than their spouse. However, a number of students of the Bible think the word unfaithfulness encompasses even more than that, and I agree. Abuse is another example of unfaithfulness.
So not a sin itself, divorce is a consequence of sin. Since it is a consequence of sin, God hates divorce as is stated in Malachi 2:16. A married person takes a vow to love his or her spouse. To the contrary, wrong actions hurt a spouse. Since God loves people and wants what is best for them, He hates wrongful actions and the consequences of such wrong, which are always bad. So this sound complicated, but the bottom line is that God does not want parents doing wrong because He loves them!
Be relieved you can love your parents and still acknowledge that wrongdoings took place. Often the majority of the wrongdoings that led to divorce are the result of decisions by only one parent, yet whatever the details of your parent’s divorce, which you may not even know, you can still acknowledge the hurt resulting from the act of divorce. Everyone in a family gets hurt by a divorce. You can disdain the act of divorce. And you can stay out of the problems of your parents as much as possible. Loving your parents is what is taking place in your heart, not what is taking place in their life. Know that God loves your parents, and rely on Him to love your parents. Loving parents need not stifle your present or future.
Loving a parent always involves hoping he or she will receive the love of Jesus as their Savior and Lord if they are not followers of Jesus. The method is going to be unique for every person, though do not use that bumper sticker I quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Yet love your parents by witnessing to them the love of Jesus in a way that fits your gifts. And if you have zero contact with a parent, say a prayer for that parent every once in a while.
Speaking of witnessing about Jesus, in Matthew 12:46-50, Jesus was talking to people in a house, and someone told Him that His mother and brothers were outside and that they wanted to talk with Him. Rather than rushing out to talk with them, Jesus made the point of who His eternal family is. His eternal family is the people who turn to the Father in heaven. Though family trees are temporary like every other physical thing in this world, God is concerned with our physical families. But becoming bogged down in the problems of parents does not help anyone. We are called to love all people, and that includes members of families, of whom each has a soul. Loving family members who have hurt you, even if you never get to talk with him or her, is a miracle of God's love.
