Some Thoughts about Love on Valentine's Day

First, God is love; consequently, every other definition must be framed within this one.

Second, since God is love, love can be found only in the hearts of those in whom the Spirit of God dwells.

Third, love, however and wherever it is expressed, must be congruent with holiness (God is not only love, but He is also holy!).

Fourth, love, though perfect in and of itself, is not some perfected talent we have at the point of the new birth, but an innate potential, a seed, if you will, which the Holy Spirit progressively develops in our lives, as we progressively become more intimately acquainted with the One who is love—Jesus.

Fifth, love is a powerful force that is at work in our lives, waging war against the power of sin (love’s antithesis), relentlessly attempting to stir our hearts to embrace the One who is love, so that we might experience love in its fullness, and, thus, freely receive it and give it.

Sixth, although love is a powerful force, its attractiveness (its ability to attract) is seen in humility, not in pride. Jesus is the example that gives credence to this postulate.

Seventh, though emotions are involved in love (make no mistake about that!), love is not merely something we feel, or something we say (for that matter); instead, love is primarily something we do (or do not do, as the case may be).

Eighth, attempting to define love can be rather slippery slope, as we use the term to define so many different “loves.” For example, who really knows what I mean when I say “I love fried chicken” or “I love Jesus” or “God loves me” or “I love fishing” or “I love my grandchildren”? To be sure, each usage means something different from the rest.

Ninth, love must have an object, namely a person, without which it has no significance, whatsoever.

Tenth, with the single exception of loving the Triune Godhead—Father, Son, & Holy Spirit—loving another always involves a risk, sometimes a very sizeable risk; however, one must be willing to take the risk, if he/she is to know love.

I Surrender All! Really?

         This idea of surrendering my will to His will is much easier said than done. In fact, when I am fearful that the fruit of my doing so is going to be far-removed from my will, it is nigh unto impossible. For example, allow me to share a real-time example with you: I have two beautiful (the boys agree with me!) teen-aged granddaughters, whom I dearly love. It is my will that they spend these years loving Jesus, doing what is right, avoiding drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and sex, studying hard, making A’s, and making their Mama proud (like I did!), and, especially, that I can live long enough to meet their beautiful children, so that is how I pray (well, sorta’). Then Jesus comes along and quietly asks, “Would you be willing to entrust them to Me, taking your hands off, and allow me to get them (and you) through these years as I deem best?”

          Now we all know that Jesus never married and, didn’t have even one beautiful, teen-aged daughter, much less two, and, certainly, had no granddaughters, even ugly ones, so I wonder, “What could He possibly know about raising beautiful, teen-aged girls?” I mean His question scares the wits out of me! As I said earlier, when I am fearful that the fruit of surrendering my will to His will is going to be far-removed from my will, it is nigh unto impossible for me to do it. And then I remember His very own words, the ones He spoke to His Father, when He knew that the fruit of surrendering His will to His Father’s would mean relentless, terrible suffering and agonizing death: Not My will but Thine be done. Remember, however, that His doing so caused Him, even Him, to sweat drops of blood!

          I have no idea where you are in your journey, but I am rather certain that He will call upon you to surrender your will to His will—sooner, rather than later. If He already has, He will do it again, and again, and again. I am confident that you will repeatedly find yourself in your own Gethsemane (place of crushing!), where your will is opposed to His will, and He is nudging you to surrender to Him, even though it scares the wits out of you. When you do, remember that His way is always the best way—period. Try to keep in mind that your trying to get Him to change His mind is utter foolishness, as His way is perfect—period.

          On another day and in another setting this is what He said: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall My servant also be; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him. Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Thy name (John 12:24-28a; NASB).

                                    

"This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent" (John 6:29 NASB).    

The Oil of Anointing

          There are many passages in the Scriptures (actually, more than many!) that give me angst, not the least of which is this one: Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins; they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much (James5:13-16 NASB).

          Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. I can handle this, but I do wonder why James didn’t include “. . . and let the rest offer him compassion and encouragement.” In my mind, that would be really helpful to the one who is suffering.

          Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praises. Well, this is a no-brainer, most believers who are cheerful have no problem singing praises. Oh, the might not like to sing them from an overhead, but they will sing them from as hymn book.

          Here is where my angst begins: Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins; they will be forgiven him. I know it is probably because I am not spiritual enough, or I have not been a Christian long enough, or my parents did not teach me the proper catechism of Christianity, or my Sunday School teacher spent too much time on social issues and not enough of theological issues, or my prayers are not effective, but the fact is this: As an elder of the church, not to mention pastor, I have anointed many, many people over the past 31+ years, but I have never seen this work. Well, maybe a few times, but what I mean is this: I have never seen someone who was really sick—cancer, broken leg, gun-shot wound, paralysis, gall stones, diabetes, drug addiction, myocardial infarction—you know, really sick, rise up and walk away healed, as the direct result of my (our) anointing him with oil and praying over him in the name of the Lord. Please note that I did NOT say that I do not believe that it works; instead, I said that I have never seen it work (except for a few times that were questionable).  

          This might be more information that you want, but I have seen quite a few of those, in the aforementioned category, get sicker and die, actually far more than I would like to admit. Yes, I have seen quite a few of these folk leave the place of prayer and go to their doctor and receive treatment and get well, but this passage doesn’t mention anything about visiting the doctor.

          Having said all of that, let me tell you what happened yesterday at Grace Christian Fellowship. I was enjoying our time of worship, singing a song that said something about healing rain falling, when the Holy Spirit spoke to me (you do not have to believe that, but He did, anyway) and told me to get the little jar of oil that I keep at the pulpit and invite those who, although they desperately wanted to be healed of their infirmity, wanted more to submit their wills to His will, to come and sit on the empty front row, and be anointed with oil. He told me to use Jesus’ experience in the Garden of Gethsemane (the place of crushing!) where His will was opposed to His Father’s will, yet He was able to say not only, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” but also and especially, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” I did what He told me to do, albeit with some trepidation, and the entire front row quickly filled [Just for the record: some of them had very serious illnesses, including cancer!]. Let me remind you that the prayer was not so much for their physical healing, as it was for them to be able to say with integrity, “Now my will but Thine be done” [Just for the record again, that is probably the most difficult of all prayers; shouldn’t be, but it is!].

          Then it was “Showtime”! The curtain dropped and it was time for me to anoint these precious folk with the physical and spiritual “oil of anointing.” Before I took the first step toward one of the people, He stopped me in my tracks, and out of my mouth came these words, “Debbie would you please come and anoint these people?” Debbie never even hesitated, not from what I could see; instead, she rose to her feet, left her husband, Dudley, and came to the front. I offered her the jar of oil and she took it from my hand, as if it were a bottle of expensive perfume—pure nard. Carefully, she turned it up and allowed some of it to run onto her fingers [her tears were already flowing down her cheeks], and slowly and compassionately she placed it upon the forehead of whomever was sitting in the first chair. As she tenderly “anointed” each head, she quietly prayed for the person. In the background, I could hear our worship leader singing that song that said something about healing rain falling. It was falling, really falling, and lots of it was in the form of tears! He was present and He was not silent!

          I will never forget the look in the eyes of the man, who had just learned that he has prostate cancer, as he surrendered his will to His will. There was a peace that came over him, a peace that surely transcends understanding or explaining. I saw that same peace come over his precious wife. Neither will I ever forget the look of peace in the eyes of the man, who has an esophageal stricture, a very, very narrow one, that prevents him from swallowing, even Ensure, as he surrendered his will to His will. I saw that same peace in  the eyes of his precious wife. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

          Strangely, one of the most powerful and beautiful pieces of this experience was seeing how the Holy Spirit used Debbie and the gifts He has entrusted to her, as she spread the oil of anointing that she had laced with love. She will never be the same, and that is for sure.

          One thing was missing: Your presence! I really do wish you could have been a part of this beautiful experience. I really do mean that! There is something in the heart of this pastor that longs, yearns, for you to be a part of one of these beautiful visitations of His Presence. Hmmm. . . I think my angst is gone—

         

                          

"This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent" (John 6:29 NASB).    

Self-righteousness or His Righteousness?

           If God should show up at your doorstep and give you the option for where you will spend eternity, heaven [eternal bliss in the Kingdom of God] or hell [eternal misery in a lake of fire], which would you choose? In my mind that is a no-brainer; surely, you would choose heaven over hell. Maybe not, but I want to believe that most of you would choose heaven.

          Theologically speaking, I know that none of us would choose heaven, regardless of how much I would like to believe that we would, unless and until God does something in our hearts that would cause us to desire Jesus [prior to that, we are all dead to God and have no interest in Jesus, whatsoever]. When that stimulus is given to us, we are left with but one option—to choose heaven.

          Anyway, Jesus had something very interesting to say about our entering the kingdom of heaven: For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20 NASB). As we say here in south Georgia, “this makes the cheese more binding!”

          In the first place, had we been among the “common folk” of Israel when Jesus uttered these words, we would have thought something like this: Well, I don’t have a snow ball’s chance in hell of entering the kingdom of heaven because I could never be that righteous!

          On the other hand, had we been scribes and/or Pharisees, we would have thought something like this: You poor saps! Not one of you has a snow ball’s chance in hell of entering the kingdom of heaven because you could never be as righteous as we are!

          Both groups, however, would have missed something very important. Jesus word was this: Unless your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. In other words, Jesus leveled the playing field by declaring that self-righteousness is not to be equated with the righteousness that is required for entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

          You see, we have but one hope, and that hope is that the One whose righteousness does exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, will impute His righteousness to us. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous (Romans 5:19 NASB).

                          

"This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent" (John 6:29 NASB).    

A New Commandment!

          It is very obvious to me that Jesus summed-up the entire Law of Moses in one word—LOVE—which, in my opinion, made things much simpler for those of us who call ourselves “Christians.” However, for reasons beyond me, it seems that most believers spend much more energy trying to keep the “impossible-to-keep” Ten Commandments, than they ever spend trying to learn to practice love. There is probably a good reason for this: practicing love makes us vulnerable; keeping the commandments does not. 

          I find it interesting that Jesus used the term “new” in describing His commandment—a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another (John 13:34 NASB; emphasis added). Again, there is probably good reason for this: The Jews made every effort to keep the Ten Commandments, but their effort was seldom coupled with love, probably never. Even a casual reading of Matthew 23 will confirm that their “effort” was about self-righteousness, and not about love. As a result, Jesus said (for all our benefit!) that He is giving us His new commandment, the commandment to love. Law without love profits nothing and leads to certain death! 

          Keeping the Sabbath Day holy without love impresses God, not one whit.

          Avoiding lying without love fetches you, not one brownie point.

          Avoiding idols without love makes one an idol worshipper.

          Take the Lord’s name in vain with love is an oxymoron.

          Giving honor to one’s father & mother without love does not gain an inheritance.

          Refusing to murder without love is the same as hating your brother, which is murder.

          Refusing to commit adultery without love makes one an adulterer, none the less.

          Refusing to steal without love doesn’t profit the thief.

          Refusing to bear false witness against your neighbor without love profits zilch.

Avoiding coveting without love is much the same as the noisy clanging of cymbals—it doesn’t make music. 

          May I suggest that you take your focus off the Old Covenant of Law and place it on The New Covenant of Grace, focusing, especially, on Jesus’ New Commandment, the commandment to love?

"This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent" (John 6:29 NASB).