Category: following Jesus

Love Wears Work Gloves

 “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”

“Little children, let us not love in words or talk but in deeds and in truth.”

1 John 3:17-18, ESV

Love is a noble idea, it’s admired and extolled by practically everyone–we see it in our music and poetry, ethics and religion. For the most part it’s a word for something decent and virtuous and honorable. It’s a good thing, but I’m afraid it’s not always scriptural.

You see, Bible love wears work gloves.

It labors and sweats and works. Bible love has chores to do, and it actively looks and sees what needs to be done. 1 John 3 tells us that we shouldn’t deceive ourselves and only see the world’s definition. That love a believer has is to be different.

Love, in John’s eyes, is most assuredly “doing.” It burns spiritual calories as it labors to serve our brothers and sisters. Love finds things it can do–it doesn’t just talk but it gets busy. Love sees the need and then gets down to serve.

“You must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.”

1 Peter 1:22

Working (serving) has nothing to do with our salvation, that is a free gift. We’re saved by grace through the blood of Jesus–that’s a given. But this love isn’t  drudgery, as a matter of fact, working and serving each other is a joy. The deepest kind of joy there is.

Our words, although important, are really an insufficient way of proving our authenticity.  The love we serve another with isn’t “pretty poetry” kind of love. It’s so easy to just shout out truth and never ever show a working, serving kind of love. That sort of love is impressive, and can’t ever be duplicated.

That disconnect is a bit disturbing.

But when do we start to realize that this love is really a verb?

Our prayer and intercession really begins when we go to work for someone else. (Our lunch box is our Bible.) We read it and it energizes us to work for one  another. When we pray we truly are loving another brother or sister. It’s work that they can’t or won’t do for themselves. At least not yet. So we pray.

John is calling believers to a more real kind of love. His love is a love that sweats.

“The church is made up of individuals. It can do nothing except as its members work, and work together.”

     James H. Aughey

Dear reader–I really do pray for you. Your love impacts so many.

 

I Came to Love You Late

regret

Regrets are a funny thing.

You really start to gather them when you’re middle-aged. I’m 63 now and am surprised (and somewhat disturbed) by my memories of things gone by. I guess this is one of the job hazards of getting old. But that’s the deal.

I guess what really bothers me the most are all the missed opportunities.

I wonder what life could have been like if I had accepted Christ at a younger age. A lot of pain would’ve been averted and perhaps I might have loved Jesus deeper than I do now. Some of us come to love Jesus late in life. There is so much time frittered away.

I regret the years spent in rebellion and disobedience. I remember the words of a 70-year-old man who had just received Christ, “Why did I wait so long for this to happen?”

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,”

Philippians 3:13

Paul learned to adjust his vision to his calling. He no longer lets his past sin and regret define him, choosing rather forget the past and press into the future. He did understand his sin and guilt. He also knew that his sin was atoned for by Jesus’ blood. 

The solution to our regret is to focus on God’s total forgiveness. Past, Present, Future.

Paul clearly saw what lay ahead of him. Heaven was his destination, and, it’s our calling as well; it’s where we truly belong, made righteous in the loving presence of Jesus.

Peter tells us that our past sin was enough. We have wasted enough time doing evil. I don’t know about you, but I had a bellyful of sin, and it’s time for me to lay aside all my foolishness and rebellion and instead live for God. Enough is enough.

“You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.”

1 Peter 4:3

Thinking about my past keeps me humble and broken (which is no small thing)! But it also cements me into the joy of His marvelous amazing grace. I now know Jesus’ love.

I am completely forgiven! The joy I now have is incredible.

David, that great sinner-king, also understood the joy of forgiveness. He wanted us to believe in it as well:

1 Oh, what joy for those
    whose disobedience is forgiven,
    whose sin is put out of sight!

2 Yes, what joy for those
    whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt,
    whose lives are lived in complete honesty!

Psalm 32:1-2

“We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear-and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.”

     C.S. Lewis

I’m a Riddle to Myself

They tell me that courage is to do something that frightens you. That it is being strong in the face of pain and suffering. If that’s true (and I suspect that it is) then I haven’t arrived yet. I’m a spiritual “chicken.” I’m no eagle yet.

It seems at times I’ve been ‘gifted’ with cowardice! 😁

I struggle at times with chronic depression, and am physically handicapped. I have lost the use of my right arm and hand. I no longer have any balance and must use a cane. This is due to a brain tumor I had in 2002. I’ve had over a dozen head injuries which only has compounded the ataxia.

I admit I sometimes get angry with God. I also get spiritually confused as I try to walk like Jesus wants me too. My frustration with Him is all foolishness when I think of all He has given me. I pretend at these times, and I do it well I think.

I’m also afflicted with a terrible disease called “Facebookitist.”

I find that this blog I write sometimes covers up a multitude of my own sins. You see and read what I want you to see. I polish up things to preserve a modicum of spiritual decency. I want you to see me as faithful and triumphant. A real disciple, (but alas, that’s often a bit of a stretch).

“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games.”

“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.”

“As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”

Brennan Manning

I once was confronted by a younger believer, “I don’t know you, brother, you’re like two different people.” And honestly I’m sure he was right. I am, and it disturbs and saddens me.

And what is the truth often scares me. I’m often a spiritual coward who tries to speak the things that are real and true. (A clown trying very hard to play “Hamlet.”) I occasionally realize I will write something that’s spiritually false, and that scares me. “Kyrie Eleison.” God have mercy on me, a sinner.

I think all I want is God’s stamp of approval. “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

And perhaps yours as well?

I realize that I end up wanting truth which is no small thing. Many lies must be stripped away and that seems to take time. It’s like scraping away layers of varnish on a table you’re working on. I’m pretty much coated with sin. I desperately need the truth to survive.

All I really know is that I love Jesus, and I seek to be filled with His Spirit. I keep coming, over and over, to Him. He holds on to me.

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”

     C.S. Lewis

“Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.”

Brennan Manning

When Faith Doesn’t Seem to Work

by Terry Powell

I am not a Christian because my faith “works” for me. Talk to a devout Mormon, Muslim, or Buddhist and he’ll extol the here-and-now benefits of his faith. He’ll cite a serenity of spirit, or a sense of order that believing brings to his life. Yet his belief system contradicts mine, so logically these various faiths cannot all be true!

If I were a Christian just because faith has utility for me, because my days are more likely to unfold in a smooth, trouble-free manner, I’d be a pragmatist, pure and simple. And I’d be prone to shuck my commitment to Christ the moment a different philosophy or religion appeared to offer me more.

Don’t get me wrong. Following Christ is not without rewards in the present. My faith often sustains me, provides perspective for decision-making, and injects happiness rooted in a biblical worldview.

But not all the time.

There’s the inevitable warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil to contend with. And in my case, either chronic depression or other weaknesses of temperament sometime get the best of me. I’ll keep praying for relief and I’ll strive for sound mental health, yet I don’t want to be among the growing number of Christians who expect God to give them on earth what He only promised for heaven.

From a theological perspective, I’m a Christian because God chose me and initiated a relationship with me (Eph. 2:1-10). From a human perspective, my faith is in Christ not because it works, but because I believe Christianity is true. And truth is objective reality, not a subjective experience. No matter how I feel, or how my day goes, truth doesn’t change. Truth just is. I wrote this poem to convey this point.

Nature of Truth

When all hope yields to despair

and I doubt that God is there;

when my heart is cold, unfeeling,

and my prayers bounce off the ceiling;

when depression takes its toll

and winter winds assault my soul;

when the race seems all uphill

and dying grows in its appeal;

when things don’t go as expected—

still, God’s Truth is unaffected.

In the long run, faith works in the sense that I’ll enjoy eternity with my Savior (thanks to His works, not mine). But being a Christian doesn’t shield me from affliction in the here and now. It does assure me of God’s compassion and healing presence: “He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds” (Ps. 147:3).

Love, Terry

 

Terry teaches in the areas of Church Ministry and Ministry Leadership at Columbia International University in South Carolina. He has served as a Christian Education staff member for three  churches, and he’s a licensed preacher in the Presbyterian Church of America.  His current books in print are Serve Strong:  Biblical Encouragement to Sustain God’s Servants, and  Now That’s Good A Question!  How To Lead Quality Bible Discussions. Terry has been married for 46 years, and has two sons, a daughter-in-law, one grandson, and a dachshund.  His constant prayer is, “Lord, make me half the man my dog thinks I am!”

Check out his blog at https://penetratingthedarkness.com/. His ministry is focused on Christians experiencing clinical  depression and other mental issues.