Love Made Manifest

Have you ever been in love? How do you know? Is it the tingles in your stomach? Is it the way you feel when your true love looks at you? Is it your desire to do anything to make the other person happy?

How would they know you love them? Do you say I love you? Do you give them flowers and gifts? Do you spend all day gazing into their loving eyes? An even more important love is the love of God for us. Do you know God loves you? How do you know? 

1 John 4:9 tells how we see the love of God for us through Jesus coming, "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him."

Through Jesus, the love of God is made manifest or show to us, and He does this in a number of ways. First, simply by coming and being with us, He gave us the very presence of God. Joseph and Mary got to experience God's love in a very unique way as the human parents to Jesus. They held Him as a baby. They raised Him as a boy, seeing Him grow and mature.

Then when Jesus started His public ministry, a large part of what He did was spend time with people. His disciples literally lived with Him for years. He went and stayed at people's houses and went to parties with many of them. Furthermore, He was not limited in spending time with just the good people or the important people. Rather, He spent time with the poor, the outcasts, and the sinner, but also with any leaders who would have Him.

He even got close enough to touch and be touched. He was held, cuddled, and swaddled as a baby. He walked among crowds where even ceremonially unclean people, like a woman with a bleeding illness could touch Him. He touched people with leprosy and with blindness. He allowed little children, who were not valued as much in that society, to come to Him.

He also came to tell us that we are loved. When talking to Nicodemus, He says that His coming is a very sign that God loves the world (John 3:16). He tell His disciples that He loves them, that they should remain in His love, and as a result they should love one another (John 13:34, 15:9). Furthermore, for those who chose to follow Him, we are told our very identity is transformed by belonging to Jesus (Philippians 1:21, Galatians 2:20). He spoke regular words of love and encouragement to His followers and through them to those of us who follow Him.

Jesus's words of love were backed up by actions of love. He said that He came to serve and to be served (Mark 10:45.) He healed the sick, fed the hungry, visited the lonely and outcast, rescued the demon-possessed, and taught the truth. Finally, He gave His life to ransom the prisons, namely us, from the chains of sin.

While we know how to show love through giving gifts at Christmas and other times, God gives the best gift in sending His son. The baby Jesus was wrapped up like a baby in swaddling clothes, but Jesus was also wrapped in burial linen. It was not until He was unwrapped at Easter that the final gift was revealed. He came to provide salvation from our sins and the gift of eternal life (Romans 6:23). So this Christmas, I encourage you to open your eyes to the love the God shows us through Jesus.

Is Your Love Bank Full?

 

I am currently rereading a book called, Love is a Choice, by three professional Christian counselors, and it is about the condition that they term, “codependency,” which they say many people have. The main issue with this condition is that people become unhealthily dependent on people or things, such as drugs, work, sex, anger, food, and bad relationships. Most of these unhealthy dependencies started in their childhood because they did not get the love that they needed and then sought to fill their internal love tank with things or people that could not give them true love. These things or people cannot truly make them whole again when they have such a love deficit and so they go deeper and deeper into an addictive cycle.

We are created to love and be loved. The greatest commandments are first to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). The most famous verse in the Bible is about God’s love for us through giving His son so that we could have eternal life (John 3:16). So it should not surprise us that when we face a lack of love and/or abuse, especially in our early, formative years, that we end up being wounded and seeking to make up for what we did not get. Unfortunately, when we do not know good love, we do not know how to give good love. Our addictions and sinful patterns perpetuate the problem to the people around us, especially if we have kids of our own. They end up not getting the appropriate love that we should be giving them, and thus the cycle continues on and on until someone intentionally seeks to break the cycle.

Some of these addictions, such as drugs or alcohol, have more immediate outward effects that others can see and lead to lives collapsing more quickly. If you go to jail for a DUI or your kids are taken away because of your drug addition, you are forced to at least consider what has gone wrong in your life. But other patterns are more subtle and sometimes are even encouraged by the society around you. Many of the examples given by the counselors in the book are of people who are externally very successful, but who are miserable in their marriages and personal lives. They highlight multi millionaires and starlets who have “made it” in worldly terms. Their clients even include “good Christians”  who put on a mask of happiness in public, but who hate each other in private.
Are you one of these people? We live in a fallen world where each of us has experienced some love deficit or abuse in our lives, so almost certainly you and I have sought out wrong ways of making up for that. Have you ever taken the time and energy to examine how you have been impacted by your past and what patterns have developed as a result? If you are living in pain right now, even private pain that you hardly even admit to yourself, God does not want you to stay there. Jesus came to give us an abundant life (John 10:10), but before we can love well and even be loved, we have to be willing to let God examine our hearts (Psalm 139:23-24). Then we can understand how we have run to the wrong things to find love and let God’s true love heal us. This is not just a one and done process, but rather a lifetime of learning to examine ourselves and then letting God change us into the person He created us to be!

Lonely Holiday

When Jesus started His public ministry, He was doing amazing miracles and teaching some profound truths, so many people started to follow Him. At times He had crowds over 10,000 listening, and He likely had as many as 120 regular followers if you include the men and women. Furthermore, from those regular followers He chose 12 men who were particularly close to Him and seemed to do everything with Him. Even among the 12, He had three, Peter, James, and John, that were even closer and who were with Him in the most intimate moments like the Transfiguration (see Matthew 17:1-8). Jesus’s life was so full of people that at times He had to move on from places to not get swamped, and He also went away some nights to be alone and pray with God the Father.

Yet as He approached the time of His crucifixion, He began to be clear about the cost of following Hi
m and many people left. He even asked the 12 if they were going to leave, and Peter said “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). When Peter said those words, I am sure he meant them, just like he and the other disciples meant it when they claimed they would die for Jesus rather than abandon Him (Matthew 26:25). But in the Garden of Gethsemane they could not stay awake and pray for Him, and then they all ran away when He was arrested, even Peter! I am sure that Peter felt like an incredible failure and totally alone when he wept after having denied even knowing Jesus three times that same night.

The next day as Jesus suffered and died on the cross, He even felt abandoned by the Father, repeating the words of Psalm 22:1, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” He did not deserve the punishment for our sins, and He did not deserve to be abandoned. But Jesus willingly allowed Himself to be abandoned and forsaken because He knew it was necessary so that we would not stay alone. He endured the cross so our sin would not mean that we had to stay guilty, ashamed, and alone after our failures.

When He rose again, Jesus took Peter aside and restored him. Three times He asked Peter, “Do you love me?” to which Peter answered, “Yes Lord.” After each answer, Jesus commissioned Peter to care for others. He was showing Peter that he was once again loved and accepted not just as a follower, but as a valuable member of Jesus’s kingdom.

Likewise, the brokenness of the world and our own brokenness can leave us feeling abandoned and alone. Jesus knows what it feels like to be alone. He came to the world to seek those who are lost and alone. He came to restore those who are broken. He came to connect the disconnected. Because He took on and defeated death, the ultimate aloneness, we can have abundant rich fellowship with both God and man. We can be restored and like Peter be part of reaching out in love to others who are still hurting and alone. 

This Easter, no matter your circumstances or your sins, come to Jesus to find a friend and be restored. You do not have to be alone because Jesus made a way for us to find everlasting love and to learn how to give that love to others.

The Condescending God

Most of the time when we use the word "condescending" about someone, we think of it as a bad thing, especially here in America where we think of everyone as equal. Someone who is condescending is looking down on others as if they are better and the others need their help or want their attention. But there is a good sense of the word where someone in a position of authority like a King or the President stops and pays attention to someone in a lower station of life like their kitchen staff. In fact, most of us like to hear how a President condescends to spend a few minutes asking a staff member about their family. It shows us that they care enough about the little guy to spend some of their time and energy getting to know them. 

The incarnation is the ultimate condescension. God the Son steps down from eternal glory and enters the world so that we could commune with God. We could not on our own get to God, so God comes into the world to lift us us up to Him. We marvel at what Jesus did in coming as a baby. He condescends all the way to our level not because He needs it, but because we did and we still need it. In fact, we see throughout His earthly ministry that He recognized that His followers needed help in understanding who He was and what He was doing.

As I have been reading through the Gospel of John recently,  I've noticed a number of passages like this,

John 11:41-42 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Here Jesus prays a truth out loud not because He had any doubt about His relationship with the Father, but because His disciples needed to hear it. Further, it wad not just those disciples at the time that needed to here it, but all of the disciples throughout time that Jesus was trying to help.

Jesus entered our world and lived a perfect human life for the purpose of saving us through His death and resurrection, and his condescension goes all the way to the level of how He speaks to us. Like a good grade school teacher who gets on the level of her students, Jesus gets on our level, literally and figuratively, so that we can understand what He has done for us. Jesus in His perfection and glory is so far above us that in our limited state we could never get to Him, but His love is so great that He comes down to our level. He lives and speaks in such a way that we can see and understand the very nature of God. 

This Christmas season as you think of the baby in the manger, praise God for His condescension toward us because without His coming down we could never be raised up.

To Whom are You Thankful?

Hopefully this week you will be able to gather with family and consume way too many calories! I know at three family meals that we have scheduled, I will definitely be eating too much! As I do, I will almost certainly be able to look around the room and find much to be thankful for, from the food, to the family, to the homes, and cars. Even coming and going from the different relative's homes, I will be able to see the harvested field, herds of cattle, barns of animals, various industries and shops that have helped to make all this bounty possible. In the process, I will be thankful for the many people who have added greatly to my life such as my wife, my kids, my extended family, my friends, my church family, and the various communities that have added so greatly to my life. When people live sacrificially and give to others they deserve our thanks, not just at one time a year, but regularly.

But many blessings in life cannot be tied to a specific person, such as life itself, health, natural beauty, and our own gifts and talents. As a Christian, I know who to thank for these blessing. Many places in the Bible let us know that we should be thankful saying, "Give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Other passages let us know to whom we should be thankful saying, "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever" (Psalm 107:1). When we reflect upon the world, we see that blessings are all around us every day and that many of the best parts of creation, from the intricacies of a leaf to the smile of a baby, if they are to have any meaning at all must come from somewhere or more specifically someone else. Upon reflection, we can see that, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows" (James 1:17). 

What if I do not believe in God or at least do not make God a regular part of my life? Where then do all these blessings come from and to whom should I give thanks? Around this time of year, I often hear people declare that we should be thankful for the good things or that we should live thankful lives. But if they do not know where the blessing comes from, who are they thanking? The universe? The world in general? Nothing? Thankfulness untethered to a deeper reality feels hollow because giving thanks should be tied to a relationship with the person who gave us the blessing. Our conscience tells us that being thankful is the right thing, but if God is not acknowledged as the origin of the blessing then our internal desire to thank someone is left empty. We end up thanking a void, which makes us feel like the emotion itself is meaningless. Conversely, our very desire to give thanks is one of the evidences that there is someone to thank!

Therefore, I encourage you this Thanksgiving time, to yes, pay attention to and even list the many blessings in your life, but also to make sure you spend time reflecting on who gave you those blessings. Pray a prayer of thanksgiving to our good God who gives us all good things.

Loving Intent versus Loving Outcomes.

As a pastor, I often get to participate with our associate pastor, Cory Martin, in deciding how to help people who come with a specific financial or physical need. They often make a compelling case for why they need help with rent or utilities, and I am glad to be able to help them when we have the resources to do that. Our church takes an offering once a month to help in this ministry, and I know that other churches do as well. There is certainly a biblical command to help those with less.(see Proverbs 19:17, Luke 14:12-14 among many others).

But as we help we also have to be careful that our help does not end up with bad results in the lives of people who we intend to be actually helping. Just because your intention is to do good for someone doesn't mean the result is good for them. This holds true in any number of areas of life, where people have desires that they want to be fulfilled, and they think need to be fulfilled, such as drug addiction, eating disorders, sexual desires and all kinds of co-dependencies. We sometimes want to help, but if we're not wise we end up hurting the person instead. 

This example of a time when people with the intention of helping ended up hurting someone is what inspired me to write this post. 

 Often times people get themselves into problems because they're following their desires which have led them astray.  If we affirm them by simply giving them more money without helping them understand how to use it properly, or affirm them by telling them that their desires are OK even when we can see those desires are in conflict with reality that will never be changed, we end up hurting them in the long run. In this article, we see how empathy for a person's problems can sometimes be a sin instead of a help.

 A wiser and more loving response would be to examine the long-term outcomes of certain behaviors, or studying what has worked historically and the wisdom of the ages. Then when we go to help someone, our intentions are more likely to line up with actual good and loving outcomes. 

This response takes more time and effort and frequently it also means we have to get more personally involved with someone, which can be scary because unhealthy people frequently wound those around them. We need to stay close to the Lord in the process and have our primary motive be love for and obedience to Him rather than expecting results from the other person who may or may not show appropriate gratefulness. 

God does call us to reach out and help all kinds of hurting people, those poor in physical resources and poor in spirit, such as those who might be emotionally distressed, but He also calls us to be wise. I want to encourage you to be willing to go deep with people that you desire to help, so you are not just meeting their immediate need, but rather are able to be wise and see what their deeper needs might be. This will give you insight into how you can help them in a way that is truly loving by helping without leading to further negative consequences in their lives.

If you are interested in studying this more, I recommend the book, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.