Are you up for a wrestle? We think we know love, but I often need reminding; the concept of love came from God, not us.
It seems so simple — love — but the trouble is we’re often a whole lot better at talking about it than we are at doing it. My heart is not geared toward love by its natural inclination. None of our hearts are.
God must change my heart before I can love others.
As a segue, here is a revolutionary quote from Mister Rogers in terms of how God’s love can work through us in our relationships:
“I don’t think anyone can grow unless they’re loved exactly as they are now, appreciated for what they ARE rather than what they might become.”
It is hard to love those who are doing things we dislike. And I don’t mean, “I love you; I just don’t like you much at present.” What I mean is love is practicing faith in the person, no matter how they’re behaving in the present situation or toward us. Love is impervious to indifference.
Practicing faith in someone requires patience, especially when they’re not responding as we’d like. This requires a heart that is FOR them, which is a heart that has the capacity to offer grace; that gift of undeserved favour.
As Christians we commonly talk about the grace of God in Christ’s going to the cross as the means of atoning for our sins. We far less commonly extend that grace, yet we often expect that grace to be extended toward us.
To extend God’s grace to someone requires us to bear the cost. I must admit that while I’d like to think I do this often, it is a comparatively rare event when I do it — AND when my heart joins in I mean.
What I mean is it’s relatively easy to extend God’s grace begrudgingly.
It’s much tougher to “overcome evil with good,” because that requires faith, which is trust that vindication will come through the means of an opposite action. Faith that in giving something valuable away, that it will come back.
Only those who have faith can love like this. And yet I know how often I fail the grade.
It’s infinitely tougher to love in a good-hearted way when our hearts are oriented the other way. It’s like steering a ship into a force-10 gale.
When God’s love emanates from our hearts it’s because we’ve chosen what God wants. Our heart has been convicted, which means God’s Spirit has convinced us.
See how easy it is to love with God’s love when God’s love has convinced us?
We can talk about God’s love all we want, but we never rise to the radical standard of God’s love unless we choose to lose. Doesn’t sound very attractive, does it?
What if we told those seriously considering faith in Jesus that they would have to lose everything to inherit the Kingdom. Would there be many converts?
Well, you don’t need to convince a convert to Christ — they’re already convinced! This is because the work of conversion doesn’t rely on us, but on the Holy Spirit.
The Mister Rogers quote stands as a perennial example of what God’s love is:
A love that sees the best in a person especially when they’re not at their best.
It’s the sort of love we all expect to receive but are reluctant to extend.
It’s a love that sees the potential in every human being. It’s a love that believes a person can grow, and when people see we believe such things a funny thing happens.
They do tend to grow!
God’s love changes us from the inside out, so when others receive God’s love through us, they’re loved from the outside in.
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