Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

Love in its truest sense needs at least two parties to be involved.  And while there are many advantages to technology, let's not kid ourselves and think that Skyping or using Facetime is the same as a discussion - face-to-face - over coffee or a meal or while sitting in a park.  Watch, learn, and live differently.



- tC

Love: Learning From A Child

I've been pondering the topic of love a lot these days.  If you follow the news at all, you'll know that defining what love/legitimate love is has come to the forefront in the national discussion.  And so when I've been thinking about it, many things have come to me.

1. "Love is a verb."  People love to say this, and yes - love entails action - but it is more than just doing things - there is emotion that should, in most scenarios, be involved.

2." You can love whoever you want."  I suppose this is true.  I can't force you to love someone or to not love someone.  That said, just because I love someone or something doesn't make it - theologically/biblically speaking - o.k.

Let me share with you what God showed me about love through my 4 year old Stella the other day.

Stella was using the hose in the backyard and before I went inside to grab something, I turned the faucet way down so as to not waste a great deal of water.  When I returned, I noticed the water was turned back up again.  I asked her if she had turned the faucet up and she told me that she didn't...3 times...and then the 4th time she admitted to doing it.  We had a little heart-to-heart about telling the truth and why she needed to always be honest with me, and that not telling the truth meant that there would be consequences.

A day later, I was in the garage and when I came back into the house, Stella was dashing back to the couch from sitting close to the television...in Hudson's seat (Hudson is 6 months old, so it is not a chair made for a 4 year old).  I honestly didn't care about the chair or her sitting in it, but when I asked, "Stella, were you sitting in Hudson's chair" she told me "No."  I asked a few more times and she finally told me that in fact she ha been sitting in his chair.  I turned off the t.v. and sat down with her to talk about lying.  She told me she didn't want to tell me the truth because she was scared I'd be mad.  I can tell you I have never struck this child and I can't tell you the last time I really even raised my voice at her.  She didn't need to be scared, and it grieved me to think she didn't know my heart for, or she has misconstrued my heart, or worse that I had misrepresented my heart to her.

She began to cry as I told her there would be consequences to her not being honest with me, and as she wept, I understood God in a whole new way.  I was not mad at her, I was sad she wasn't honest with me and that she didn't know my deep, deep love for her.  I didn't long to be 'right' and to say, "See I told you I was serious about consequences!"  I just wanted her to know I love her and she has to be honest with me and I want the best for her, even when it sometimes feels like me limiting her freedom.

And so it is with God.  His love is a love of giving us boundaries because He loves us.  His love is a love that desires honesty because He knows the truth even before we speak it.  No part of God desires or needs to punish us to prove His point - He doesn't have an ego problem and He isn't insecure.  His correction (His consequences) are not because He likes to see us cry or suffer, but because sometimes only the consequences will show us what is good and what He truly desires for us.

God's love TOWARD us is always rooted in good FOR us.
May that truth penetrate our hearts deeply.

- tC

In the end, love

(Photo by David Castillo Dominici - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

A handful of years ago I watched a round-table discussion between 3 well-known Christian leaders - Mark Driscoll, Joshua Harris, and Francis Chan. In the process of the discussion, Driscoll asked Chan a question based around the topic of money.  He asked if he (Chan) thought that poverty was innately connected to holiness. Chan had given away all the proceeds from his NewYork Times best-seller Crazy Love.

I will never forget Francis Chan's response.

"The core issue has to be love."

He's right, biblically. This is confirmed all throughout the Bible but let me give just a few examines.

1. Deuteronomy 6:4-9. This is a call to the chosen people of Israel on how to live. The basis - hear what is being said, know God, and love Him.

2. John 3:16. This is it. God has no need for us but chose to interact with us, and His interactions with us are rooted in love.

3. 1 Corinthians 13. While this entire chapter is about love, consider how Paul ends this passage. He tells us that 3 things remain - faith, hope, and love - but then he ends by declaring that the greatest of these is love.

4. Galatians 5:6b. This one is not nearly as well-known as the others but once again Paul makes a very strong statement about love, not as merely the greatest thing, but as the only thing that matters in the end.

It's not a particularly hard case to make that love is the ultimate point of The Bible, the Christian faith, and life, but now we've addressed it directly from the Scriptures.

Over the next few posts we will discuss what love truly is and by contrast, what it is not. If love is the ultimate calling for humanity, it serves us well to know what it is and how to do it.

-tC

Not Emotion, Not Cognition, but Affections

(Photo by dream designs - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

(Photo by Luigi Diamanti - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Let's flip around the perspective from our last blog post.  In the last post we talked about how God loves us even though He has no need for us, and how this love is the deepest and truest form of love because it is not about manipulation or an exchange based on insecurity.

What about our love toward God?  How should we love God?  You will hear people talk about 'head' vs. 'heart' knowledge.  This language, however helpful, should be used cautiously because people often think of the head as the center of thinking and the heart as the center of emotion.  In the biblical language, the heart was not the emotional center as much as "the center for both physical and emotional-intellectual-moral activities" (see Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology).  The Hebrew word for heart speaks actually less to the 'heart' and more to 'the guts' - that part inside you that is the center of who you are and where you will find your deepest convictions.

So we are, ultimately, to love God out of this - our heart, our guts, our center.  The implications are many. While obedience for obedience sake does get us to do the right things, we should be clear that when we obey just to obey, we are missing out on the fact that God's goodness and grace toward us should be the motivating factor.  If my wife Jenny is being loved by me, from time-to-time, even when I don't feel loving, most people would say, "That's life and part of being married", and I would agree.  But if my love for her is based solely or mostly on obedience to our marriage vows, no one would say that yes, that is deep and meaningful love.

And so it is with God.  We should be moving toward a place where our deepest heart-soul desire is to love God and we should be finding that we are operating out of a felt and experienced love for Him.  When you ask me why I read the Bible, I should be able to say, "Because in it I find love and guidance and ultimately, I find God, and this brings me the deepest sense of joy."  Jonathan Edwards dealt with this concept many years ago when he spoke about religious affections.

So I close by asking - what are the affections of your heart toward God?  May we find our love for Him growing and thus find ourselves operating out of how His love impacts us deep within.

- tC   

God Has No Need For Me

(Photo by Stuart Miles - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Ponder this truth: God doesn't need me...or you...or anyone for that matter.  While this is probably disheartening at first and perhaps even scary, this truth is the ultimate sign of love.  How?  Let's look into it.

So much of the love we experience on earth is based on an exchange of affection - you love me, and I'll love you back.  If we're honest, we know this to be true even in some of our closest relationships.  Unfortunately, the kind of relationship where a person gives his or her all regardless of what is given back - those are very rare indeed.  Perhaps a parent to a child is the closest we get to this, or the sacrificial love we see of an elderly couple where one of the spouses gives full care to a debilitated spouse.

However, if God doesn't NEED us, there are a few invigorating and freeing realities.

1. Do we really want to serve a 'needy' God?
A powerful God?  A sovereign God?  An omnipresent God?  Yes.  But a God who is needy?  Honestly, not many of us crave to be around a needy person, let alone a God who is needy.

2. If God does not need us, it must mean something else, because the Bible clearly communicates that God desires to be in relationship with us.  God does not need us - He wants us.  He desires us because we were made by and for Him.  He desires to pour out His love on us and as we receive it and glorify Him, He is filled with joy that we are living as He intended, reveling in Him and glorifying Him as we know and reflect Him.

3. If God doesn't need me, but He still wants me, then the direction, the insight, the denial of certain things, the guidelines from Scripture - all of these are for us that we might live most fully, honor Him most fully, and in turn, find that these two things (living fully and honoring Him) are not different truths world's apart, but instead they function together in a symbiotic relationship.  Life is most full and most human when we are most fully honor and love God.

He doesn't need us.  He wants us.  And in this there is freedom and joy.
- tC