Pat's Ponderings

The ideas for this post have been sitting around for a couple weeks now, but I came across some good stuff in Matthew that tied in well. So, I decided to sit and write rather than pack for the trip. Only a few hours left...

The entry for May 11 in My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers, started the thoughts:

YOU WON'T REACH IT ON TIPTOE

"Add to your brotherliness . . . love." 2 Peter 1:7

Love is indefinite to most of us, we do not know what we mean when we talk about love. Love is the sovereign preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that that preference be for Himself (cf. Luke 14:26). When the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ is easily first; then we must practise the working out of these things mentioned by Peter.

The first thing God does is to knock pretence and the pious pose right out of me. The Holy Spirit reveals that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now, He says to me, show the same love to others - "Love as I have loved you." "I will bring any number of people about you whom you cannot respect, and you must exhibit My love to them as I have exhibited it to you." You won't reach it on tiptoe. Some of us have tried to, but we were soon tired.

"The Lord suffereth long. . . ." Let me look within and see His dealings with me. The knowledge that God has loved me to the uttermost, to the end of all my sin and meanness and selfishness and wrong, will send me forth into the world to love in the same way. God's love to me is inexhaustible, and I must love others from the bedrock of God's love to me. Growth in grace stops the moment I get huffed. I get huffed because I have a peculiar person to live with. Just think how disagreeable I have been to God! Am I prepared to be so identified with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness are being poured out all the time? Neither natural love nor Divine love will remain unless it is cultivated. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained by discipline.

Paul talks a lot in Colossians about love amongst the brethren, how it is because of Jesus that we should love each other deeply, putting on a "heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience." Because of Jesus' death, the dividing wall was destroyed and "Christ is all, and in all." There are no divisions, no inequalities; we are the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ! We should act like it in love toward each other. And where is this love in the Church today? I don't want to be hypocritical, but we have come a long way from the unity of the earlier church.

I think about Jerry, an older black man with a scraggly whitish beard and a slight odor to his worn blue coveralls. We picked him up under an overpass on our way back from Kansas last week. He has chosen somewhat of the drifter lifestyle and seems to fit a lot of the outward stereotypes. He has been all over the place, served in the military for seven years, and carries all his possessions in a small green suitcase and a black duffel bag. The point is, regardless of his appearance, Jerry is still a human being, a creation of the Most High God. But, when we dropped him off at the McDonald's in Ardmore, Oklahoma, the stares of my fellow middle-class, white Americans bored holes through his heart. I imagine he is probably used to it, but it angered me that we can't love people if they are different from us. I don't really know where Jerry is at with the Lord, but I hope to say that he saw the love of Jesus shining through us.

Anyway, I got off on a little rant with that, but it's all to say that, on the whole, we flat out don't love people like Jesus called us to. How can we realize that the Holy God of the Universe loved us so much that He sent Jesus to die for us while we were still in straight-up rebellion to Him and His purposes (Romans 5:7-9) and not be moved to love people like that?!? Do you need a reminder of how much He loves you? Check out Matthew 18! Jesus uses the parables of little children and lost sheep to show us just how much the Father really wants to be with us. We get so caught up in our own pursuits and position that we forget two fundamental truths: 1) We have been given an inexplicable love that was completely unmerited and 2) Jesus tells us to show that love to everyone around us, not just the people we like (Matthew 5:43-45). It's time for the American church to get out of our pews, out of our special 'worship' services, out of our protective little Christian bubbles, and love people. Love people like Jesus! Don't just talk about it, do it. Look back at what Oswald challenged us with: "Be so identified with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness are being poured out all the time!" Jesus didn't pour out His life in the ultimate act of love so that we could just enjoy the benefits. He wants to love people through us. It's time to wake up to be what Jesus wants His Bride to be.