Learning to love--a life journey

I want to take a moment and tell you all what an incredible experience it has been to write these blogs and see the number of views that are being recorded each week.  There simply is nothing that I desire more than to be used by God in the drawing of others to Himself.  This seems to be a format that God is using and an area where He is asking me to grow.  You may have noticed that the format has changed a few times through the process.  Through Robyn, God is helping me understand what changes to make to create the greatest opportunity to provoke thought, contemplation, and mostly the voice of the Spirit.  In this effort I have added some questions that, if prayed over and contemplated upon, will help create an opening for the Spirit to move through.  You may find that printing this out and writing your responses facilitates a deeper awareness and as such more opportunity for growth, healing, and spiritual freedom.

Over the next two weeks I am going to break down our key scripture on love into two parts.  I pray you find the format thought provoking and that it facilitates the voice of the Spirit into your life.

'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' "This is the great and foremost commandment.  "The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.'  "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."

As a quick re-cap, in expressing the concepts we are discussing we summarized that God’s “nature” is His ability to meet us where we are, His expression of compassion, and His warmth and forgiveness.  In short, it is His ability to provide us with a feeling of “being loved”.  Is this feeling of “being loved” by God the same as “loving God”?  Take a moment and pray that God will open up your heart and mind to the following questions.  As you read each of them ask God to help you see the truth of your own thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

1. Think of someone you love and contemplate the feeling of love you have for them.
2. Is your “love” really nothing more than a really high level of appreciation of what they do for you?  Or is your love for them like what we summarized love to be in last week’s blog?
3. Think of someone that you would want to love you.
4. What does that look like?

My answers to the last question includes things like:

• I would want them to see me as trustworthy, loving, honest, and of good character.
• I would want them to desire time with me, seek my thoughts, and long for my counsel.
• I would want them to see my interactions in their life as being in their best interest.
• I would want them to believe that my purposes are righteous.
• I would want them to accept my purposes as their purposes.
• I would want them to be willing to do anything necessary to help me fulfill my purposes.
• I would want all of these to be extended from the heart, not out of a sense of commitment, obligation, or sacrifice.

What would you say if I asked, “Is it possible for someone to believe that they are truly honoring God, doing God’s work, loving others as He loves us, and still be doing work for evil?”  I would bet that most of us can relate to this.  Maybe it was a parent, a teacher, someone in the church, a boss, or some other person.  It doesn’t really matter who it came from but what we were told ended up being a foundation of some kind of philosophy that tightened the worlds grip on us more than helping us break the grip it already had.  Maybe someone said something like “if you don’t go to college you will never amount to anything”, “the one who dies with the most toys wins”, “live and let live”, “if it weren’t for religion everyone would get along”, or any number of comments of this nature.  The people who give this “advice” are usually thinking that they are being really good mentors and that the advice they are giving is exactly what we need to hear. 

The problem is that these kinds of philosophies are based on a flesh centered approach to life.  It is a focus that leads us to believe that the joy and peace we seek will be found in the pursuit of the things of this world as we gain affirmation from our “successful” lives and the people we impress along the way.  Is it true that someone who doesn’t have the intelligence, money, or opportunity to go to college will never amount to anything?  Being that the score isn’t tallied until everyone is dead, who is going to be the one to declare the winner?  Isn’t everyone living their own way anarchy?  Is it religion that motivates people to rape, steal, slander, abuse, take advantage of, or somehow hurt others?

It is only by the grace of God that I can stand under the weight of looking back over my life and seeing how I have impacted others in this way.  This is the foundation of my first two blogs on “choices”.  I firmly believe that until we allow God to hold up a mirror for us to see our own self-reflection we will never fully understand everything He is attempting to communicate to us.  It is in the observation of our own thoughts and actions that we come to understand what drives us to do what we don’t want to do and not to do what we so desperately desire.  Let’s take another moment and ask God to open our heart to a few more questions.  As you read these ask God to open your heart to what He wants to show you.

1. Can you think of someone that you have prayed for in the past?
2. Did your prayers include asking God to heal them, protect them, guide them, or something along these lines?
3. Is there someone who you are very close to that you prayed these kinds of prayers over?  Maybe a husband, a wife, or your children?

How often do we ask God to “protect a loved one from evil”, or “help free them from some behavior or addiction”?  At the same time how often do people approach us and tell us that the way we are living is not healthy?  How often do we argue with people in regard to what is or is not “sin”?  How often do we argue with the very people we are praying over when they share with us what we are doing that makes them feel unloved?

The reality is, we all “love” those people we are praying over.  We honestly want the best for these people.  We want God to hear our prayers to protect them, to deliver them from evil, and to heal their wounds.  The only problem is when God sends someone into our lives to tell us that we need to change something about what we do, how we act, the things we say, or the way we live, we don’t listen.  The simple truth is that we pray in “love”, and then reject the voice of the Spirit in our flesh centered defensiveness.  In doing so we actually block God from answering the very prayers we asked Him to fulfill.  We are so full of pride that we never even consider that we are the ones bringing the evil into their lives, that our life choices are exactly what they need to be protected from, or our attitudes are the very thing pushing our loved ones toward their addictions.  Let’s ask God to help us fully open our hearts to what He wants us to understand about how we have not allowed Him to fulfill the very prayers we have put before Him.

1. Going back to that close relative who you have prayed for in the past.  Can you pray for God to show you when He has tried to answer those prayers by bringing people to speak into your life?
2. Are there other occasions you would like God to show you where He attempted to bring about change in your life for the very purpose of answering your prayers over someone else?

The honest truth is that the most important aspect of loving others isn’t how we feel toward them, how we act toward them, or what we do for them.  It is the monumental challenge of allowing God to rule over us, to guide us, and to transform us.

Love is not as simple as being nice to people, praying for them, or doing good things for them.  Love is a total life commitment that listens and responds to the Spirit in an ever growing relationship that delivers us from the bondage of this world so that the Spirit may use us to lead others to the same freedom.  Let me ask you this; Do you think it please God when we show others His love, claim to be His representative, and then lead people (by example) into a life that is contrary to His character and into the bondage of His arch enemy?

The fact is, when we put on the face of God and extend His nature people will follow.  They will follow us to where we go, to what we do, and take on the beliefs that we have.  If we have allowed ourselves to follow our flesh centered ideas and only allow God to break the chains of bondage we choose for Him to break we will fail God, fail others, and ultimately fail ourselves.  At the end of the day we will find that what we have done is nothing more than led those we “love” right into the same chains that hold us.  That doesn’t sound too much like love to me.  To be honest, it sounds more like “misery loves company”.  Wouldn't you think God takes this really seriously?

What I am about to expand on is that following the Spirit in our expression of love is much bigger than the words we use, or the honest intentions of our hearts.  The reality is, loving God changes us into people who will live & love His way.  Loving others is a total life experience, it includes holiness, righteousness, faith, and healing.  Simply put, it is the experience of allowing God to mold us, make us, and create us, fresh and anew, for His purposes.

You may not agree exactly on the order of these but here is how I see it.

• We trust something that He gives us (through word, spirit, or circumstance) with our minds, 
• As we go about life His way we open our minds to greater understanding as to how our flesh centered mind tries to get us to reject what we have trusted Him with, 
• We come to understand how our flesh is driving a resentment toward truth living,
• With God's strength, our mind rejects the resentment and turns to Him to show us the liberty in a heartfelt commitment to the change He has brought into our awareness, 
• The heartfelt commitment leads to the promised liberty because God is always faithful, 
• Once the liberty is experienced our heart fully embraces “truth” and our decision to follow moves from “commitment” to “choice”, 
• Over time this becomes a pattern of life, we trust what we don’t understand, our flesh centeredness cries out in frustration, we lean on God’s strength to overcome the resentments, we experience the liberty, our heart “chooses” freedom over bondage, and the cycle pushes on, 
• Once the “pattern’ becomes natural it is apparent that the soul has been transformed.  We actually reach a point in our spiritual maturity where it is more natural to follow the Spirit than to follow the desires of the flesh.  This is when we begin to truly feel the freedom of our salvation.

Let’s just take a quick moment to connect the “whole Law” to what we have discussed above.  Without going into too much detail and a long debate, the Law is a way of life that:

• Exemplifies the character of God,
• Helps us grow our understanding of Him,
• Gives us insight into His character and His nature, and
• Provide a stimulus for deeper Spirit led conversations between His Spirit and us.

In summary it is not a line that divides right from wrong, or what specifically establishes what is "sin" and what is "not sin".  It is a foundation that God uses to help us build a relationship with Him.

Throughout our lives God attempts to lead us toward embracing His nature and His character.  The more we accept with an open heart in word form the more we give Him to work with in a gentle way.  The less we accept in word form the more we force Him to use the circumstances of life to help us see and understand what we must come to know, understand, and embrace.  The more of the foundation we use the easier our lives will be, the less of the foundation we use the harder our lives will be.

The truth is, we live in a very harsh world because so much of the foundation is being ignored.  We quickly see where others have not built their relationship on the foundation we accept.  At the same time we are quick to reject aspects of the foundation that others build upon that are more "sacrificial" than we are willing to live.  By doing this we leave God no choice but to speak to us through the events and circumstances of our lives....just as He does in the lives of those who do not embrace what we do.

In other words, if I say “OK God, I trust you in that, now show me what you want me to understand through it”, He simply needs to speak into my heart through the Spirit.  On the other hand, if I say “God, that just doesn’t make sense, I don’t think that applies in this time, in this country, in this blah, blah, blah", I leave Him no choice but to prove to me through the circumstances of life that it is still very relative to my journey into spiritual freedom.

Basically what I am saying here is this:  Biblically speaking we are told that in the end, “every knee will bow”.  So, regardless as to how much of a foundation we give God to work with, He will throughout the journey of this life and our time in the unknown realms, bring us to an awareness of who He is, who Satan is, who we are, and what love truly is.  Regardless as to what we want, He will hold up a mirror, and we will have no choice but to look into it.  Regardless as to if we progress willingly or if we wait until it is forced upon us…..He will show us if we have chosen to love Him, or if we have chosen to love Satan.  He will use whatever is necessary to bring each of us individually and all of us cumulatively to this point.  The purpose of this life is to teach us to love Him and to reject Satan.  He will let us go with Satan if that is who we choose to love.  My attitude is this:

• It only makes sense to give Him the biggest foundation I am capable of giving, and
• As far as bending my knee, I trust the sooner the better with a willing and open heart.

Making all this really simple:  Loving God is not as simple is “loving the feeling we get when we know God loves us, sent His son to die for us, and forgives us for our sins”.  Loving God is about:

• Seeing Him as trustworthy, loving, honest, and of good character.
• Seeking time with Him, reading His word, listening to His Spirit, and longing for His counsel.
• Understanding that His interactions in our lives are in our best interest.
• Believing that His purposes are righteous.
• Making His purposes our purposes.
• Being willing to do anything necessary to help Him fulfill His purposes in and through us.
• Doing all of these things from the heart, not out of a sense of commitment, obligation, or sacrifice.

In closing, let’s take one last moment to ask God to open our hearts and minds to one last round of questions.  As we read through these questions we will ask God to help us see the true nature of our spiritual condition as we ask Him for the strength to be honest in what we see:

1. Can you see where you tend to struggle in your ability to love God with all your mind,
2. With all your heart, and 
3. With all your soul?
4. Do you feel the liberty found in a soul deep transformation? 
5. Can you pray that He will give you the strength to trust Him in the areas you need His help? 
6. Has God spoken any scripture references into you as you have been reading this blog?
7. If so, what are they and how do you think they apply to what you have been reading?

Over the next few weeks we will dig deeper into these aspects of “loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul” and we will see how by loving God in this way we cannot help but “loving others as we love ourselves”.

I pray that this has been a blessing to you and that you feel your time has been well spent.  I pray that you are a blessing to someone else this week, and through that blessing you feel the love of God flowing through you in a new and exciting way.