Growing up in a Christian home I’ve been told all my life
about Christ and all the deeds he did and how he can change your life. If I
just trusted in Him with my salvation, then everything would be peachy at least
in the life to come. Not that my parents actually taught this, but my whole
life I never really thought about this life and Christ, I only thought about
heaven and the Lord. He was my way out after this life…AFTER not now. If life
is only really about the hereafter, then Lord take me now. I mean what’s the
point of living. Some would say it’s to bring others to the Lord so they can be
with Him in heaven. So my only purpose on this earth is to tell others about
Christ and heaven? BORING! That’s not living, that’s dying slowly.
Thank God that is not the truth. “The thief comes to steal
and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the
full.� -John 10:10 Life to the
full people. You’ve heard this before I know, but do you get it? Do you really
get it? I had heard it a million times before, but I’m only now discovering the
truth. Life to the full isn’t just talking about Christ. Yes we our
commissioned to preach the Good News of Christ, but Christ said something else
first, “’My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love
has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.’� —John
15:12-13 Jesus doesn’t stress preaching about him as the most important thing
to do, he stresses love. Take the shackles off. You don’t have to try to do
this or that, to make yourself busy about the “Lord’s� business. Are you really
sure what you’re doing is even the Lord’s business? What did Jesus himself say
to do? Love. That’s it. Everything you could ever accomplish comes after this.
If you haven’t done the “action� in love, you’ve wasted your energy. Many
people busy themselves trying to serve the Lord because they think he wants
them to. All he wants is for us to love. So for some that means going to the
jungles of the Congo and for others it means to just talk to your neighbor who
beats his wife and love him instead of judging him. Forget trying to heal
someone through prayer if you don’t love them, God won’t show up. So what does
it mean to love someone?
I find it really hard to describe true love. It’s so abstract
and feels different a lot of the time, but I’ll describe it like this: to feel
like the other person feels and to feel for that person the way the Lord does.
It’s putting yourself in the Lord’s shoes so to speak and feeling for that
person the way the Lord feels. Jesus doesn’t care what anyone has done in the
past; he’s bigger than that. He says love me and I’ll make you clean, whiter
than snow. We need to see people as souls and spirits the Lord passionately
loves and literally would die to have them with him. Would you die for a
stranger so that they could see and feel tangibly Christ’s love? That’s what
we’re called to live for rash, intense, crazy, violent love. We need to pray
for the Lord’s heart for the world. To be broken hearted by a complete stranger’s
story and brought to our knees in prayer for the Lord to intercede for them to
bring healing and wholeness. Interested?
Life as a believer seems a little more exciting when you
know the truth. The question I’ve had is how do you get to this place? I want
so badly to feel this kind of love for the world and to act out of pure love
instead of selfishness, to honestly die to myself daily. How do you get there
though? You can’t just flip a switch and suddenly your heart becomes putty and
you burn with passion for the hurting. Trust me I’ve prayed for it. But, I have
noticed my heart soften over the last 9 months and I didn’t understand how
until a few days ago. How it slipped past me for so long I have no idea, but
I’ve found the answer. The answer is time. If you want to have the Lord’s heart
you have to do the time. You have to spend time with love to be love. I’ve
asked myself many times why I’m not healing the sick and raising the dead yet.
I mean I’ve devoted 9 solid months to the Lord and I’m just now starting to see
small healings and feel a little of his heart, but if I had to be honest with
you I haven’t spent the kind of quality time with the Lord that he wants, and
that’s why I’ve been so slow in my development. The more time you spend just sitting
and talking to the Lord and waiting, the closer you become and the more you
will receive from him. The Lord can’t risk giving us authority until he knows
we can be trusted, and the only way to be trusted is for him to know we are
filled with his love. So the answer is to spend personal alone time with the
Lord talking to and listening to him, everything else will follow. So preach
the Good News everywhere you go, but know why you are doing it. You are doing
it because you passionately love the people you are telling and you want their
lives to be filled with joy in the Lord without pain now and their eternal
future secure in the fullness of Christ. This is why we tell people about
Christ, because of his overpowering love, the kind of love that makes you sick
to your stomach unless you share it. To walk in love you must first abide in
love.
Christ’s love and that’s it.
