If you’re reading this, you’re probably confused by the title, rightfully so. This isn’t some scheme or lie or clickbait—okay, well maybe it’s clickbait a little—but the point is, it’s true. Steph Gwinn is dead.
If you read my last blog you know that God has been teaching me the meaning of dying to myself. It sounds like a strange, almost gruesome idea, I know, so let me explain.
Here in Ethiopia, I’ve been asking myself over and over for God to deepen this big, complex idea of love.
We read and talk about it all the time, and yet, I still find myself a combination of both frustrated and eager knowing that I’m only beginning to scratch the surface of what it is and how I should be living it out.
Jesus gives us the new command to love God and love our neighbor, and that fulfills the law in its entirety. That means everything that Israel was commanded of in the Old Testament—the 10 commandments and the entire book of Leviticus—all of it is fulfilled with love. So what the heck is love then?
To put it simply, God is love and love is God.
And now that love is defined, I’ve begun to read the Bible in its intended context. From the very beginning through Jesus’s ministry all the way to the early church, I’ve noticed a pattern of what this new command entails—dying to self.
It isn’t actually dying in a literal sense, but its putting your wants and desires to rest for the sake of others. The cool thing about genuine love is that it’s a choice, and even when it’s inconvenient we still have the choice to love others well. I think this is where I realized that I was actually really bad at loving my neighbors. I only chose people when it was convenient for me or if they chose me first. Never out of an overflow and purely circumstantial.
God has given me a humbling slap in the face to redirect me from this incomplete, misunderstood idea. The truth is loving people isn’t always this mutually joyful thing. It’s hard work. It can be exhausting and uncomfortable, but I don’t think the point of loving others is to benefit yourself.
A lot of the time it requires you to humble yourself, throw out all pride and entitlement, and ask for nothing in return.
A really practical way of looking at this is when I was in the village at church around kids. Last week there was a little boy covered in dirt, boogers all over his face, and lice crawling in his hair—he wanted to sit on my lap. One may look at him and think to themselves “dang, I wish he wanted to sit on someone else’s lap”, but I don’t think that’s what love is—I think that’s what pride and entitlement are. Love would welcome the little boy, cause love doesn’t care about circumstances. That’s dying to yourself. That’s kingdom. That’s what Jesus would’ve done.
It’s been awesome how faithful the Lord has been in teaching me this and growing me to look more like him. Makes me excited to see how he’ll deepen this understanding in the future.
