love - The Text Messages

December 3, 2019December 7, 2019

The Moral of the Story

One of the greatest and most whimsical stories of the season is the Dr. Seuss classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Who HASN’T heard the story about the grumpy green grouch living above the city of Whoville?

While the story seems to focus on the restoration of the main characters maniacally twisted, depraved and ever so tiny heart through the kindheartedness of a little girl named Cindy Lou Who, I think that most of us have missed the more subtle moral of the story.

Have you ever considered that Theodor Geisel aka Dr. Suess might have been railing on the flamboyant, over the top consumerism and materialism that seems to drive our own keeping of the season from before Halloween through our New Year celebrations?

What IS this season REALLY about?

As I see it, its about love.

It’s about the love of God who at just the right time, “sent forth His Son, made (born) of a woman, made (born) under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4) It’s also about WHY God the Father sent Him: “God so LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” (John 3:16) God loved the world – the kosmos in the Greek; He loved the world and especially its inhabitants. He loved you and me when we were green with envy, when we were grouchy and complaint filled; He loved us, the Bible says in (Romans 5:8) “while we were yet sinners.” He loved the sinner while hating their sin – a fact not written out in so many words in the pages of scripture and yet made evident by the actions He undertook on behalf of us all.

It’s also about the love of Jesus who died to reconcile us to God while we were still His enemies (Romans 5:10). Did He love God or each of us more, when He suffered unspeakable hate and torture and as He bore our sins on the cross and exchanged them for His own righteousness? The answer seems clear from the Bible that out of love and especially obedience toward His Father, Jesus endured all of those things (Luke 22:42, John 4:34,5:30, 6:38 ) nevertheless, love kept Jesus on the cross.

At His incarnation or birth into human flesh, the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ was given as an expression of God’s love toward the world in order to make us what none of us ever could be on our own – right with God. By His crucifixion and resurrection Jesus Christ made His Father’s love a literal reality for every person who has believed or ever will.

Christmas isn’t about Jing Tinglers, Flu Floopers, Tar Tinkers or Who Hoovers no matter how wonderful the music played on these can be! It isn’t about finding and giving the most amazing (and amazingly expensive) gift from the list of someone we love. While love is the only debt the Bible says we ought to owe each other (Romans 13:8), expressing it shouldn’t put us in the poor house. Christmas IS about the greatest expression of love ever known among men – God’s love toward sinners.

So this Christmas, if all you have is time to give – give it; your time given to the one forgotten is a priceless loving gesture to them. By the way, love the unbearable grouch at the end of your block or next to you in your work place or couch – do for them what Jesus did for you; who knows if it won’t just change their lives too.

November 17, 2019November 24, 2019

Love Does the Harder Thing

When I was just a boy, my dad asked me a mind blowing question; he asked me, “What is love?” I defined it the only way I could at that age – by how I had experienced it; I replied, “Love is caring for a friend.”

Love is a lot of things but in my mind before it’s anything else it is a verb, in other words, it is the act of a person or persons which evokes an intellectual, emotional and sometimes sentimental response from the recipient(s).

The Bible says that love is patient and kind; it bears, believes, hopes and endures all things and is never failing; that is, in part what Paul said about it in (1Corinthians 13:4-8). It bears with people, believes the the best about them, hopes the best for them and NEVER gives up on them.

The Apostle Peter added in (1Peter 4:8) that love covers:

“And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “’love will cover a multitude of sins.'”

Love won’t make public another persons sin by way of gossip or conversation rather it comes alongside and restores the errant brother or sister (Galatians 6:1); it believes, bears, covers and one more thing…it speaks truth. That’s actually how the church is grown and strengthened, by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15)

In other words, loving people tell the truth, even critical and perhaps even controversial, unpopular and maybe even unwelcome truth… love tells the truth for the good of the other person. It doesn’t tolerate, overlook or otherwise accept and validate falsehood or sinfulness it lovingly confronts it.

Love is a command. Jesus said in (John 13:34) “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (see also John 15:12, 15:17)

The Bible says that love is not only the only debt we ought to owe anyone (Romans 13:8) but that it is also a fulfillment of the law in the same verse.

Let me leave you with a thought from Josh McDowell:

“Tolerance says, “You must approve of what I do.” Love responds, “I must do something harder: I will love you, even when your behavior offends me.”

Tolerance says, “You must agree with me.” Love responds, “I must do something harder: I will tell you the truth, because I am convinced the truth will set you free.’ ”

Tolerance says, “You must allow me to have my way.” Love responds, “I must do something harder: I will plead with you to follow the right way, because I believe you are worth the risk.”

So love your neighbor, brother, the one who loves you and the one who doesn’t; love your friends and your enemies… love acts ~ love does the harder thing.

November 14, 2019

The Prime Directive of Love

Last Sunday at Parkway Church Pastor Mike Hurt reminded us from the words found in (1 John) that “God’s love for us shapes all of our relationships:” (https://parkwaychurch.tv/sermon/relational-change) the section we dialed down on (1 John 4) concludes with these words in (v.20): “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”

Those words, as powerful and convicting as they are can lead the proud among us to ask the same question posed to Jesus by a lawyer in (Luke 10:29): “And who is my neighbor?” As if trying to find some way out of the prime directive of love found in both the Old and New Testaments (Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18 Luke 10:27): “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself; ” we ask , “who is my brother and who is my neighbor – do I really have to love him or her like that?”

In so asking aren’t we really asking “is there anyone I don’t have to love?”

It’s an honest question and a believer might ask it but asking it may also indicate a far greater area of concern in the life of the person asking. Jeremiah wrote in (Jer. 17:9):

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

Before we met Jesus, our hearts were incurably sick; our hearts were full of the wrong things. Jesus said that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” (Matthew 15:19, NKJV) In short, we didn’t and couldn’t love others or God because we loved ourselves too much. Think about it – why do we lie; for our sakes or for others? Why do we steal – to benefit others or ourselves?

The heart is tricky. It so cloaks its true intentions and condition that the one in whom it beats may not even know how wicked it really is – but God knows. He searches the hearts of men (Jeremiah 17:10; Romans 8:27) and while others are making distinctions based on appearances, God looks deeper (1 Samuel 16:7) – “He looks at the heart.”

Does what He perceives in our hearts repulse and repel God from us? No, Paul told us in (Romans 5:8) “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This was the mission of the Savior who said in (John 3:16):

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Far from shrinking back from, hating or condemning us, God, in His love made a way for all of us, since all of us suffer from this incurable heart condition, to be made well. The writer of (2 Samuel 14:14) made it clear that God, in His mercy, “…devises means, so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him.”

When a person believes in Jesus, he is born again (John 3:3) in this sense – God gives him or her “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezekiel 36:26). Because of that new life, he who once upon a time only loved himself can now love God and others because of the NEW condition of his heart.

When we consider the lengths that God went to in order to express His love toward us and what He had to both overlook and endure in terms of our sin to draw near enough to us so as to forgive us the penalty due for our sin by dying in our place and rising again victorious AND that nothing will EVER separate us from His love (see Romans 8:38-39); when we remember that He did THAT for US and believe it, we will then be able to also see and hopefully treat our fellow man with a similar kind of love.

Is there anyone you don’t have to love? The question might be better put like this – is there anyone you just can’t love? Mankind spit in Jesus’ face – He loved them anyway. Mankind beat Jesus to a pulp – He loved them anyway. Mankind hung Jesus on a cross and mocked Him there – He died for their sins anyway. If anyone had a reason to hate it was Jesus. If anyone had a reason to withhold grace and mercy it was Jesus. What stood between you and the Lord that in love He forgave you of even after you first believed? What now stands between you and those who are like you were “without Christ…having no hope and without God in the world?” (Ephesians 2:12)

May the Lord’s enduring love for you inspire you to love those around you for their sake and to His glory…without exception.