When Jesus was alive, He was always being questioned. Sometimes, he was being questioned by people who were really interested in the answer. They needed His guidance, His personal touch on their lives, His compassion. At other times, He was questioned by the religious leaders of the time (Pharisees, Sadducees). Most of the time, they were not really interested in His answer. Instead, they wanted to trick Him. The common people absolutely loved Jesus, however, the religious leaders did not. They were threatened. They wanted to try to find a reason to make Jesus look like the fake they thought He was.
One particular instance of this questioning was set up by the Pharisees. They found an expert of the law to ask Jesus a question. He asked Jesus "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" (Matthew 22:36). This might sound like a simple question, however, there are 613 different commandments found in the books of the Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). The Pharisees were hoping that Jesus would anger part of the Jewish people by His choice.
The problem with their logic is that Jesus was the author of the Bible. Of course He knows the correct answer and the most important commandment. He calmly, and without hesitation, responded "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself." Nikki has already written about loving God with everything you have. I'm going to focus now on the command to love your neighbor as yourself.
The first question you may have is, who exactly is my neighbor? Jesus actually addresses this with a parable. He tells a story about a man who is robbed, beaten, and left for dead on the side of the road. There are three people who walk past this person. Keep in mind, he is laying on the ground bleeding and naked. The first two people to pass by were a priest and a Levite. These are both religious leaders. If they truly loved God with all of their heart, they would have had compassion on the man. Instead, they actually crossed the road so they wouldn't come in contact with the man and walked by. They left him there. They had absolutely no compassion. The third man was a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans really, REALLY did not like each other. They were constantly fighting with each other. Of the three, this is the man you would expect to have no compassion. Instead, he saw the injured man and had pity on him. The Samaritan went to the man and bandaged his wounds. He lifted the man off the ground and put him on his donkey because he didn't have the strength to walk. He took the injured man to an inn and paid for his stay. He asked that the inn keeper call the doctor and do whatever the man needed in order to care for him. He made a promise to the inn keeper that he would come back and pay any other expenses that his initial payment didn't cover. The Samaritan took his own time, resources, and money to care for this man that he didn't even know. Jesus points out that the "good Samaritan" is the neighbor to the injured man because he is the one who shows mercy. Jesus then says that we should do the same.
Thankfully, Jesus doesn't leave much to chance. Because now, you might be wondering, ok, I need to show mercy to people…what does that mean? Jesus told us that too when He gave us the golden rule. In Matthew 7:12, Jesus says "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." Most people know the golden rule by heart even if we can't turn right to it in the Bible, however, it is something that is often taken for granted. This is not something that comes naturally to us.
Nikki and I have done our best to teach our kids to keep this in mind as they interact with people. When we were first teaching it to Harrison, he could not keep it straight though. When he was not behaving very well, we would ask him what the golden rule was. He would say, "Do to others what they do to you." He didn't hesitate. While this is cute from a young child, it is the natural reaction for most of us. Don't get mad, get even is a pretty common thought process held by many people. This, however, is not what Jesus taught. Jesus teaches that if we are struck, then we should turn the other cheek also, we should love our enemies and pray for people who treat us badly, and we should forgive someone repeatedly when they sin against us.
If we truly love our neighbor as ourselves, our lives will be different from other people. We will treat other people the way WE want to be treated whether or not they deserve it. It's the kind of love that Jesus gives to us. He gives freely. If we do the same, we will make a difference for those we encounter. They will see what God's love truly looks like. They can have a tangible experience with a God that they don't know or understand. God is spirit and can't be seen. We, however, are not. We are able to carry the love of God to those in need. Not because they have done anything special to, or for, us. But instead, because we are loving them in the way that God intended.
Put it into practice: As you interact with people, consider the golden rule. Are you treating them the way they are treating you? Or, are you treating them the way YOU want to be treated? Give an honest evaluation of your actions and motivations over the next week. Is there someone you need to forgive even though you feel they have treated you poorly? Have you treated someone poorly because that is how they treated you first? With every person you encounter, make an honest effort to treat them as you would want to be treated.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Love Inspiration from the Movie "2012"
So, we rented the movie 2012 to play a clip for a youth study on Wednesday, so Ryan and I decided to watch it that night when we got home. (Not a great movie to start at 11:30 pm when you can't sleep in the next day! Didn't finish it until 2:30 am!! Talk about tired at the zoo the next day!) I personally thought it was a great movie (which could've been that much better without all the useless language involved)! Of course, it was completely predictable and you know it all works out, but it was still exhilirating to watch. Anyway, I was so wound up from watching it that I couldn't fall asleep. So, what else to think about except what it would be like if tomorrow a giant tsunami were to wipe out my city (let alone the world).
As Christians, we talk about how tomorrow is not promised because we are not guaranteed to live beyond the present, and we also talk about how we can look at the signs mentioned in the Bible as signs of Christ's return and know that He will be returning soon. But, what if that were really tomorrow? What if we woke up tomorrow morning, started to eat breakfast, and instantly found ourselves standing face to face with Jesus Christ? Life on earth as I have been living would be over in an instant! While I know that being in the presence of God for all eternity in a perfect and beautiful place that cannot be described by any words has to be incredible, I got to thinking about what kind of things I might regret. So, I basically wanted to share with you some thoughts I had while laying in bed so early in the morning, contemplating the shortness of life in light of love. And, for the sake of fun, I have four thoughts to share using each letter of the word LOVE.
L--Love God with Complete Abandon--This world is the stomping ground for Satan, whom Jesus refers to as a liar from the beginning and always lies because it is who Satan is. So, our nature, which is defined from this world, will be to lean towards trying to find ways to prove that we have no need for, not just God, but any god. We try to use science to show how the world created itself from nothing, found some way to make a few gases and land, then created simple organisms and found its way to more complex organisms. Now, I won't go into the argument for why this doesn't work, but if you're curious, feel free to ask me and I will share with you. We try to prove that the human nature can be good by going out and doing good things. Well, while it is true that we have the ability to do good things, there are few times when those people don't have a selfish reason for doing those "good" things. Any time we hear something that says how we can write God out of the picture, we latch on to it and say "See, this proves God doesn't exist" while really it just shows how dumb we are! If we spent less time trying to disprove God and spent more time living as God designed us to live, life would be better. I just think life and time is too short not to embrace the fact that the Creator of the universe loves us, made the perfect way to restore and keep a personal relationship with us, works things out in our lives (though not always how we'd like them and definitely not in our timeline!) and wants to bless us greatly! To embrace the guidelines He has given us allows us to see that God hasn't tried to set out a rules of do's and don'ts simply to try to tell us what to do but that He actually knows what things destroy us physically, mentally and spiritually so He has told us what those things are. His Words are the secret to a life of contentment and joy (there is no promise of easiness and happiness). It's time to abandon our desires to want to be able to do everything on our own and embrace completely that God empowers us to go beyond anything we thought we could ever do! Now that's powerful!
O--One Moment at a Time--I don't know about you, but I find that the more I focus on the future, the less time I spend focusing on the now. In the movie, the scientist who discovers the crazy heating of the earth's core is shown with his wife and daughter as a tsunami comes hurdling towards them to engulf them in just a matter of seconds. At that moment, the scientist grabs his daughters face and helps her to focus soley on him so that she doesn't worry about those last few moments in fear. What if this moment, right now, is the last moments I have with my family and friends? Do I want them to find me living in a future that won't look anything like I'm trying to map it out to be or do I want them to see me looking at them, giving them all my love and energy? All we really have is each blessed moment. Instead of focusing on all the flaws and mistakes of those around us, what if we just spent time enjoying them? What if we spent less time playing video games and playing on the internet and spent more time creating memories that will last for all eternity? This moment, right now, is truly all that matters. And whether or not our last moments come as a result of death or the return of Jesus, let it be a moment others will never forget! Be ready at all times, the Bible says, because we never know what the future will be!
V--Value Each Other--One of the big, emotional parts of the movie is when the main geologist is convincing the world's leaders that humanity is our ability to take a chance and help each other. I think sometimes, people worry so much about why people don't spend enough time for them or approve of certain things in their life, that they forget that people deserve to be valued. That means valuing their identity, their thoughts, their desires, etc. Sometimes, love can work very similar to respect--the more of it you give, the more you receive. It is hard to have someone pour love on you and not desire to return it back to them. If you want others to show more love to you, show more love to them. Don't wait for them to do it first. God is the perfect example of this. In Romans it tells us that God didn't wait to give us a way back to Him until we wanted it or were doing the right things; He did it when we least deserved it! What an example for us to follow. Life is simply to short to spend time destroying or devaluing others because in the end, the greatest thing we can leave as our legacy is love!
E--Encouragement--There are so many ways to encourage others. The biggest thing we can do is align our mouths with our actions. We need to stop saying we believe certain things to be true yet act out completely opposite of those beliefs! If we claim to be "Christ-like" which is what the word Christian means, then we need to live it. People already have plenty examples of messed up people and hypocrites. What they need is people who claim to live a life of higher standards than the world holds and can actually live up to their claim. They need to see that there is a hope of better things. What better hope can we have than the hope we find in Christ? I once heard it said that you can go through difficult times in one of two ways--with or without Christ. In this world we WILL have trials and tribulations. That's straight from the Bible. But we can walk it alone or we can walk it knowing the God of the universe is helping us through it. I don't know about you, but I can't make it through the hard times alone. It is in those darkest times that I can rest assured that God IS at work on my behalf and you can know that too!
Weekly Challenge--How can we put this into practical application? Well, this was pretty straightforward this week. Start loving with real love. Love your parents first by honoring their wishes and desires for your life. Start doing things just because for them. Stop spreading gossip about your peers. Live what you claim. Love God and trust Him with all that you are instead of trying to figure out how you can eliminate Him! Just love. And if you need to see what love in action looks like, pick up a Bible and read the Book of John. Jesus is love in action. Look at Him and see what love will do!
As Christians, we talk about how tomorrow is not promised because we are not guaranteed to live beyond the present, and we also talk about how we can look at the signs mentioned in the Bible as signs of Christ's return and know that He will be returning soon. But, what if that were really tomorrow? What if we woke up tomorrow morning, started to eat breakfast, and instantly found ourselves standing face to face with Jesus Christ? Life on earth as I have been living would be over in an instant! While I know that being in the presence of God for all eternity in a perfect and beautiful place that cannot be described by any words has to be incredible, I got to thinking about what kind of things I might regret. So, I basically wanted to share with you some thoughts I had while laying in bed so early in the morning, contemplating the shortness of life in light of love. And, for the sake of fun, I have four thoughts to share using each letter of the word LOVE.
L--Love God with Complete Abandon--This world is the stomping ground for Satan, whom Jesus refers to as a liar from the beginning and always lies because it is who Satan is. So, our nature, which is defined from this world, will be to lean towards trying to find ways to prove that we have no need for, not just God, but any god. We try to use science to show how the world created itself from nothing, found some way to make a few gases and land, then created simple organisms and found its way to more complex organisms. Now, I won't go into the argument for why this doesn't work, but if you're curious, feel free to ask me and I will share with you. We try to prove that the human nature can be good by going out and doing good things. Well, while it is true that we have the ability to do good things, there are few times when those people don't have a selfish reason for doing those "good" things. Any time we hear something that says how we can write God out of the picture, we latch on to it and say "See, this proves God doesn't exist" while really it just shows how dumb we are! If we spent less time trying to disprove God and spent more time living as God designed us to live, life would be better. I just think life and time is too short not to embrace the fact that the Creator of the universe loves us, made the perfect way to restore and keep a personal relationship with us, works things out in our lives (though not always how we'd like them and definitely not in our timeline!) and wants to bless us greatly! To embrace the guidelines He has given us allows us to see that God hasn't tried to set out a rules of do's and don'ts simply to try to tell us what to do but that He actually knows what things destroy us physically, mentally and spiritually so He has told us what those things are. His Words are the secret to a life of contentment and joy (there is no promise of easiness and happiness). It's time to abandon our desires to want to be able to do everything on our own and embrace completely that God empowers us to go beyond anything we thought we could ever do! Now that's powerful!
O--One Moment at a Time--I don't know about you, but I find that the more I focus on the future, the less time I spend focusing on the now. In the movie, the scientist who discovers the crazy heating of the earth's core is shown with his wife and daughter as a tsunami comes hurdling towards them to engulf them in just a matter of seconds. At that moment, the scientist grabs his daughters face and helps her to focus soley on him so that she doesn't worry about those last few moments in fear. What if this moment, right now, is the last moments I have with my family and friends? Do I want them to find me living in a future that won't look anything like I'm trying to map it out to be or do I want them to see me looking at them, giving them all my love and energy? All we really have is each blessed moment. Instead of focusing on all the flaws and mistakes of those around us, what if we just spent time enjoying them? What if we spent less time playing video games and playing on the internet and spent more time creating memories that will last for all eternity? This moment, right now, is truly all that matters. And whether or not our last moments come as a result of death or the return of Jesus, let it be a moment others will never forget! Be ready at all times, the Bible says, because we never know what the future will be!
V--Value Each Other--One of the big, emotional parts of the movie is when the main geologist is convincing the world's leaders that humanity is our ability to take a chance and help each other. I think sometimes, people worry so much about why people don't spend enough time for them or approve of certain things in their life, that they forget that people deserve to be valued. That means valuing their identity, their thoughts, their desires, etc. Sometimes, love can work very similar to respect--the more of it you give, the more you receive. It is hard to have someone pour love on you and not desire to return it back to them. If you want others to show more love to you, show more love to them. Don't wait for them to do it first. God is the perfect example of this. In Romans it tells us that God didn't wait to give us a way back to Him until we wanted it or were doing the right things; He did it when we least deserved it! What an example for us to follow. Life is simply to short to spend time destroying or devaluing others because in the end, the greatest thing we can leave as our legacy is love!
E--Encouragement--There are so many ways to encourage others. The biggest thing we can do is align our mouths with our actions. We need to stop saying we believe certain things to be true yet act out completely opposite of those beliefs! If we claim to be "Christ-like" which is what the word Christian means, then we need to live it. People already have plenty examples of messed up people and hypocrites. What they need is people who claim to live a life of higher standards than the world holds and can actually live up to their claim. They need to see that there is a hope of better things. What better hope can we have than the hope we find in Christ? I once heard it said that you can go through difficult times in one of two ways--with or without Christ. In this world we WILL have trials and tribulations. That's straight from the Bible. But we can walk it alone or we can walk it knowing the God of the universe is helping us through it. I don't know about you, but I can't make it through the hard times alone. It is in those darkest times that I can rest assured that God IS at work on my behalf and you can know that too!
Weekly Challenge--How can we put this into practical application? Well, this was pretty straightforward this week. Start loving with real love. Love your parents first by honoring their wishes and desires for your life. Start doing things just because for them. Stop spreading gossip about your peers. Live what you claim. Love God and trust Him with all that you are instead of trying to figure out how you can eliminate Him! Just love. And if you need to see what love in action looks like, pick up a Bible and read the Book of John. Jesus is love in action. Look at Him and see what love will do!
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Smitten With Love
At ATF, most of the weekend was spent talking about love. We talked about how to listen to love. This was about who and/or what our identity is based. We talked about loving sacrificially, and we talked about romantic love. To start the weekend though, we talked about our love for God and His love for us.
In my opinion, this was right on target because without this foundation, the other topics might be good but they are not going to be lasting. If we don't love God completely, then our faith is going to be shaky at best. Jesus understood this...which is why, when asked about the most important commandment, said "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:37)
It's at this point that I think a lot of people stumble. While this sounds simple, many people ask..."Why?". Why should I love God? What has God done for me? I've had really hard times. My life has been hard. What does God know about me? Why would God love me? It's really hard for us to love one way. Meaning, if you do not have love being returned, then it can be nearly impossible to really love with all your heart, soul, and mind. Many people, I think, feel like this is what Jesus is telling them to do.
Here is where many people miss the boat. The fact, that is often missed, is that God is completely crazy about you. He is absolutely smitten with love over you. Smitten is a fun word. It can mean very much in love, captivated, enamored, devoted, passionate, wild, charmed.
I think back to when Nikki and I were dating. She was in college and was living life based on a college schedule. If you aren't sure what I mean, most people in college will sleep in late, or take naps during the day if they have to get up early, and then stay up late. Many times when I was in college, I would start a movie, card game, Bible study, grocery store run, etc around midnight. That was common. Well, when we were dating, I was working full time and wasn't on the college schedule any longer. But, I would sit in my living room waiting for her to call at all hours of the night. I remember one time, Nikki was going to call around 11:30. I sat there and eventually fell asleep with the phone in my lap. She called around 12:30 or 12:45. Was I mad? No! I woke up and we talked for an hour or more. I was enamored.
Then, when I decided to ask Nikki to marry me, I wanted to impress her. I wanted the proposal to be thoughtful and sweet. I wanted it to be memorable. I wanted to show her how much I loved her. So, I planned. On Labor Day of 2000, I had the day off work. Nikki was a senior at Jewell and didn't have the day off. This allowed me to secretly make preparations. I told Nikki that our college group was meeting at the church for a prayer meeting. I had one of her friends drive her up to the church as part of the plan. Her friend, conveniently, forgot something in the car and Nikki came up to the sanctuary by herself. I stood at the front waiting for her. When she came in, she saw the rose petals that I had spread down the aisle. She walked down to me and we sat down together, and I read 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter) while fighting back tears. Then, we stood and I told her how much she meant to me. I explained that I wanted her to spend the rest of her life with me. I lowered to a knee and then asked if she would marry me. We prayed together and then danced to the song "Amazed" by Lonestar. After this, we went to a surprise party for her at the parsonage. Pretty much our entire college group was there. I even bought a cake to celebrate. I really wanted the night to be perfect. I was, and still am, smitten.
When it comes to God's love for each of us and my love for Nikki, it's not even close. God is much more smitten about us. There are two parables that Jesus used to describe how smitten He is about each of us.
The first is the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11). A man has two sons. The younger decides he doesn't want to wait until the father dies for his inheritance. He wants the money now. So, the dad divides the inheritance and gives the younger son his share. The son wastes ALL of the money with prostitutes and ends up in the pig sty. This has to be the worst possible situation for a Jew. He is feeding pigs! He is so hungry that the food they are eating looks good to him. The son decides to go home and beg his father for a lowly servants position. He knows that even his father's least of servants have a better situation than him. But, when the father sees him returning, he is elated. He loves his son so much that he completely overlooks the past mistakes and runs to meet him.
The other parable is the story of the shepherd with the lost sheep (Luke 15:1). A man has 100 sheep but loses one. He can't stop thinking about the one sheep. He is consumed with desire to find the sheep. He finally decides to leave the 99 sheep and find the one missing sheep. He searches and searches until he finds the lost sheep. He was devoted to his sheep and was willing to search until it was found. He is overjoyed. He not only brings the sheep back but picks it up and carries it triumphantly all the way home.
In Psalm 139:17-18, David says this about God's love for us:
"17How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
They would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you."
I think there are some passages that we kind of glide over when reading the Bible. I don't know how many times I've read this chapter and I've never put any thought into this particular passage. To really consider this though is breath taking. How many grains of sand do you think you could hold in your hand? Now think about the amount of grains of sand that cover the Earth. The University of Hawaii did a study to estimate the number of grains of sand on the Earth. Well, it's more of a mathmatical equation and there are assumptions involved. However, they found that there are 7.5 X 10^18 grains of sand on the Earth. This number may not seem very real to you. So, here is a visual image of the entire number written out.
7,500,000,000,000,000,000
For those of you who don't know how to say this number (I didn't either). It is 7 quintillion 500 quadrillion. Those are a LOT of thoughts. According to the Center for Disease Control, 78 years is the average life expectancy in the United States. In 78 years, there are 2,459,808,000 seconds. When you divide these numbers, it means that God thinks about us approximately 3 billion times per second. Talk about passionate obsession.
In the New Testament, Jesus says that even the hairs of our head are all numbered (Matthew 10:30 and Luke 12:7). Think about this for a moment. God knows how many hairs we have. Can you imagine your significant other, parent, or friend even wanting to know this information? I got a bit of a chuckle out of this when I was thinking about it. Actually, the chuckle was mainly thinking of Nikki's reaction as she wakes up in the morning and looks over at me. I have a big, goofy grin on my face. "Guess what I did last night" I say. "I counted your hair. You have 102,425 hairs. I stayed up all night counting. I would have gotten a couple hours sleep but I lost track the first time when I hit 73,004."
God loves us to the detail. He knows absolutely everything about us. He knows what we like and dislike. He knows our strengths and weaknesses. He knows our greatest dreams. He knows our heart. He can see every good thought and desire. But, He can also see every evil and terrible thoughts and desires we have. The things that we are ashamed of. Our past failures. The addiction, depression, anger, unforgiveness, bitterness, lies...anything we hide from others because we don't want them to think less of us. God knows everything about it. Everything. This could be terrible. God, who created the universe from nothing, could have decide we are not worth saving. He could have decided that we are past help, past forgiveness. But, it's not terrible. Because God loves us in spite of those things. God loves us enough to pay the ultimate price for us. He didn't wait until we became "good" people. He didn't wait for us to seek Him out or punish ourselves. He is smitten and He, Jesus, died for us while we were in our sin (Romans 5:8).
As Christians, when it comes to loving God and loving others, many of us talk the talk. We make grandiose promises about what we will do, who we will be for the person we love. However, few of us actually live up to all of those promises. God not only talks the talk, but He walks the walk. This video illustrates this well.
It is much easier to love God with all of your heart, soul, and mind when we remember how much He loves us. His love is complete, personal, and perfect. All of us have had human love fail us. But God's love will never fail. He is waiting, with open arms, for us to run to him. Please don't take His love for granted. He can, and will, change your life forever if you give your life to Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter that you have sinned. It doesn't matter if you have rejected God in the past. He loves you and is ready to take His place in your heart.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Loving One's Self
Okay, so last week we began looking at love--what it is, what it is not. Basically, love is not a feeling because it is something that God commands us to do, and we cannot completely control our feelings; therefore, love must be more than that. I read recently, and I've heard it said before, that love is a verb. I think that is very true because love flows from the heart into our actions, words and behaviors.
The second key part to Jesus' mention of the two greatest commandments (the first being to love God with all our heart, mind and strength) is to love ourselves. Now you might say where do you find this. It is simple. Jesus says we must love our neighbor as ourselves. There is a process here. First, we must learn how to love God. That means we focus our priorities around Him. We seek to know more about Him to get to know Him better (through prayer and reading the Bible). We place value of His opinions and desires for our life. We surrender our goals to become second place to His goals. Once we learn what it means to fully love God with all that we are, we can begin to put those same things into practice with others, beginning with who? Ourselves. We must love others as we love ourselves. Why must we understand loving ourselves first? Because we must understand what our love feels like. Let me give you an example. Most toddlers/babies go through a biting phase where they bite others. I know this because two of mine have done this as well as my nephew. When you have a child who is biting, you begin to get lots of advice on what to do to get him or her to stop. The one I've heard most often is to bite him or her back. Can you imagine an adult biting a 6-month-old or even a 2-year-old? It sounds mean, and I have to admit I've been very tempted to try it. The reasoning behind this theory is that little children don't really know what the biting feels like; they simply know the result works out in their favor. Big brother tries to take little brother's toy. Little brother bites big brother. Big brother drops the toy and runs away (usually crying to mom or dad). Little brother gets toy back. That's the desired outcome, and it usually works. Now, if someone were to bite the little one back, the idea is that they would see how painful biting is so they won't do it anymore.
Honestly, I have no idea of that works or not, but I think the same idea can be said of love. If we don't know how our attempts at loving feel, we may not fully understand whether we are showing love in the best ways. If I tell myself I hate me, I'm not going to be a happy person for long. So, it's easy to see that if I tell someone else that I hate them that they probably aren't going to feel love either. In order to show love most effectively, we need to experience both the giving of it and the receiving of it to understand the full effect of our actions. I once read a leadership book by John Maxwell that devoted a whole chapter to the idea that hurting people hurt people. The whole point of the chapter is that when we are hurting, we cannot encourage others because we all we can see is how much we are hurting. When we are hurting, we'd rather be around unhappy people because happy people make our stomachs' churn because we want to be happy but aren't. If love is seeking to encourage, get to know, honor, respect, and protect others, we must first practice those things to ounselves. When those things become habit, it is much easier to begin loving others, whom by the way, we cannot control. It truly is easier to love ourselves because if we don't like something about ourselves we can change it. But if we don't like something about someone else, we cannot change them. Plus, for love to be feel genuine to others it must be genuine. Love cannot be forced or fake so we must already know and understand genuine love.
Let me make it simple, we must know and understand how we want to communicate love and how that might received by others. What better person to practice on than yourself? That way, if you mess up, nobody has to know!!!!! Seriously, though, if you do not love yourself, you will not be able to really love others. Love requires the ability to put yourself aside and put another's well-being ahead. When we dislike ourselves, we become so focused on our own unhappiness that everything we do comes from that unhappiness. And remember, hurting people hurt others.
Put It Into Practice: How can you put this week's idea of love into practice? Figure out how you can genuinely love yourself. You may need to watch what things you say to yourself, what things you choose to believe that others are saying, how you let certain things affect your overall happiness, and what you are putting your hope and trust into. If you are struggling with finding the value in your life, then you need to seek out the One who defines value and created your very life. Of course, it all comes back to whether or not you have really accepted the first commandment anyway, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. If you have any questions about how to begin either of these two steps, please let Ryan or I know and we'll be glad to share with you.
Nikki
The second key part to Jesus' mention of the two greatest commandments (the first being to love God with all our heart, mind and strength) is to love ourselves. Now you might say where do you find this. It is simple. Jesus says we must love our neighbor as ourselves. There is a process here. First, we must learn how to love God. That means we focus our priorities around Him. We seek to know more about Him to get to know Him better (through prayer and reading the Bible). We place value of His opinions and desires for our life. We surrender our goals to become second place to His goals. Once we learn what it means to fully love God with all that we are, we can begin to put those same things into practice with others, beginning with who? Ourselves. We must love others as we love ourselves. Why must we understand loving ourselves first? Because we must understand what our love feels like. Let me give you an example. Most toddlers/babies go through a biting phase where they bite others. I know this because two of mine have done this as well as my nephew. When you have a child who is biting, you begin to get lots of advice on what to do to get him or her to stop. The one I've heard most often is to bite him or her back. Can you imagine an adult biting a 6-month-old or even a 2-year-old? It sounds mean, and I have to admit I've been very tempted to try it. The reasoning behind this theory is that little children don't really know what the biting feels like; they simply know the result works out in their favor. Big brother tries to take little brother's toy. Little brother bites big brother. Big brother drops the toy and runs away (usually crying to mom or dad). Little brother gets toy back. That's the desired outcome, and it usually works. Now, if someone were to bite the little one back, the idea is that they would see how painful biting is so they won't do it anymore.
Honestly, I have no idea of that works or not, but I think the same idea can be said of love. If we don't know how our attempts at loving feel, we may not fully understand whether we are showing love in the best ways. If I tell myself I hate me, I'm not going to be a happy person for long. So, it's easy to see that if I tell someone else that I hate them that they probably aren't going to feel love either. In order to show love most effectively, we need to experience both the giving of it and the receiving of it to understand the full effect of our actions. I once read a leadership book by John Maxwell that devoted a whole chapter to the idea that hurting people hurt people. The whole point of the chapter is that when we are hurting, we cannot encourage others because we all we can see is how much we are hurting. When we are hurting, we'd rather be around unhappy people because happy people make our stomachs' churn because we want to be happy but aren't. If love is seeking to encourage, get to know, honor, respect, and protect others, we must first practice those things to ounselves. When those things become habit, it is much easier to begin loving others, whom by the way, we cannot control. It truly is easier to love ourselves because if we don't like something about ourselves we can change it. But if we don't like something about someone else, we cannot change them. Plus, for love to be feel genuine to others it must be genuine. Love cannot be forced or fake so we must already know and understand genuine love.
Let me make it simple, we must know and understand how we want to communicate love and how that might received by others. What better person to practice on than yourself? That way, if you mess up, nobody has to know!!!!! Seriously, though, if you do not love yourself, you will not be able to really love others. Love requires the ability to put yourself aside and put another's well-being ahead. When we dislike ourselves, we become so focused on our own unhappiness that everything we do comes from that unhappiness. And remember, hurting people hurt others.
Put It Into Practice: How can you put this week's idea of love into practice? Figure out how you can genuinely love yourself. You may need to watch what things you say to yourself, what things you choose to believe that others are saying, how you let certain things affect your overall happiness, and what you are putting your hope and trust into. If you are struggling with finding the value in your life, then you need to seek out the One who defines value and created your very life. Of course, it all comes back to whether or not you have really accepted the first commandment anyway, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. If you have any questions about how to begin either of these two steps, please let Ryan or I know and we'll be glad to share with you.
Nikki
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