by Beth Moore
Please allow me to ask you a very personal question. At this season of your life, deep down in your heart, what things are you most afraid of?
Fears are fillers. Mind fillers. Heart fillers. Soul fillers. The enemy fuels them because they leave virtually no space for the filling of the Spirit and the welcomed flood of divine love. Second Timothy 1:7 (KJV) tells us that God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power, and of love, and of sound mind. Does that tell you why Satan would want to do anything possible to supply us with fillers other than the Holy Spirit?
Satan neither wants us to know who we could be nor what we could do. Lives full of God's power, love, and soundness of mind are a terrible threat to the kingdom of hell. After all he's done to me and to so many others, I want to be a threat. Don't you? How do we begin? By allowing God's perfect love to start driving out our destructive fears and condemning natures like an eighteen-wheeler plowing through a cornfield!
Wholeness begins by deliberately and daily receiving the lavish, unreasonable, unfailing love of God all the way into our marrow. When life is too foggy to see the evidences of His love around us, behold it in His Word, dear one! Know it until you feel it.
Chapter 33
LOVING THROUGH US
If anyone says, “I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen,
cannot love God, whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20)
I am convinced that virtually everything in an individual believer's life hinges on his or her deliberate belief and active acceptance of the lavish, unconditional love of God. I'm not sure we can be reminded too often of God's absolute priorities for our lives. No matter how different our personalities, gifts, styles of worship, or denominations, God's chief priority for every single one of us is that we love Him with everything in us (Mark 12:30). Like two chambers in one heart, the lifeblood of His first priority cannot flow apart from the second: that we love others as ourselves (Mark 12:31). What does the fulfillment of God's unparalleled priorities for us have to do with deliberately believing and actively accepting His lavish, unconditional love? Everything! First John 4:19 says, "We love because he first loved us."
One of the biggest hang-ups many believers have in loving God and others lavishly is a distrust or unwilling acceptance of the immutable fact of God's love! Everything begins there. How can we get on with loving God and loving others? We can consider all God has said and done to prove His love through His Word and His Son. Then we can confess the sin of unbelief and choose to act upon what God has said and done regardless of the ebb and flow of our emotions. If we would but practice this daily, how life would change!
Let's take a look at a few things John has to say about loving others in his first letter. I urge you to read the passages from your Bible. Here are my summary statements for several key passages about love.
· In 1 John 3:11-15 John posed two options. We can either love one another, with the probable result that the world will hate us, or we can be murderers like Cain. The litmus test for whether we have passed from death to life is whether we love our brothers.
· Then in 1 John 3:16-22 the aged apostle tells us how we know what love is: "Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers" (v. 16). He says if we hoard our wealth and don't care for others, we show that we lack the love of God. We already saw the connection that Jesus' power is greater than our hearts. I'd suggest that when we get busy allowing Jesus to love through us, we've made a great step toward also allowing Him to overcome our self-condemnation.
· First John 4:7-12 extends the teaching of love. Not only does love come from God, but "everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." The only reason we can even know love is because He "loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." The greatest manifestation of God this side of heaven appears as we love one another.
· First John 4:16-21 makes the connection between God and love so closely that "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." As we become like Jesus, love matures. It provides our confidence facing the day of judgment, and it drives out fear. But love must be practical. We can't say we love God and hate others. "Whoever loves God must also love his brother."
· First John 5:1-5 ties love to believing and overcoming. If we believe Jesus is the Messiah, we can't help loving the Father and the Son. The natural result becomes loving obedience. When we obey Him in love, the result becomes an overcoming life. So we begin with God's reasons to love, and if we stay with the Father, victory results through faith.
Admit it. Loving is a mammoth challenge. Because we cannot see Him, loving God can be even more challenging. Developing what St. John of the Cross called an "answering love" requires the active participation of faith and the willingness to learn to "live by the Spirit" (Gal. 5:16), no matter how awkward the process.
Let me assure you based on my personal experience, God is so patient! He simply wants to see that our heart's desire is to follow hard after Him even if the process isn't pretty. How in the world is a person with two broken legs spiritually and emotionally supposed to walk pretty? Take it from me on this one. Just keep taking another step in His direction no matter how ugly-and if you fall, fall forward and not back. Eventually and miraculously along the way, He will heal those legs. That's a big part of what will make loving Him so irresistible.
Somehow I don't find loving God quite as challenging as loving a few others I've known. I fear they'd say the same thing. Allow me to say that "Oh, brother!" is a common figure of speech for frustration for good reason. Our most serious challenges are usually not with circumstances. They're with people.
My younger daughter called from college recently on a rampage about someone she "just cannot stand." She is a God-seeking young woman with a fiery passion for His Word, but she agrees with most of us who feel we could serve others more successfully if others weren't so otherly! I reminded her of a difficult relational challenge she'd had the year before. Then I "consoled" her with the assurance that she'd have another next year ... and the next. Why? Because loving people we find difficult is so important to God. Just about the time we get one challenging relationship under the Spirit's control, God will supply another.
Have you found this principle to be true? How many people would you estimate you've been very challenged to love in the last five years? I just have a suspicion born of experience. I bet some of those relationships have become some of the dearest in your life.
When I began this chapter, I intended to use the phrase "loving difficult people," but under the direction of the Holy Spirit, I changed the description to "loving people we find difficult." As hard as this suggestion may be on our egos, just because we find someone difficult to love doesn't make him or her a difficult person.
The difficult person in my challenging relationship may be me! I'll never forget when someone who had just completed Breaking Free told me that I was her stronghold! Another who just completed Jesus the One and Only told me she could hardly stand the way I taught, but she toughed it out, received a blessing, and likes me better now. Sometimes two people just don't make an easy mix. What a perfect combination for the practice of agape!
That we exercise and strengthen weak muscles of what I'll call "otherly affection" is paramount to God. If I may be simplistic, it's why we're still here. So what's a believer to do with all the challenges to love people we find difficult? Forget faking it. The first sentence of Romans 12:9 says: "Love must be sincere."
You and I are called to the real thing. God already knew that commanding us to love others sincerely would force the issue of heart change in those who truly desire to obey and please Him.
While loving others God places in our paths will never cease to be challenging, the key is learning to draw from the resource of God's own agapao rather than our own small and selfish supply of natural phileo or fondness. Agapao is many things we i
magine as love, but two primary elements set it apart.
Agapao begins with the will. It is volitional love. In other words, the beginning of true love is the willful decision to agree with God about that person and choose to love. Secondly, when Scripture makes a distinction between agapao and phileo, agapao love is based on best interest while phileo love is based on common interests.
Both kinds of love are biblical and wonderful expressions in the body of Christ, but phileo love often originates through preference and taste as in a naturally developed friendship or sisterly relationship. Based on my limited biblical understanding, agapao tends to be the more "expensive" love because the element of sacrifice is part of its nature. God's directive in places like Luke 6:27 to love our enemies involves agapao. It's simply harder and necessitates will over emotion.
Earlier I pointed out that the key is to draw from the resource of God's own agapao. First John 4:7 tells us love comes from God and not from our own determination. His will is involved in choosing to receive and exercise God's love, not our own. Romans 5:5 displays the concept beautifully. It says, "God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." The first quality of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22 is love.
God's chief goal is to deepen each of our relationships with Him. He knows that if we don't see our need for Him, we will never understand how sufficient and wonderful He is. Therefore, He continually challenges us to live beyond our natural abilities. God knows that challenges like loving someone we find difficult will place the obedient in the position to come to Him constantly for a fresh supply of His love. We have to pour out our own toxic and preferential affections so our hearts can be filled with His affections. As we ask for our cups to overflow with agapao, the liquid, living love of God will not only surge through our own hearts; it will splash on anyone nearby. Glory!
So did John practice what he preached? I thought you'd never ask! Did you hear the gush of affection in John's constant endearments?
The original word for children is teknion, meaning "a little child." The seriousness of the subject matter tells you John didn't write to young children. He was an older man by this time, and his flock was as dear to him as flesh and blood. Jerome, one of the early church fathers (approximately A.D. 340-420), "tells the story that John lived to an advanced age in Ephesus. So feeble was he that only with difficulty could his Christian disciples carry him to the church building. He could hardly speak, but when he did he said the same words: `Little children, love one another.' Eventually his disciples grew weary of hearing the same phrase, so they asked him why he always spoke it. `It is the Lord's command,' he replied, and if this alone be done, it is enough."
My favorite account from the early church fathers concerning John was preserved by Clement. It begins with the statement, "Listen to a story which is not a story but a true tradition of John the Apostle preserved in memory." While visiting a new bishop and his congregation in Smyrna, John "saw a young man of strong body, beautiful appearance, and warm heart. `I commend this man,' [John] said, `to you with all diligence in the face of the church, and with Christ as my witness."' John returned to Ephesus and, as promised, the bishop took the young man under his wing and baptized him. Time passed and the bishop "relaxed his great care and
watchfulness.... But some idle and dissolute youths, familiar with evil, corrupted him in his premature freedom." Before long, the young man gave himself entirely to a life of sin, committed crimes, and even renounced his salvation. Eventually John was summoned back to Smyrna and asked for a report of the young man. Somewhat taken aback, the bishop answered, "He has died."
John inquired, "How and with what death?" When the bishop described the young man's abandoned faith as death, John replied, "Well, it was a fine guardian whom I left for the soul of our brother. But let me have a horse, and someone to show me the way." (Sounds a bit like the old Son of Thunder, doesn't it?) When the elderly John found the young man, he started to flee. John called out to him, "Why do you run away from me, child, your own father, unarmed and old? Pity me, child, do not fear me! You have still hope of life. I will account to Christ for you. If it must be, I will willingly suffer your death, as the Lord suffered for us; for your life, I will give my own. Stay, believe; Christ sent me." (These were figures of speech meaning that John would give his life to see the young man return to Christ. John knew better than anyone that only Christ could ransom a man's life.)
The young man wept bitterly, embraced the old man, and pleaded for forgiveness. The account says that John led the young man back and "baptized him a second time in his tears.... He brought him to the church, he prayed with many supplications, he joined with him in the struggle of continuous fasting, he worked on his mind by various addresses and did not leave him, so they say, until he restored him to the church, and thus gave a great example of true repentance and a great testimony of regeneration, the trophy of a visible resurrection."2
Yes, John practiced what he preached. I wonder how many fewer castaways might leave our pews empty if we practiced what he preached?
Chapter 34
LOVE IN THE TRUTH
The elder, to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth and not I only, but also all who know the truth. (2 john 1:1)
I’m having a bad day. A really bad day. I can either lose a writing day over it or write about it. I inherited a strong work ethic from my father, Major Dad, so brace yourself. I'm having that kind of day when I may do something rash like eat nothing but sweets. And I may go back and see if that woman who told me to have a nice day is still in the elevator. If she is, I'm going to push all the buttons at the same time and see if I can get her stuck between floors for a minute-then when the door opens, I might just say something mature like, "Same to you and more of it!"
This day takes my husband by surprise every year. He's not accustomed to my beginning a day bawling out loud. Then when he says, "Please don't cry," I reply (loudly), "I'll cry if I want to. And I want to!" He even called to check on me when he was halfway to work. He knows I'll be OK. This happens every year. I don't plan it. It just happens. I have a bad case of anniversary grief
The silly thing is, the day isn't the anniversary of anything tragic. It was one of the sweetest days of my whole life: the day our son of seven years came to live with us. The day on the calendar need be of no importance to anyone but Keith and me. And God. He knows. My head was so full of dreams that night. I had never seen a more beautiful little boy. He looked so much like Keith. But tiny. Almost fragile. He played with Keith's plastic fishing worms while I planned his whole future in my head. He would be my man-child. The one I always wanted. One day his wife would say, "I hope he loves me someday as much as he loves you." And I would think, He won't. Not really.
I just feel fussy today. I really like the song "Trading My Sorrows," but I have absolutely no intention of trading them today. For now, this pain in my heart is all I have left. Although I'm aware of the loss every other day, I rarely give it permission to shift to the gear of full-throttled pain. Today's the day. So for now, it's my party, and I'll cry if I want to.
For reasons known to God, the dreams spun in my head that first night were not to be. The whole situation has been hard to understand and impossible to explain. God, however, has gone out of His way to clearly state that we are not to interfere. We were on temporary assignment, and He'll let us know if and when He has further need for us. Period.
Every other day of the year, I can look at my life through a telescope and sit in utter amazement. God has fulfilled dreams I couldn't have had sense enough to dream. He has done the unimaginable. He delivered me from a life of recycling defeat and deeply embedded bitterness. He saved my marriage. Had anyone told me twenty-five years ago that I'd still be wild about my husband a quarter century later and have two young adult daughters who are crazy about Jesus, I might have thought they were dreaming. Not to mention God's scandalous love to allow such a forme
r pit-dweller like me to serve someone like you. Oh, He has been indescribably gracious to me ... just as He has to you.
On hard days we just need to pull back the lens a touch and look at the wider picture. But on those microscope days when we determine to slap the most upsetting thing we can think about on a slide and stare at it for hours, we throw a pity party and resent any loved one who refuses to come.
Do you have microscope days? And if so, what do you tend to focus on during a microscope day?
Let me warn you, Satan will rarely refuse to attend a good pity party. I appreciate the way Psalm 18:17-18 exposes the opportunism of an enemy. Of God David wrote, "He rescued me from my powerful enemy, / from my foes, who were too strong for me. / They confronted me in the day of my disaster, / but the LORD was my support." Don't think for a moment that Satan won't confront you on the day of your disaster-whatever that may be. Sometimes we give him credit for having a heart and respecting when something should be off limits. After all, fair fighters don't hit a person when she's down.
Satan is not a fair fighter. He confronts us on our worst days and approaches us with his specialty: lies. You can't imagine the lies he tries to tell me on my microscope day. Lies like: "You didn't love him well enough." "You failed him." "You failed God." "If you had just tried this ... or that." "If you had waited a little longer." Other times he tries a different approach. "Never take that kind of risk again." "Taking someone into your heart like that isn't worth it. You will always get hurt." "Love will fail you. Here's your old hammer, and I even saved the nails. Rebuild that fortress around your heart. Don't let anybody hurt you again."
Just about the time I want to default back to my old coldness, the Spirit of God within me whispers warm breath upon my cooling heart: "My little child, love comes from God ... whoever does not love does not know God because God is love."