A Monthly Reflection
“Let us beg of God to enable us to prove ourselves his children.”
Matthew Henry and Thomas Scott, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1997), Mt 5:43.
This month we sought to be challenged to living a life of love & obedience. What is love and what has it got to do with it? When Tina Turner in her chorus says,
What’s love got to do, got to do with it?
What’s love but a second-hand emotion?
What’s love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?
It is loss. A mis-construed ideal that love is just a 2nd hand emotion and it is not worth it. It is eros. It is passion. It can cause pain. I wonder if she ever read C.S. Lewis and felt the pain that this 2nd hand emotion really does bring. C.S. Lewis in the four loves states that only agape is on-top. It is the master over the other 3 loves of eros, storge, and philia. And while it is heavenly and self-sacrificial – it does not make the other three less valued or important. It sustains them.
I would almost venture to say that most people think love is just that – a feeling. A motherly feeling, a brotherly feeling, and intense sexual feeling. Yet these are just a small substitute (if I can even call it that) for real love. Real sacrifice. Real compassion. Real understanding. Real.
Of course hearts can be broken. Our egos smashed. Our griefs drugged through the other emotions as we endure a death to a loved one or a loss of employment. Perhaps a back-stabbing friend who quickly becomes our enemy. There is an opposite to the 3 minor loves, and they come with shock, with pain, with grief, and with sorrow.
Agape is different. If you are truly living and breathing and serving in agape-based love then you are living out 1 Cor 13 word-by-word and breath-by-breath and it endures all things, all pains. I believe this extends into joy in trouble, smiles in pain, prayers in trenches, and gratitude. There is no opposite to agape, in a bad copy-cat but diametrically opposed manner. Sure you cannot have agape and live for your own selfish reasons but that is different. That is the negative not the opposite.
The challenge is to live in that agape as it leads to endure the pains of the other 3 loves when they are pushed up against a wall and wrung out of its juice, its flow of goodness.
But how?
And that is the question. We need to live it out on our knees praying for us to truly understand what agape is, how it functions, how it should permeate every ounce of our being.
That is how we love our L-rd. If we have agape for Him, we will sacrifice anything of ourselves for Him because agape cares for others and their well-being. If we surrender to our Abba, then we want His best, His well-being and not our own. In fact, the Bible is clear on this point.
Or do you not know that your body is a [k]temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from [l]God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. – 1 Cor 6:19-20 NASB
We are called to honor G-d, to glorify Him, because He paid the price. A huge sum. And He gives more and more to us daily. And mix that in with agape and you yield out a dessert of cake and icing, if trusting is the cake, and obedience is the icing. You need to trust to obey and as the cake holds the icing so does trusting holds the obedience.
To quote Mr. Lewis, in Mere Christianity:
To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says.
There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus
if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him.
So do we trust Him? Like Lewis, if we trust G-d then we should take His advice. And trust since it comes from the heart (the cake) then we should be trying to obey Him (the icing). Oh that sweet icing. But we need the cake to offset it. To give it substance. To make it last and not just drop into a mound of gelatinous sugar. For it to have a shape, to have a purpose, we need to trust G-d, even if that means through suffering from circumstances via the other loves.
Our heart needs to be pure. Think to Matthew 5:8 NASB:
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see G-d.
Did you catch that? They shall see G-d. Not that they might. They will. And in a culture and being human means tangible items or sayings such as “prove it” or “put your money where your mouth its” or by trying to amass great amounts of riches on Earth prove that we are sensual creatures. We need to taste, touch, etc. And it is in this context, albeit probably more spiritual that if we have a pure heart we WILL see G-d. And what does that, or should that yield?
Trust.
No doubt. You can’t see G-d and not trust. He calls you to it. He proves Himself through it.
Ok, maybe, you can doubt yourself. I do. Moses did.
But not G-d. You really can’t not trust Him. He follows through on His promises and He just said we will see Him. Thus, we can trust Him.
And this yields to obedience as previously mentioned by C.S. Lewis. It is a natural progression. You really can’t help it. And why would you? Love is driving it. It is picking up the fork to eat the cake. And the good news is we get to eat it and not take on the negative pounds of physical weight. It is yummy to our tongue and good for our bodies. We need it. G-d wants it.
Win-win.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves me longing for cake. What about you?
What flavor of cake do you want? Or more accurately – what are you needing? Coconut pecan flavored – less greed and selfishness. Or what about carrot – going out of your way to help others even if you don’t feel like it. Or maybe you enjoy a healthy dose of dark chocolate – acts of service to the less-fortunate. Or maybe it is the sweetest and milk caramelly of dulce-de-leche = pure sweetest form of agape to and for our L-rd.
Whatever flavor you have on your mind or within the scope of your palate – you can’t go wrong.
Savor the flavor. Enjoy each bite. Lick the plate of the final drops of crumbs and icing.
And yes, I do like dessert. I like cheesecake too. I need the heavenly cheesecake, the sweetness of trust and obedience, with love driving the way.
On repeat. Encore:
Oh please Father, please help me to be surrendered to you often and forever. Please help all of us see you as #1 and allow you to be #1 in our lives no matter what the cost as you are totally worth it. Please give us strength when we are weak trying to follow your will. Please have mercy upon us as we have shortcomings, character flaws, and overall are prideful and stubborn creatures. We need You; I need You. Thank you for your grace and mercy as we are lost without you and desperately in-trouble. Please help us to love you wholeheartedly as time goes on and for us to grow in love, adoration, and praise for You.
A partying thought to ponder from Oswald Chambers, January 18, 2023, MUFHH:
Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” —John 20:28
“Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink’ ” (John 4:7). How many of us are expecting Jesus Christ to quench our thirst when we should be satisfying Him! We should be pouring out our lives, investing our total beings, not drawing on Him to satisfy us. “You shall be witnesses to Me…” (Acts 1:8). That means lives of pure, uncompromising, and unrestrained devotion to the Lord Jesus, which will be satisfying to Him wherever He may send us.
Beware of anything that competes with your loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of true devotion to Jesus is the service we do for Him. It is easier to serve than to pour out our lives completely for Him. The goal of the call of God is His satisfaction, not simply that we should do something for Him. We are not sent to do battle for God, but to be used by God in His battles. Are we more devoted to service than we are to Jesus Christ Himself?
Dessert anyone………
