Living Life for Christ Alone

Love. What is it like?   At times, it’s silent and lowly.   He quiets me and beckon s for me to look.   A baby is nestled up to me, asleep. She feels safe and loved.   She knows she is cared for.   She knows she will have her needs met by me if she cries.   Sometimes, it seems she can’t get close enough to me.   She hangs on tight with her little arm around my shoulder.   I fight the restlessness inside. There is so much to do.   I feel like I have accomplished nothing.   But He settles me again, and motions towards the baby.   “This is kingdom work,” He whispers.   “Why?” I ask.   I won’t walk away from this later and feel like I’ve accomplished anything.   I won’t have a checked-off to-do list to show for this day.   I won’t be able to talk about some grand daring feat I managed to pull off.   It doesn’t seem to matter much in the bigger picture of things, my feelings say.   But then, ...

 “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loves us…” 1 John 4:10 Love is NOT defined as us loving God.  Why?  It’s no miracle for imperfect ones to love One so perfect as He is -even if it is only in an admiring sort of way.  If love is us loving, the best we give is our leftovers, for we are always self-preserving. And that love amazes no one.  Don’t look at humanity to see what love is. You’ll never learn love there. At least, not in the fullest sense.  No, the best ways we love are when we live fully in the way God created us, but even then it falls way short.  Fatherhood, motherhood, marriage, friendship, etc. -these are only dim pictures of the love of God.  Love is THIS: God loving us.  One so perfect should not love ones so unlike Him -but He does.  He set His love on humanity and chased her all the way to the grave. He traded His life for hers. His perfection for her filth.  We are the ones who should have hung o...

“But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1 John 3:17) Shuts up his heart. Makes it so that the needy person has no access to the tenderest emotions that are felt there.   In a world that encourages us to put up walls and shut people out who hurt us, Jesus lifts high a different banner. He shows us a better, more beautiful way. But it is the way of the cross; the way of true, heavenly love.   You can’t truly lay down your life with your heart shut up –walls up, roof on, windows and doors locked. If your heart is inaccessible, so are the tenderest emotions that are needed to love another human being. And if compassion and tender love are not an ingredient in laying down your life, you aren’t laying it down.   But the risk involved in opening  your heart to another human being is huge. How many would dare go to that extreme for someone?   Many have been so hurt by...