September 14, 2007

• What does it mean to love the way God loves?

  I think it includes one big death and a thousand little deaths everyday for the rest of your life.  It requires a giving up of yourself and all your ideas of what you think is right –forfeiting it to God’s sovereignty.  Love like His means that if the recipient happens to make choices that are against ‘my will’ (what I think is good and right), I wouldn’t hold it against them by ceasing to love them, withholding grace or failing to extend a servant’s posture toward them as if to punish them for their poor choice.  As if I need to help them see what a horrible decision they have made by being one of the many who treats them poorly.  As if they didn’t have enough people in the world dumping on them.  If it was truly a bad decision, they will suffer the ill-consequences.  I don’t need to add to their pain.  They don’t need me to tell them it was a bad idea – they’ll find out soon enough.  What it means to love someone the way God loves is to extend my heart without holding back, without passing judgment, without being critical.  This kind of love is like a thousand deaths –  that leads to life everlasting.  Rather than give condemnation, I can give grace.  And from it, they will see the face of Jesus.

  • 8:19 pm
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