Where is the love?

by
published on 11/28/05
categories: Grace   Love  

This went on for a while.  The worst times in my life.  I sat in a place of pure darkness, a place of pure misunderstanding.  What was it that finally pulled me out of this never-ending path that I’d worn?  It was love.  It was God’s constant revelations of what love was and what it was not!  It is not what the world tells us it is - not self-seeking, lustful or fleeting.  It’s not within us, but within God.  Instead, what love in is Christ truly about – sacrifice for ALL (not just me, not just you), unconditional (through good and bad), non-judging (while right and wrong), all powerful (derived solely from God)– starts with us, individually.  I realized that in the command to love your neighbor as yourself, the sequence requires that you must first have a full and total appreciation for who you are in Christ - a loved being.  You must go beyond what you feel for yourself or how you perceive other’s feelings for you.  Recognizing your lack of control, you must acknowledge your imperfections as the reasons for love, and within those are the reasons to extend it further.  By finding your own special place in God’s heart, you are able to realize the special-ness in each person you pass every day of the week.  He doesn’t just love one of us, He loves us all. 

You see, I had to learn to accept that Christ died for ME.  That this amazing, unique gift of love was meant to free me.  But with this freedom, I am meant to recognize how unjustly it was given to me - that I must be just as open to sharing that love with others.  First though, I had to open the gift and I had to accept it, which meant that I also had to let go of everything that I’d held onto.  Everything that I thought defined me and my each of my relationships.  By accepting that love that comes with forgiveness at the ultimate expense, I have no choice but to extend it, unconditionally, to myself and to others. 

So I started small.  I caught myself with each negative self-talk comment that I made and I said “As true as this might be, a bigger truth says that I am forgiven and loved”.  I began to give myself and my imperfection a break, the break offered by the cross.  The freedom that came from that began to flow over into my personal relationships.  When I realized the release of my own anguish, I began to see the need for it in others.  So, with every judgmental comment/thought I began to say “As true as this might be, a bigger truth says that they are forgiven and loved”.  That affected my actions.. and now, before I act, I stop and ask myself “Where is the love in this?”

I don’t always get it right and still have my moments of frustration and judgment, but even in those times I can look to a bigger truth, that we are all forgiven and loved in a way that goes beyond our comprehension and in a way that offers such freedom, to pass it up is to choose a life in a self-defeating prison, but to accept is to choose a life of love!

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Angie is a social worker in Minneapolis, so filled with love and compassion of God that she hopes it spills over and impacts the world around her.


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suzanne Smith

on 02/25/06

I agree with almost everything you say, but I don’t believe that God forgives just anyone of anything automatically. I think that before he can forgive them, they have to ask! I can still judge a sin as a sin. When someone that I love does something that I know to be a sin, I gently correct them if I can. But, to just let them go on doing it because you think that God automatically forgives anything anyone does, is just plain wrong. That’s what’s wrong with the world today.  We have to be “born again”. That means that we have to change our minds and the things we do. We just can’t go on sinning and think that we are saved. Yes, we are definitely to love everyone, but accept what they do? No! Even though I’m saved, I still ask forgiveness each and every day!

Robert

on 02/25/06

Out of curiousity, since we sin all the time, even when we don’t know it, do you think a Christian will be forgiven and saved if they die suddenly and didn’t have a moment to ask for forgiveness?

How far do you think God’s grace extends?

on 02/26/06

Yes, I think a Christian will be forgiven and saved if they die suddenly and didn’t have a moment to ask for forgiveness. But, that isn’t the the part of the original story that I responded to. The way it sounded in that story was, that the person had caught herself in the act of judging someone and then thought that because God had forgiven her, then surely God had forgiven that person that she was judging, so she should too. What I’m saying is that God doesn’t automatically forgive everyone on earth. We have to ask for his forgiveness! We have to ask Jesus to come into our hearts and repent of our sins! We have to become “born again”. And yes, we still sin every day of our lives because we are only human, but I still believe that we have to repent and ask forgiveness every day. Why do you think that the prayer that Jesus taught us to say has the phrase in it - And forigve us our tresspasses as we forgive those who tresspass against us? Billy Graham says as much in his books. We can’t just go on sinning with no change in our lives. Jesus said in John 14, verse 24 “Anyone who doesn’t obey me, doesn’t love me”. It says in I John, chapter 3 verses 6-11, that if we keep on sinning, it shows that you belong to Satan. It says in Romans chapter 8 verses12-14 that if you keep on following your old sinful nature, you are lost and will perish. Read also, Hebrews chapter 6 verses4-6, and I John 2 verses 4-6
We sin everyday but we must try our hardest not to. That is what being born again means. Turning away from our sinful nature as much as humanly possible.
We are only children of God if we believe in him and repent of our sins and take Jesus into our hearts. Otherwise we are Satan’s children. That is why in the Bible it states that the way is narrow and few be that will find it. Just because God created us does not mean that he will forgive us unless we make the conscience choice for him.

Robert

on 02/26/06

I was just curious if you were expressing that salvation is dependent on us asking forgiveness, regardless if we have faith in Jesus Christ.

It had seemed that you were expressing that salvation is a works based system dependent on us to do the work of asking for forgiveness; and if we didn’t ask at every moment of every day regardless that we have faith in Jesus Christ, we wouldn’t be saved.

I view asking forgiveness as a reaction to the salvation that Jesus has given to us by His work on the cross, not by my work of asking for forgiveness.

That is why James talks so much about faith being dead without works. Works are our reaction to our faith, but our works do not save us. Asking for forgiveness doesn’t save us, faith in Jesus Christ does. Asking for forgiveness is our reaction to what Jesus has done for us, much as changing our lives to please Him is. They both go hand in hand.

on 02/27/06

I didn’t say that asking for forgiveness is what saves us. You are missing the whole point. We “HAVE” to do something in order to be saved. We have to make a conscience choice to repent, ask Jesus into our hearts and be baptized. The way that letter was written made me think that she thinks that just because God created us, we are all magically forgiven of everything we have ever or will ever do! It’s not that way! And again, if Jesus didn’t want us to ask forgiveness for our sins, why would he teach us “the perfect prayer” if he didn’t want us to use it? Did you not repent of your sins, ask forgiveness for them, and ask Jesus to come into your heart?
Some people honestly think that just because they were baptized as babies, that they are fit for heaven. They never have to do another thing. They don’t know any better because they have never been taught. They take their babies to church to have them baptized, even though they themselves haven’t darkened the doorway since their own baptism 25 years before. Then after the baptism, you never see them again. My best friend sincerely believes she’s going to heaven just because she was baptized as a baby. She refuses to even talk about Jesus or God or anything. She doesn’t “need” to.

Robert

on 02/27/06

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound as if that is what you said, but rather that is what I got from what you said.

My point was the we don’t save ourselves in anyway. It God who gives us faith, it is God who calls us to be saved. We give in to Him and He does the rest. He changes us and being receptive to that change will change us. This change brings on repetance, and forgiving others for what they have done to you.

It isn’t your call or mine if another is saved or not. We don’t need their validation for it to be true. Salvation is between each person and God, not between someone else, me and God. I have nothing to do with your salvation, just as you have nothing to do with mine.

Don’t misunderstand me either. We need to allow God’s change to happen in our lives, otherwise we aren’t truly having faith. But realize, I believe it is God who does the work and not me. I don’t look to myself to save myself by asking for forgiveness, nor do I look for someone else to validate my salvation that God has given me.

With that being said, I believe Angie was expressing that she needs to forgive others just as Christ has forgiven her. Just as the Lord’s prayer says. Also, that she/we shouldn’t be judging others because that brings judgement on ourselves.

Salvation and faith are from God alone. Your friend may talk to Jesus all the time and you just don’t know it. But, becuase you don’t know, doesn’t then make her unsaved. That is what I am trying to get at with so many Christians thinking that they need to validate someone elses faith in order for it to be real. But, I don’t know your friend, or you. I am just saying, you might not know everything that your friend does when she is alone with Jesus.

Just my two cents and I apologize if I have made you upset.

on 02/27/06

You diidn’t upset me at all. I just am frustrated because I don’t seem to be getting my point across. I am in a Bible study right now and we have been discussing the “once saved, always saved” philosphy that some believe. We have practically torn apart the Bible to find where it says that. I had a gal work for me at my place of business and that is what she believed. In fact, she wore her religion so much on her sleeve that other young people her same age really looked up to her and wanted to be like her. After work one day, she went to the bar with the rest of them (who wanted to be like her), and she talked about how she smokes and drinks and takes drugs and how she has sex with guys, etc. These impressionable young people then came to me and told me what she had said. I was appalled and I told her that she was a stumbling block to them. But she told me that it didn’t matter what she does because she’s saved.
And yet, when you look up all those passages that I talked about in my earlier notes, that’s absolutely not what it says in the Bible. It plainly says that if we keep on sinning, we are lost!
Also, the thing about my friend. She doesn’t know that least thing about being saved and she’ll tell you that. When I told her the other day about heaven, she said she doesn’t have that kind of faith. And it’s because she was never taught. Her folks didn’t go to church and she doesn’t go. She doesn’t read her BIble and literally doesn’t know a thing about it. But, like I said, she thinks she’s going to heaven because she was baptized as a baby. I feel that baptizing babies is wrong and is actually a lie that Satan uses to keep people from God. Anyway, it is in our church. I would estimate that 75% of the babies that have been baptized in our church in the last 20 years, have never darkened a church doors, nor do they know the smallest detail about how to be saved. Their folks weren’t raised in a church and were never taught and it has visited 2nd and 3rd generations in this way. They don’t realize that there is more to going to heaven than just being baptized as a baby. I was raised Mennonite, that is why I know the truth. The church I’m a member of now is Methodist. Our minister believes we evolved from apes. She also says that the Bible is not the divine inspired word of God. She even said in the pulpit one Sunday “Baptism is not so much about repentance or the forgiveness of sins, as it is about just receiving a blessing from the Lord”. Now do you understand where I’m coming from?

on 02/27/06

I just wanted to say that Robert is right, my point was not about God’s forgiveness of others, but instead it was (and still is) about exemplifying God’s love and forgiveness shown toward me on the cross by doing as He called us to do: emulate Jesus.  Jesus loves and forgives me daily, hourly, “minutely”, “secondly”!  He died for me! I am the worst among sinners and, because of that, I need to offer the same grace and mercy given to others whom I come across. 
I appreciate that there are times that we need to “call out” other people’s sins, but I believe that is also supposed to be done in a spirit of love and forgiveness, without judgement as that is not the example we have been shown!  So regardless of how you want to look at it, the question still remains: Where is the love!?

on 06/15/06

I am not Christian, although I went to a Christian private school for 7 years (chapel 3 times a week etc). What would happen to a person like me after dying according to your faith?

Rowan

on 10/10/07

"I feel that baptizing babies is wrong and is actually a lie that Satan uses to keep people from God.”
I don’t agree that’s it’s a lie of Satan. There’s nothing wrong with it at all. In essence all it is is prayer, a prayer that a baby would follow the way of Jesus. Isn’t that what you pray for your friends? So why not for your baby?

The problem isn’t baptism; it’s the reasons it’s done for. It’s only a problem when parents have their child baptised thinking that he/she is now saved from eternal damnation.

“Baptism is not so much about repentance or the forgiveness of sins, as it is about just receiving a blessing from the Lord” Unlike you, I completely agree with that. Baptism is just praying for a life of love and unity with God. Baptism isn’t about repentance or forgiveness, those two things are up to the individual.

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"But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works." Psalm 73:28