DOES LOVE REALLY WIN?
I dare you to be bold and ask yourself, "Do I have what it takes to love people the way that Jesus loved them?"
We all wish to answer, "yes!" We envision ourselves telling the world, "I love without limits. I know how to love well!" But in this moment, the world is not eavesdropping. No one is waiting to be impressed with pretense. The only person who can hear your inward answer is you. So, give yourself the gift of raw honesty. "Do I have the courage, will, and self-sacrifice to love people boldly?"
We all aspire to love & to be loved. This is noble. Yet, I believe if we are honest with ourselves, every one of us must admit, "There are people in my life who are hard to love. Places where my love was lost. And times I cannot even look back on because the rage and pain are scary to face. No, even though I wish to, I don't always know how to love."
Me too!
This past year has wiped the pride from my eyes and I have uncovered an ugly truth about myself - I don't know how to love as unconditionally as I once believed. The brave question you asked yourself is the same one which has filled my mind for the past couple years.
When Raj and I first arrived in India, I felt like nothing could dim my warm flame. I was ready to shake this place with God's love! As I stepped off the plane two years ago, my joy and love crept into all the dark places. I emanated life and saw Heaven touching earth through me. I was a thermostat influencing the temperature around me, instead of a thermometer reading the environment I live in.
But lately, I see my light dimming and I have felt my love growing cold. I am disenchanted because I have seen the shadows, the injustice, poverty, and dysfunction. And it has changed me. The brokenness is hard to face every moment of every day. My love is exhausted.
Broken pieces
Let me give some context for why I have been feeling this way. You get to see through my eyes, not as a tourist who will go back home in a week, but as a soul who lives here day by day trying to make a positive change.
Imagine you are grocery shopping when a woman walks up to you holding her baby. She raises her hand asking you for money. You look past her matted hair into her beautiful eyes and smile as you hand her your extra change. Everyone in the store is shunning her, but she is a child of God and worthy of dignity! As you give her the change you hold her hand and say, "you are valuable to God!" She does not understand and you are not fluent in her language. You awkwardly smile. You are used to meeting many people asking for money so every time you leave your house you choose to take it as a God set up to plant seeds for Jesus in a culture which is adverse to open conversations about Him. But when you look down at the toddler in her arms, you realize he is naked. She sees your shock and holds the child up in your face as she shouts at you in her language for more money. Even in this uproar you block out her screams because your heart breaks for the baby. You think to yourself, "I'll show God's love by getting some clothes to cover him. This is so wrong! No human should have to go through that." You find your local friend who is in the aisle next to you and you say, "Hey! Let's get this kid some clothes!" But your friend tells you, "She is conning you. The ladies often use their children and strip them on purpose. They don't want clothes for their babies. If they keep their kids naked then people will pity them and give them more money. Even if you gave them all the clothes in the shop they would not dress their kids." Outrage! Heartbreak. But how! How can the one who is designed to be a child's fiercest protector abuse and use their own child? How can injustice like this exist? And why are people not confronting it? You go home and cry and cry, "God, how can this be? I can't handle this!" God speaks to you, "I still love her. Will you?"
This is my daily struggle - the tension between showing mercy and fighting for justice.
By shedding light on all these evils I am not trying to build a case against my host country, I am admitting the fact that sometimes I struggle to love when things get ugly. India has just as much injustice as every other country but it is honest in its faults compared to other nations who are masters at painting over real blemishes. Every nation and people have their own flaws but God says it is possible to love and be powerful in the middle of the mess.
I share all of this because I want you to know that you are not the only one who is weary. We all have exhausted the last drop of our love tank at times. But we don't have to stay there. We can find a way to love again, to shine bright again.
How healing starts
I remember the sweet moments at Bethel when God asked me, "Will you love people? Will you go and tell them about Me?" In the classroom, my little heart shouted, "YES! I'm so excited!" But saying "yes" was the easy part! The issue is how? How do we reform a culture with real, lasting, life-changing love? What does love look like? How should kindness respond in the presence of cruelty? When do we fight dangerously and when do we fight with peace? When do we choose justice and when do we choose mercy? How do we overcome evil with good?
Maybe my real issues are not rooted in what surrounds me externally but what is going on inside of me internally. The injustice on the outside should not be louder than the peace I have on the inside. I love what Bill Johnson writes, "You have authority over every storm you can sleep through." Jesus calmed the waves because His peace was greater than the storm. We will begin to see healing and real impact in our cities when we live out of our resting place in God's house instead of the chaos in our own house.
God says, "We love, because He first loved us." We can only give what we have first experienced. Every day, I need to step into God's waterfall of love and be washed and refreshed if I dream of splashing some of that sweet flood onto anyone else! God's love is the most powerful force in this world, but if we don't soak it up then we will not be influenced by it and we cannot share it!
Maybe my heart is tired because somewhere I switched from His well to my own well. I have been pouring from my tank of love & looking with my expectations. But I don't have enough love to cover this nation or even my own street. But one drop of God's love is more powerful then a cyclone of darkness. God's Name is the light that the shadows cannot fight! God's love in us makes the darkness tremble!
Jesus said, "One new commandment I give to you. That you love one another just as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you're my disciples." John 13:34
Did you catch that? We can love people the way He has loved us! It is possible! You and I have the best job in the world - to receive! To be saturated and bubbling over with the sweet love of Jesus! And then, release it, knowing that there is always more left over. God is not poor in love, He is rich in love! We don't have to enjoy God's love sparingly! We get to thrive in it! And we get to give it lavishly! It says that three things will always exist, faith, hope and love. (1 Cor 13:13) That means God's love will never run out!
Love the unlovely and unlovable
Love the ugly, the hypocrite, the cruel, the lawless, the adulterer, the heartbroken, the smelly, the bitter, the victim, the abuser, the hurting people. Love them past the faults on the outside. Don't look at them the way that normal people do, look deeper and call out the noble heritage that they have as the kids of the King of Heaven. Don't treat them as orphans, treat them as loved children.
"If someone has enough money to live well and sees a person in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in them? Let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions." (1 John 3:17-18)
Love sees a need and takes action by spending itself to fill that gap. God says, "You cannot love Me while hating your brother." (1 John 4:20) If we love God we must love people. All people. He showed us how it is done. In our brokenness, our injustice, and dirt, He looked at us and said, "Now there is someone who I can love!" God filled our cracked heart with pure love and chased our demons out and filled us with His Spirit. He did this for us. We were not forsaken so how can we forsake our brothers and sisters who are in the same pit we were pulled out of? God does not only expect us to love when it is easy, He believes we will love even when it is hard.
You see, love is never wasted. It takes courage to be kind and it takes honor to be merciful. The cross is the way God waged war! He went to war against our sin and the powers of darkness by "wasting" His life! God was dignified by going low and taking our blow. He won by surrendering Himself so we could live. God's cure for injustice was sacrifice and His battle plan was forgiveness. If God wins wars through grace so will we. We will never regret loving the way Jesus loves.
But how should we respond to injustice? How does good overcome evil?
Real love has boundaries
Love is built on two principles, "You are important & so am I."
1. I am important
Once, I was walking in a bazaar of crowded street shops. Suddenly a lady charged toward me and grabbed my wrist. It happened so fast that my physical reaction was to wrench my arm out of her hand. After Raj and I quickly walked out of that street I began to feel regret. Should I have reacted so dramatically? Should I have stopped and asked her what was going on? But the truth is, we need to value ourselves if we want to show value to other people. We need to know when it is safe to say "yes" and when we need to say "no!" Jesus did not live in reaction to people, He lived in response to His Father. Living according to people's expectations of us will leave us bankrupt. But living from God's expectations will empower us. If you never say "no" then that means that your "yes" is not intentional. We need to lead our "yes" instead of give our "yes" as a reaction to the demands on our life.
I think the biggest lie we can believe about love is that is is passive. But love is the last one standing in the fight when everything else fails. Love does not make excuses for evil, it crushes it. Love is not weak, love is a fighter. In one moment, love is the soft hug of a friend, but in the next it is the the battle cry to stand up for the weak. Love is the strongest substance on earth. Love protects by enforcing standards and boundaries. Love not only comforts but it also confronts.
2. You are important too!
Let's be honest, we all have that someone who brings out the hulk in us. The feeling of anger is not wrong but breathing life into the lungs of that beast will cause it to turn on us. The word "anger" is one letter away from "danger." God knows that hatred will eat us alive so He warns us to not let that monster grow even a day old. Benjamin Franklin said, “Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.” I feel comfort when I remember that we would not need to forgive if there had not been a real wrong in the first place. It is because of an injustice that we are able to choose mercy. Loving well does not mean that we give people our permission to take advantage of us. Loving well means that we are an advancer of people's identity in God. We hold them to His standard and advocate of who they are in Christ. And when they become hard to love we don't give up on them because our love is not subject to them it is subject to God.
"Hello from the other side"
An amazing minister named Bob Jones died and went to Heaven in '75. But he came back to life and tells about how God asked him only one question, "Did you learn how to love?" Bob replied, "No, I did not." God said, "I want you to go back." Bob replied, "I don't really want to." I can just imagine God laughing because He sent Bob back. Bob Jones live another 39 years and made it his mission to learn how to love to the degree that Jesus loved. He finally went home in 2014 on Valentines Day as if God was cheering, "You did it! You learned how to love." This story powerfully speaks to the fact that the critical issue to God is love. When God asks me that same question I want to be able to answer, "Yes!"
Love is in the house!
The remedy to a love sick world has set up shop in us, and He, the One called Love, is ready to get to work! We are filled with the Spirit of God. God's vision for your life is not to just get you to Heaven, it is to get Heaven into you and out through you! Our love tank will never run dry when we are tapped into His unending supply. I believe we will feel a rush of freedom when we can admit to ourselves that we don't know how to love the way we dream of. In our exhaustion we must tap into the abundance of God's love tank. Our love can only run as deep as the well we draw from. God says, "I saw your empty heart, so I loved you first. Now you have something to give away." So it begins with Him and it is continued through Him! If we want to live with real love, we must live aware that we ourselves are loved by a passionate God.
1 John 4:12, “If we love one another then God sets up house in our hearts and He lives in us.” Any time we're loving people, God's there. You don't have to move across the globe to be used by God. You just need to say "yes" right where you are, today, in your town, in your language, and in your home. Let's step out into the day together, with the same prayer, "God, I give you permission to interrupt my life! I want to find treasure in the hidden places again. Empower me to love people the way you love them."
How do you balance God's command to walk in justice but to show mercy? Do you ever struggle with the "how" when God asks you to love people? Do you have a story to tell of how you showed God's love? Share your thoughts in the comments below. And remember, God's biggest plan for your life is for you to be loved & to be love.