All You Need Is Love?

"Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7

If we truly look at this list of love, the love we have been trying to practice over the last month, can we say this is easy to display to the people around us on a regular basis?  Changing a normal reaction in a situation to a love action takes thought, awareness, and perseverance.  It requires us to look at the situation and the person differently than we did before we truly considered what Christ did for us on the cross and how we should take that into our daily lives.  I can tell you that this week I have not been patient, was not kind, was jealous, and definitely sought my own in some instances. 

In our house we have come to a couple of realizations.  Realization one is love actions are easier in our own home than they are once we walk out our front door.  My son put words to this one.  Early in the month during a conversation about love actions and what we had been able to accomplish that day in terms of love, he said, "...it is much easier with our family than outside."  How true is that?  How much easier to react in love in a place that is safe where you know the actions will be reciprocated (most of the time anyway)?  My daughter had a tough experience with this exact realization.  She ran into a circumstance where she was hurt by a friend of hers (being vague to protect the innocent) and was not greeted warmly and with love when that is what she expected.  I do give my Emma credit.  She does not hold onto things.  She has a wonderful ability to let things roll off her back.  As her eyes welled up with tears I said, "You can just come home with me..".  But she wanted to continue with the group, regardless of the hurt currently being felt, and she stayed and played and when I picked her up she spoke of a pretty good time.  My daughter's ability to let things roll off her back and move forward, to me, is the essence of forgiveness, and a definitive love action.

Realization number two is love actions are a decision, not a feeling.  We did talk about this a little in an earlier post, but consider the weight of that statement.  When you are faced with a confrontation from someone that seems unfounded, when you are being addressed by someone who clearly does not care about you, when you are faced with anger, how easy is it to respond in love?  You have to dig deep inside and find the source of agape love and make a very conscious decision to act in love instead of any of the other twenty emotions that are close to the surface in that moment.  Only through God's love and drawing on his strength can we change a normal human action to a love action.  This has been a poignant realization for my children and I.

However, we have the ability to do it!  In the old testament, Solomon spent a good portion of his life rebuilding the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.  He dedicated all his energy and talent to this calling on his life.  As he was prayerfully dedicating the temple to the Lord in front of the mass of Israelites he makes this statement to the crowd, "But your hearts must be fully committed to the Lord our God, to live by his decrees and obey his commands, as at this time."  1 Kings 8:61 
He knew in the splendor of the beautiful new temple, the Israelites would be able to worship and obey God, but what about when they left the beauty and comfort of the temple?  It is the same with us as we leave the comfort of our homes and go out into the world daily.  At home we can pray and talk about love actions and practice them with our family, but can we continue that focus when we are faced with our daily lives?  I say we can!  We need our hearts to be committed to God,  we need to rely on his strength, and we need the support of like minded people, but... yes we can! 

We need our hearts to be fully committed to God.  Are we fully committed to God each and every day.  No, because we are human, however there is forgiveness and grace for all who ask.  So each day we have the ability to renew our hearts before him and before we set out into the life he has for us.  Maybe if each day we started with Psalm 51:10 we may be better able to act in love.  "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."  I love that a pure heart is in the same stanza as a steadfast spirit.  We know we need a steadfast spirit to turn normal actions into love actions, haven't we established that?  So a  pure heart, committed to God, making a decision to act in love.

We need to rely on his strength.  If we considered what we had to accomplish each day, not just daily tasks but the interactions that those tasks lead us to, sometimes, don't you want to stay in bed?  Gideon felt the same way.  Israel had once again committed evil in the sight of the Lord and they were being attacked by the Midianites.  By the way, I LOVE the scripture that is coming!  The Lord picks Gideon, who is basically a farmer, to lead the Israelites to defeat the Midianites. Gideon basically says, "Are you kidding me?"  Then, the best thing ever!  Are you ready?  "The Lord turned to him and said, 'Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand.  Am I not sending you?'"  Judges 6:14 
Holy Batman, Robin!  First the Lord turned to Gideon, can you imagine that, and then told him to go in the little strength that a farmer had, that the Lord was sending him.  Trust the Lord and he will make up your deficiency of strength.  Is that awesome?

We need the support of life minded people.  Our children need us until they find that solid group of like minded people.  While they are still young we are their like minded people.  Remember Hebrews 10:24?  "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds."  Our children need us to remind them about love actions and the strength required to make a decision to move in love. 

Let your talk and focus on love actions continue.  It requires us to love the Lord, be committed to him, make a decision to love, be obedient, and be focused and sure of our love actions, persevere. Psalm 128:1,2 with Stacie in the parenthesis, says, "Blessed are all who fear the Lord (a heart committed), who walk in his ways (obedient decisions and actions).  You will eat the fruit of your labor (perseverance); blessings and prosperity will be yours (joyful life)."

I have already been blessed by love actions and watching my kids focus on them and their eyes light up when they commit a love action.  We will continue in this as we move through the fruits of the spirit.  All you need is love?  Not so much, we need the Lord, his strength and the help of other believers.  But love actions make the other fruits of the spirit seem a little more realistic.  Doesn't joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control all seem more do-able in the light of a love action?

The joy of the Lord is our strength!  Joy begins next...

By His Grace

And the Greatest of These is Love

I have an sweet aunt who has become a motherly friend since my own mother passed away. She has a 13 year old daughter who is my God-daughter and is a treasured possession of mine. This past Friday I received a text from my aunt: "can we come down this afternoon, Jennie's friend killed himself."

She is 13, he was 13. The world as she knows it came crashing down on her in an instant. This will be the hardest thing she will survive to date.

They arrived at my house before I did. When I walked in I just hugged and held on to Jennie as she and I both cried. I had no words for her. What could I have possibly said to such a raw pain, but in those few moments we were both protected from the ugliness of the world that swirls around us daily.

This could be my daughter in three years and what I want for her is to feel and cry and share, but to also turn to God. I want her to seek him as her refuge. We all have times in our lives where we have a choice, we can let whatever it is break us or we can search and find the comfort and love of our God. God needs to be my children's center. This event has caused me to be more diligent in seeking how to turn me from being my child's center to God being their center. Remember moving from challenged parenting to called parenting?

The first and most important command is to love our God. That means in all circumstances. Deuteronomy 6:5-9 says, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

Our love of our God needs to be evident and our children need to learn that love and what to do with that love each day. Love is an action and if we love God, we do our best each day to move and act in love. As our kids practice love actions I am humbled by the idea of how important this concept will be as they grow up and go through the trials and hurts of life. We make a choice to move in love, even when we are horrified and broken, there is a choice to make. We can wallow, which needs to be done also, but at some point we raise our teary eyes to the one who first loved us as proof through a love action that we want to be a part of his plan. We make a choice to praise him in the midst. Our praise may be tears, searching for his love and craving his arms, but that in itself is a love action. We could just as easily crawl up in a ball and sob. Yes, we can do that, and I am not saying we don't feel what has happened, but there is also a time for mind over matter or love actions over circumstances. We do have a choice to make in each circumstance. So love actions are external to our world around us, but also internal, when we make a choice to focus on God instead of what seems to overwhelm us.

'Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has His unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion? Then I thought, "To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High." I will remember the deeds of the Lord: yes I will remember the miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.' Psalm 77:7-12
Notice the flip in verse 10; 'Then I thought, "To this I will appeal..."' In the midst of feeling broken and hurt, Asaph, the psalm's author, makes a conscious decision to look at what the Lord had done in his life and to focus on the wonderful history he had with the Lord. That is a conscious love action.

While our kids are somewhat protected from the world, while we have more control of their time and schedule and intakes, we need to teach them about the love of God and create a chance for them to begin to develop a history with him so they can at some point look back and rely on what they have seen him do in their lives. He can do things in anyone's life, regardless of their age. If we teach love actions now, practice them with our children, give the opportunity to talk about them, will they return to them when they encounter a horrible circumstance or resist the urge to strike out in anger or frustration? Psalm 78: 5-7 says, "He decreed statues for Jacob, and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands. "And the greatest of these is love..."

By His Grace

How Does Our Traffic Flow?

So did you have good conversations about love actions?  In our house we realized it is much harder than it appears.  In the comfort of our family discussing the love that God showed for us when he sent his son and the love Jesus showed for us when he died on the cross, it seems an easy enough task to go out in love.  My daughter had an experience where her first reaction was love but when pushed further by her peers, she reacted with frustration.  My son had a deeper experience, which was good based on his biblical answers to what love is.  Remember I was unsure how much he actually got?  Well, here's what happened in his eye opening experience. 

He was at a swimming practice and was swimming in a lane with a bunch of 8 year old boys.  By the way have you seen how 8 year old boys interact?  Wow, some love action is needed there!  Anyway, I see my son's face curl up in anger and then he uses the kickboard to splash water at the boy in front of him, not in jest, trust me, that was not a playing face.  I immediately went to the end of the pool lane and asked some detail, told him his reaction was inappropriate and sent him kicking to the other side of the pool.  After practice, he came and sat by me and as soon as some of the other moms and kids cleared away I asked him to come sit next to me.  He said, "Are we going to talk about what happened with Jonathon?" (fake name to protect the innocent!).  We had a tearful exchange about how hard love actions actually are and when you get frustrated about something and someone is not doing exactly what you want them to do it is so easy to respond in anger.  It is not only hard for us, but very hard for our children also.

On the way home from a baseball game last night we had a family conversation about the flow of traffic.  My daughter first asked what the speed limit was on the freeway (we were not speeding by the way, but that could often be the case), then we talked about driving with the flow of traffic.  We talked with them about the safety of driving with the flow of traffic on the freeway and how someone going too fast would cause it to become less safe just as much as a person who was driving too slow.  It hit me that we, and our children, find it easier to move with the flow of traffic.  My son reacted the way he has seen other boys react in the same situation and his reaction is a common place occurrence in a swimming lane of 8 year old boys.  All day we move in and out of the flow of traffic as we walk in and out of God's spirit depending on the situation.  As parents and adults, we may have a broader perspective and catch ourselves flowing with traffic instead of walking with God.  Our children, may have a harder time making that distinction.  Kids are affected more quickly and more intensely sometimes because they don't have the life experiences that tell them how little something is going to matter in the next five years or even in the next hour.  How much more important is it then for us to try to help them understand what it means to walk and act in love?  So when they do have the life experiences they already have some perspective on God's plan for their journey and what it involves.

1 John 4:11 says, "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we ought to love one another."  I think Paul started with 'dear friends' because he wanted to comfort us slightly knowing that what he was going to tell us to do would be a challenge.  It is easy to love those that love us back, to act in love towards those that act in love toward us, but that is going with the flow of traffic.  Dear friends, this is going to be hard for us and it is going to be even harder to encourage our children to not go with the flow of traffic, but to buck the system and love their neighbor as God loved them.

Hebrews 10:24 says, "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds."  That will be my strength this week and my remembrance when I want to just not talk about love with my kids and not spur them on toward the journey God has for them.  When I am tired from all the end of the year festivities and all the commitments I have made and want to just sit and watch iCarly with my kids (which is not always a bad thing).  When I am more comfortable going with the flow of traffic, I will remember that we are to spur one another on toward love, and I will spur my children on to the path of love, sharing in their frustration with them, while knowing God is at work.

We are adding a card to our bathroom window: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud."  1 Corinthians 13:4  Love is the opposite of anger, frustration, and sadness.  My children came to that conclusion this week, fairly easily.  And even though it may have been hard to change a normal reaction to a love action this week, we know that we have a God who forgives and a family that holds on to each other.  Love is the opposite of the flow of traffic and we set out on another week to attempt to change more of our reactions to love actions.

By His Grace

Normal Action or Love Action?

Did you talk with your kids about love?  Did you ask them what they love the most?  God graciously set it up so I had an exchange with each of my children separately.  What he reinforced with me was that each child is very different.  Their responses were different and had they been in the same room and together in the conversation, they would have been influenced by each other.  I know this inherently, but it struck me how it was an example of how God knows each of us individually and knows everything thought and feeling, just as he knows our kids.

One thing I know about God's plan for my children's life, and my own for that matter, is that they have been called to love.  In John 15:16,17 it says, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit - fruit that will last....This is my command: Love one another."  God has a journey for each of us that involves loving from his love for us.  But what a concept for kids to understand!  So I did talk with my kids about love and the concept of John 3:16.

My son is an old soul and attends a Christian school, so his answers were mature and biblical but I question how much is truly understood about the love it took for God to give his only son to die for us; people who sin and ask for forgiveness daily.  But we will find out as we move through this month and as his experience with God's love shows fruit in his life.

My daughter on the other hand was more age appropriate in her responses.  She loves her American Girl dolls, her dog and a very treasured possession in the form of a stuffed animal named 'Spirit'.  From there we had a humorous conversation around this scenario, "What if there were a group of people that were sometimes your friends and sometimes not and they had all done something wrong and Daddy asked you to give up 'Spirit' forever so that their wrong would go away?"  Her face curled up in an astonished and horrified manner and said, "Why would he do that?"  It hit home when I told her that is exactly what God did for us when he sent Jesus to die on the cross for us.  He had the ability at anytime to make the choice to not continue the path his Daddy had asked him to take, but he did not stop it, he continued and fulfilled what his Daddy asked him to do.  "Wow", she says.  Big smile from Mom!  Remember I suggested you journal, this one goes in my journal because I know there are going to be things that don't go quite so well, mostly because I know my daughter, but I do not underestimate my God.

The love referred to in John 3:16 in the Hebrew is agape.  "Agape is generally assumed to mean moral goodwill that proceeds from esteem, principle, or duty rather than attraction or charm." Tyndale Bible Dictionary  In this form love (agape) is a moving, an action, a decision, not an emotion.  It stems from pure, divine love, but results in an action.  The concept of love might be challenging for kids to understand.  But if you ask when they feel love most often the answer will be: when I play with my dog, when my Mom takes care of me when I'm sick, or when I hug my Daddy.  All of these responses are truly physical action which is oriented in things; I play with my dog, Mom takes care of me, and I hug my Daddy.  A child potentially understands and feels agape love more than adults. I may learn more through this process than they do!  I can, however, provide help and direction on how to extend that agape love into their world daily.

In fact, we are given specific instruction to act in love.  In 1 John 3:18 it says, "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."  Right there is an example of the perfect parenting blueprint. How are we and our kids supposed to act, well we don't need a big parenting book to tell us, we know, we are to act in love, plain and simple.  But not so easy, right?   What does love in action look like for our kids?  Depending on their age it may, and probably will be, quite different.  How can we get them to look at the situations they encounter daily and act in love in those situations instead of out of frustration, sadness, anger or, best yet, competition?  How can they act out in love and show Jesus' love to those around them so they are set apart for his purpose and his plan for their lives?  And what if all our kids did do just that?  Would our schools slowly change?  Would our world begin to change its trajectory?

I know I am just a mother who wants the best for her kids and that includes attempting to equip them in the fruits of the spirit, the armor of God, and help them find their way in the world by looking to God as their center.  1 John 4:16 says, "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him."  So we move forward and talk to our kids more and more about love and encourage them to seek opportunities to act in love as Jesus acted in love for us when he gave his life.

We have taped John 3:16 on our bathroom mirrors and are beginning a challenge.  We are asking each day, how often did you stop and act in love today?  This is not a competition, but a way for my kids (and myself) to think throughout the day of ways to change our normal action to a love action.  I love (not agape) the words from a Brandon Heath song that say:
Someday I'll pass through the great sky above,
And the first thing I'll ask is how well did I love?
Did I leave the world any better than it was before?
Of all the things I've done, could I have done anymore?
From "As Long As I'm Here" by Brandon Heath

I want to be able to state that and I want my children to be able to do the same. 

By His Grace