“Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.”

Welcome back to the Love Jam series! Last time I talked about how love shouldn’t be used like a drug intended to make you feel good, and its purpose is not to boost one’s own ego and elevate selfish needs over the needs of others.

At this juncture along the road to understanding the kind of love which the Apostle Paul writes about, we need to take a step back and look at a common element to the breakdown of loving relationships: friction. We all know what it feels like. Whether it’s between father and son, sister and brother, best friends butting heads, a guy and a girl — something is just not right. Tension is in the air. Every word spoken grates on the nerves. Any little comment can seem like an insult. Sometimes this may be a low-level feeling seething underneath the surface, whereas other times it is punctuated and explosive at the most inopportune moments.

Friction is almost always a result of one simple human truth: when someone makes you feel unwanted, stupid, disrespected, or misunderstood, you tend to get angry about it. This anger comes in the form of resentment, and resentment usually leads to a warfare mentality. We’re at war, it’s him/her against me, and we’re no longer working together in this thing called life but are at odds with one another.

Now if you think you’ll win the war by looking out for number one and standing up on your own two feet and declaring your rights, here’s a newsflash for you: you’ve bought into an insidious lie, and you’re a fool. Hey, don’t get mad at me for saying so — I’ve bought into this foolishness many times myself. I keep thinking that if only the other person would simply realize how bad they’ve made me feel, they’ll change and treat me right. Sorry, that never works out in the end, because here’s the deal: love does not insist on its own way. If I’m forcing someone to walk around on eggshells and baby my poor ego, I’m not showing them love, I’m actually robbing them of the joy, freedom, and compassion that they so rightly deserve as children of God.

Love is not irritable or resentful. This means that we need to keep a constant check on our attitudes and watch out for the things which cause us to lose focus on showing love with patience and kindness. If we allow friction to continue, we’ll get a blister on our souls. Remember how you get blisters on your hands or feet? Constant rubbing a little bit at a time. It can grow to be very painful, but the cause is so subliminal.

When we are upset, we will say the things we’d never say when we are in our right mind, and that is a danger. James puts it this way:

“We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.”

James 3:2-5

How can we stave off resentment and lift the other person up even when it feels like it’s at our expense? This is where a little wisdom goes a long way. “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” Proverbs 12:18. The key is this: your measure of sacrificial love is in direct proportion to your revelation of the depth of love that God has for you and how much He has forgiven you even when you’ve sinned against Him. When you seek the Lord for wisdom and understanding, when you ask Him to show you the fissures and crevices in your own heart, when you allow Him to bring change and transformation to your own thoughts and emotions, you will discover that following the way of True Love by not insisting on your own way brings far more blessing, health, and peace to your relationships than all of your irritation and resentment.

I pray the following verse on a regular basis for myself as well as others, and I have found it to be extremely powerful. There is no one alive today who is not in need of a larger heart. May God give us more of His heart as we chase after Him!

“I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!”

Psalm 119:32

“Love does not boast; it is not arrogant or rude.”

If I could sum up these three interrelated concepts that Paul addresses in his admonition to the church in Corinth, it’s simply this: don’t use.

Love is not an emotional drug. Love is not here to make you high. Love is not something that exists for your own selfish pleasure. Love does not use people, treating them like means to an end. Love does not seek its own glory. Love is not a vehicle for getting whatever you want out of life. Love is the very antithesis of narcissism.

Something has been bothering me a lot lately, and it just came to mind as I was writing this entry. The value of true love in our modern pop culture (and I’m speaking of romantic love in particular) has become greatly diminished, and that is truly a tragedy. Please, I don’t want to sound self-righteous when I say this, but it saddens me when I hear folks make cynical remarks and excuses for the institutional failure of marriage. When we hear about the rise of teen sex, or the skyrocketing divorce rate (even in the Church, which is deeply troubling), or the moral failure of so many leaders (even in the Church, which is deeply trou…um, yeah…), the response from a large segment of the population is just a sort of cop-out, like “well, that’s just the way it is. No getting around hormones. Our grandparents probably did all that too — they just didn’t talk about it. It’s only fundamentalist hypocrites who are making a big stink, and they’re off fooling around as much as anybody.”

How did we get here? Why are people so ready to make excuses? Now I want to make something very clear: following the ways of true love is hard work — really hard work! Believe me, I know! I struggle with love the same as the next dude. That’s why it’s so important that we follow love back to its source and discover the One Who is Love. Only the God of Love can empower us and enable us to live a life of true love. When we are tempted to allow pride and arrogance to blind us from the very real needs and dignity of others, when we begin to slide down the slippery slope towards coarse behavior which taints our thinking and perverts a godly perspective on covenant, that’s when we need to fall on our knees and beg God to fill us with His strength and wisdom to seek His will in our love relationships.

My #1 priority in life is to honor my parents, my family, my friends, my loved one, my neighbors, my co-workers, and — ultimately — to honor the God Who created them. I can only do that when I lay down my pride, my boasting, my selfishness and greed, my desire for personal gain, my negative emotions, and seek out what is in THEIR best interest over mine.

The Bible says that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Wow! Since I really dig grace, maybe I should check out this humility deal. It might be good for me!

I love reading through Proverbs. The contrast between good and evil, wisdom and foolishness, light and dark, obedience and rebellion, love and hate — it’s all laid out in, well, black and white. Here we have a classic example: the writer of this proverb, Solomon, is making a comparison between having a heart that’s filled with peace, tranquility, soundness, healing, and a heart that’s corroded by envy, jealousy, competitiveness, mean-spiritedness, self-centeredness, a “what’s in it for me?” attitude. The former brings life to your flesh, nourishment to your body. The latter makes your very bones turn to dust.

This teaching is pretty clear. If you want to live a healthy, successful life, seek God’s peace and healing. If you want to live a life doomed to sickness and destruction, follow your negative emotions into the pit. Guess what? That’s what I did. There was once a time when I focused on myself. I blamed others for my own failures. I allowed anger to rise up within me when I saw others more successful than myself. I looked for ways to boost my own standing rather than help my fellow man in a sincere manner. I wasn’t a source of healing in my life or others. Rather, I desperately NEEDED healing!

Thank God for God! He is the Healer! He longs to restore our hearts and drive out the demonic forces of envy and jealousy that would seek to destroy us. I don’t know about you, but cultivating cancer in my bones doesn’t sound too pleasant. Maybe learning how to walk along the path of true love — cultivating a peaceful and tranquil heart — would be a far more beneficial endeavor!

How are your bones?

“Love does not envy.”

At long last, the Love Jam series continues! It’s been over a month since the previous installment, largely due to the fact that momentous events transpiring in my personal life combined with several weeks of ongoing illness (I literally caught the flu from hell) rendered my abilities to focus on blogging severely limited. But here I am, and this time around the topic is very interesting.

I must admit, I’ve had a bit of a hard time discerning where I should go with the concept of envy. The Greek word zeloo suggests connotations of jealousy, covetousness, and “heat” in the sense of negative emotions against someone, or indignation. Interestingly enough, the same word can also imply, in different contexts, to be zealous in the pursuit of good or to earnestly desire something.

Perhaps therein lies the dilemma. We often start out a quest to obtain something desirable with good intentions. We want to be honest, caring, and “do the right thing”. We usually don’t premeditate a path of envy and jealousy! The problem lies in our fallen sin nature. What begins as a noble pursuit often ends up in bitter strife. We begin to covet what others have that we do not, or we allow anger to rise up inside of us when we see others’ successes amidst our own failures. We want things to come easy, and when they don’t, we aren’t content to wait our turn.

Here’s another way to look at envy. Do you remember ever having a really miserable day — feeling lousy with a pile of work to do — and then some friend or family member comes along and describes all the fun they’ve been having or will be having and how awesome everything is? What is your reaction? Do you want to say “that’s great, I’m so happy for you! Rock on!” or do you feel like slamming their head against a brick wall? Hmm, maybe it’s just me. Usually when I’m feeling miserable, I want everyone else to join me in my misery. How dare they feel great! How dare they have fun when I’m going through hell!

In very close relationships (best friends or man/woman), jealousy can often sneak up on you when you least expect it. A little perceived slight here, a little rebuff there, a little too much attention paid to a personal annoyance, and you can find yourself falling into a dangerous pit of hostility towards the other person. What’s wrong with you? How come you’re spending so much time focusing on [fill in the blank] when you should be focusing on ME! Aren’t I the most important thing going?

The Apostle Paul says that love does not envy. Rather, love honors someone else’s successes and accomplishments, even when you feel like a failure. Love cherishes someone else’s blessings and possessions, even when you feel like you have nothing. Love appreciates and respects someone else’s priorities, pastimes, and pursuits, even when you feel like they take attention away from yourself.

Love gives the other person room to be themselves. To be who God created them to be. Love celebrates the other person — even at your own expense. I want to be someone who honors others, and that’s why I have to be vigilant to ensure that in my zeal and my desire to pursue good things, I don’t give way to the negative side of those passions.

“So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

1 Peter 2:1-3

“Love is kind.”

We’re continuing this series on the attributes of love that the Apostle Paul describes in his first letter to the church in Corinth. In the first two posts, I talked a good deal about patience and the importance of waiting and being content with lack while trusting in God for future supply. Now it’s time to move on to the next facet of love: kindness.

Kind. Gracious. Mannerly. Useful in a moral way. These are words we could use to describe the implications of the original Greek meaning, and they provide a useful (to pardon the pun) insight into this aspect of love. Here’s the bottom line: I really need to work on this! You see, I tend to jump to conclusions. I tend to attach motives to people’s actions very quickly, which can prompt a response in me that isn’t always appropriate or accurate. Yet showing kindness means that I behave in a gracious manner towards someone — even if I don’t think they deserve it. I lay down pride, anger, or resentment, and pursue a path of peace. I want what’s best for that person. I want them to succeed. I want to encourage them, build them up, show them I care. I value them. I honor them.

Kindness is like a pleasant odor — the whole room fills up with the sweet smell, and every other noxious fume is displaced. Treat a person kindly, and you will begin to see that the barriers come down between you and a bridge is built. The challenge is that this is sometimes very difficult! If you are being treated badly, or you are having to defend yourself, or you are in disagreement with someone, it’s easy to lose sight of the kindness factor and become self-centered in your thinking. “Well, they just don’t understand me. They just don’t get me. They just can’t see things my way. They’re in error.” Whether that’s true or not is beside the point — once you start to go down that road, it can become impossible to behave in a gracious manner. You can stand on your principals and be secure in your judgement and still be kind, and while that sometimes seems like too much to handle, we as Christians are meant to call upon the Holy Spirit to fill us with the strength and the grace to walk in kindness and humility.

Make kindness a core pillar of your relationship with others, and you will discover a spiritual growth and a harvest of fruit that will stand the test of time and all the pressures of life. And never forget this simple truth of humanity: a kind smile can wash away a world of hurt!

“Love is patient.”

Last week I introduced the concept of patience as the ability to be content with lack as you wait upon the Lord to bring you supply. Now I’d like to delve into some of the ramifications of this waiting period — learning how to enjoy the “meantime”. Specifically, three points came to me as I was pondering this “in the meantime” aspect of patience.

Goals vs. seasons

We often tend to think of life as a series of goals to be accomplished (especially the men in our midst!), and while that line of thinking has many fine points, it can be rather destructive in the context of relationships. Love is patient. Love is not afraid of waiting. Love looks not towards the end result of a task completed but towards the transformation and enlightenment that occurs along the way. It’s all about the season of life you are in — the journey, not the destination. When the proper time arrives, you may discover that you have reached your “destination” without even realizing it! I often marvel at how unexpected and unusual the journey has been that brought me to where I am today, and I’ve grown to expect that future destinations will require an equal dose of “circumstantial uncertainty” — or adventure as Mark Batterson defines it.

Processing time

Different people take different amounts of time to process ideas or things that happen. Now I’ve always been very good at moving fast, making decisions fast, and trying out new things or new approaches. I hate feeling like I’m just standing still. It bothers me whenever I leave questions unresolved. It’s taken me a while to realize this, but I’m not ashamed of my personality — God created me this way for a reason. The challenge lies in recognizing that my timetable isn’t always someone else’s timetable. I may need to wait. I may need to take a step back. I may need to give someone some space for a while. Patience in this sense is the grace to allow someone to walk along a path for a while until they get to the next junction — and not give into the pressure to hurry them along. And who knows? You might just find that as you spend some time to rest and admire the scenery, you’ll be glad you weren’t in a hurry!

Servitude

I’ll have more to say on this in future posts, but serving someone requires a great deal of patience. You are setting aside your needs in order to accommodate someone else’s. Having a servant’s heart requires the ability to say “I can put my dreams, my ego, my wants, my desires aside for a while. This is your time. Right now, it’s all about you, not me.”

Jesus spent three years of his life hanging out with some of the dopiest dunderheads around. I mean, seriously, those guys were clueless. Here they were, constantly beholding the miracle-working power and Spirit-filled glory of the Son of God, receiving hands-on teaching that you and I could only dream of having, and most of the time they were grumbling and complaining and doubting and missing the point of the whole exercise. And lest you think I’m casting stones, I’m an even dopier dunderhead than they! What amazes me is how patient Jesus was! He never gave up, he never faltered, he never changed his mind. He came as the servant of all, and he modeled servitude and servant leadership to his disciples in a way that still imparts age-old and priceless wisdom to us today. If Jesus never gave up on his disciples and took them all the way from poor, unremarkable fishermen and scheming tax-collectors to world-famous, culture-shifting, empire-changing apostles, then how can I follow Jesus and not emulate his example of selfless, understanding, patient love?

Serve others. Give people time to process. Discern the season you are in and learn from it. Enjoy life “in the meantime.” You’ll find yourself a much happier person.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Stay tuned for the next installment!

“Love is patient.”

Here is take two of my first installment of the Love Jam series…the first take had no va-va-va voom! Somehow in the translation between my brain and the screen, the concepts I wanted to convey turned into greeting card sentiments. I’ll have to be careful to avoid that as I work through this series.

Here we go! And-a-one, and-a-two….

Maxima enim, patientia virtus — Patience is the greatest virtue. I tend to agree, because it is one of the most difficult to cultivate; yet properly executed, patience can reap tremendous rewards. The problem is we hate it. We hate being patient. We would rather focus on another virtue, like courage, or justice, or hope, or charity. Something glamorous, something people could admire. Patience isn’t glamorous. “Hey buddy, whatcha up to there?” “Oh nothing. I’m just being patient.” “Oookay. Good luck wit dat.”

Patience can also be translated from the Greek as “longsuffering” — and sometimes it certainly feels that way! You see, patience necessarily implies lack. You are waiting for something that you do not yet have in your possession, or you are waiting for an event that has not yet occurred.

You are lacking. And when humans lack, humans fight back.

James 4:1-3 puts it this way:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

I think there’s a key here. Maybe when I’m having a hard time being patient, it’s because I’m allowing my passions to be at war within me. I’m asking for the wrong thing — my will be done, not Thy will be done. I should be passionate about the things that matter to God — the work He wants to accomplish in me and through me. Rather than bang my head against the wall because of what I lack, I should be cheerfully preparing to receive whatever He wants to give me in its proper time.

“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:19

Amen to that! God knows what I need even better than I know myself, so I desire to do whatever it takes to become ready for His supply to meet my needs, supernaturally!

There’s more to say about being patient, particularly in the context of love (which is what this series is all about!), so I’ll continue on that riff in my next post. Catch you then!

What am I talking about? I’m talking about Love, of course. To quote the 80′s hit song by Howard Jones:

What is love anyway, does anybody love anybody anyway

Now let me back up a second. Most of the time when people are talking about love in pop culture, they’re referring to a pale imitation of the real thing. Not only that, but it’s a corrupted form of only one aspect of love — romance — that has little awareness of the deeper nature of love; of sacrifice, of humility, of mercy, of genuine compassion. Love, ultimately, contains within it an element of death — you die to yourself in order to live for another. But most people don’t want to die, which is why true love is a rarity.

So, as Howard Jones asks, what is love anyway? How should we love, and can we even truly love in the right way? Perhaps love is indeed a mystery, and there’s no telling how deep one can go or how far one still has to go to plumb its sacred depths. I’m sure that’s close to the truth, but I believe we can gain a certain level of insight or understanding of love’s basic principles, which is why I am embarking on a new series called Love Jam. Like good Jazz, learning to love is a bit like improvising on a theme. As my starting theme, I will be using the attributes of love that the Apostle Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. From there on out, whatever comes to mind as I meditate and “improvise” on that theme, I will blog over a period of about a couple of months or so.

Interestingly enough, I’ve never read any commentary on this famous passage of Scripture. I may be one of the few Christians out there who hasn’t! So this will be fun for me. I hope you receive something useful from my explorations as well.

So, without further adieu, here is the theme. I will start again from the top in my next post. Enjoy!

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love does not envy or boast.
Love is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way.
Love is not irritable or resentful.
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. 20 To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

It is interesting to see the reaction from both the Left and the Right here in America to the announcement that Rick Warren is to pray at Barack Obama’s inauguration this coming January. From the Left, it’s understandable to see the dismay given Warren’s track record defending the pro-life and pro-traditional-marriage positions. But from the Right, it rankles me that people are getting their knickers in a knot over the idea of a so-called “conservative” Christian minister praying for the swearing-in of a liberal president. Now I’m not here to judge Obama’s faith, but given his stated positions on several issues which go against the grain of Biblical authority, I am certainly dismayed by his candidacy. However, we are told time and time again to pray for our enemies, and also to pray for those in political authority, by none other than the apostles Peter, Paul, and even Jesus himself. There is no verse — none! — that would back up the notion that “thou shalt boycott praying for a presidential candidate you disagree with”. If anything, such a leader desperately needs our prayers and blessings more than anyone!

As to the fear that Rick Warren is somehow endorsing Obama’s political ideas by attending his inauguration and praying for him, that is absurd. Warren is a prominent American church leader. Obama is going to become the 44th President of the Unites States of America. It is quite honorable and logical that Warren would be selected to join in the proceedings, and it is quite understandable that Warren would accept the invitation. To do otherwise would be to insult a huge swath of the American public as well as cast a negative shadow on the face of the Christian Church as once again skeptics behold the hypocrisy of leaders who put political agendas ahead of the New Testament mandate to, if possible, live peaceably with all.

Believe me, this is not an easy statement for me to make. I am staunchly in favor of outlawing abortion in this country just as slavery was outlawed in past times, and I am very much a supporter of the traditional nuclear family and covenant marriage between a man and a woman. I feel Obama will prove to be a major affront to these causes — yet I cannot and will not compromise my holistic understanding of Christian theology in the name of moral zealousness. Remember, it is ultimately not the devil who put Barack Obama in the seat of presidential power. It is God. I think we need to act as such.

You see, there is this girl….

OK, I’ll wait until you stop chuckling…. Yeah, that’s enough, cut it out. The long and the short of it is that I am courting a beautiful and wonderful young lady that I have known since early this year and developed a close friendship with over the past several months. We attend a weekly Bible study and fellowship group and have participated in various ministry events on several occasions, and they have provided the opportunity for us to get to know each other better and forge a deeper relationship. I’m not ready to go into too much detail at this time, but some events transpired towards the end of October that I can only describe as divine providence which led us rather quickly and surprisingly from a place of friendly acquaintance to romantic interest. Since that time, my life has been very, very different (understatement of the year!). It never ceases to amaze me how quickly one’s perspective on life and what one most values can change, but with God at the helm of that change, it is a healthy and beautiful thing far beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

The thing that causes me to rejoice above all else is that we both love the Lord deeply and rely on the Holy Spirit for wisdom, guidance, and direction. It’s important for us to know that we are walking in God’s will and peace every step of the way. The road won’t always be easy, and it won’t always be clear, but we must remember that, as the Apostle Paul says, “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) God is for us, He knows us better than we do ourselves, and He has our best interests at heart. All we have to do is submit our mind, will, and emotions to Him, and He will be gracious to lead us forward into the glorious future He has prepared for all those who walk in His ways.

On a practical level, one question you may have is, what is courting? What does it mean, from our vantage point at least, to be in a courtship? To be honest, I think we’re still pondering that question ourselves. Probably it’s easier to define what it is NOT, and that’s largely a reflection of how much we dislike the idea of modern secular dating. I’ll have to save some thoughts for a future post.

Due to my new time and energy commitments and the fact that the spiritual subjects I’m meditating on and studying right now are more germane to my personal life than to this blog per se, I probably will be posting somewhat infrequently in the near future. I had previously intended to go in a very different direction and talk more about my future ministry plans, but Life intervened. And I’m not complaining in the slightest, mind you.

Prayers, support, advice, encouragement — all are greatly appreciated during this time. It’s especially good to hear from godly couples Who Have Been Through This Before and can lend their wisdom based on experience to aid us in our journey. Thank you first and foremost for your patience as I spend more time away from blogging.

God is AMAZING!!! Can I hear an AMEN to that?!?!