Instead,
speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the
mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
-- Ephesians 4:15
To
the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching,
you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the
truth will set you free.”
-- John 8:31-32
Let
no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one
another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The
commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,”
“You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command
there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as
yourself.”
-- Romans 13:8-9
Did
you ever say something and then realize oops, that didn't come out
right? You may have been right about everything but either the way you
said it or how it was taken just made it all wrong. It's hard to take
that back sometimes, hard to explain that you didn't mean it that way.
And the damage is done; the message is lost not because of the message
but because of the delivery. God knows this about us and gave us the
way to get around this. In order to speak the truth, we must know it.
And as we see in John 8:31-32, the truth is in Jesus teachings as we
find in God's word. Read it, study it, embrace it and learn from it.
Only in that way can you speak of what you find there.
If
we then are to speak these truths in love, does that mean we do so with
all these warm fuzzy feelings or does it mean something more? It is
not the same love as we have for football or pizza or whatever which
makes us feel good when we experience it. That is too shallow a love.
The love we are to have for our neighbor is based on the love we have
for God and what He has done for us. It is a deep soul changing love
that guides our daily walk and lasts forever. We can try to speak the
truth to others with gentleness or only pleasing words so as not to
offend them but that can lead to a shallow understanding on their part
that never takes root. We can speak the truth no matter how harsh
saying it is out of love for them but then they reject that harshness
and thus the message. We need to remember that oftentimes people are
not as afraid of God's eternal judgement as they are of our judgement
here and now. What is really needed is to be scripturally sound and
humanly compassionate. On many occasions, Jesus would simply tell
people the truth of their sin and then the message of hope and
forgiveness and leave it to them to decide. The need for following
Christ has to be the desire of that person's heart and soul and neither
we nor our God can give that to them. All we can do is reaffirm to her
that we love them and want for them what God has given to us. If we
remember God's hope in us, faith in us, and best of all love for us, and
we know the truth from knowing and believeing in His word and embracing
His son Jesus, we can speak what we know in love and let them decide.
Therefore
be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ
loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice
to God
-- Ephesians 5:1-2
Parents
love their children. Even when their children make it hard to love
them, we love them nevertheless. It's part of our design as human
version 1.0; we parents just can't help it. And so it is with God since
we are designed in His image. The message that God loves us, His
children, is so often repeated in the New Testament that you would have
to go out of your way to ignore it. And as our children imitate our
behaviors and traits, Paul asks us to imitate God in the same way. We
need to imitate Him in our love for one another, in our goodness towards
all, in our forgiveness for when others wrong us, and in our patience
with those who do not follow in His way. God does this for us and so we
in turn should learn from that example and walk in the same loving way
He does as best we can. As
parents, we understand that our children not only look like us to a
great degree, but follow our example in what they say and do. When we
do good things, they follow that. When we do bad things, they follow
that too. When we say good things, our children repeat them. When we
say bad things, our children can repeat them too, much to our
embarrassment. Children have no greater example to follow than their
parents. They learn to interact with the world through watching how we
do it and imitating that example. As children, we look to our parents
for how to do things. We don't know anything else for a very long time.
We know that is why they are there and we love them because they love
us and help us. We can learn the hard way that doing or saying the
wrong things just because our parents did is not always acceptable. And
so we learn to imitate the good examples and ignore the bad ones. God
gave us all the example we will ever need in Christ Jesus. Jesus is
the ultimate example of the most free and generous love that ever was.
We can all take great comfort in knowing that He loved us all so much
that he gave himself as a sacrifice for our sins. It is all the proof
we will need of His love. So let us all walk together in love for God,
for Christ, and for each other and imitate the example God has placed
before us in Jesus as best we can.
Consider
it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many
kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces
perseverance.
James 1:2-3
In
his poem "The Rainy Day", Longfellow concludes "Into each life some
rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary". While the poem
starts our gloomy, it ends with the realization that everyone has to
deal with dark things at times in their lives but at the end of every
one of them, there is hope and sunshine. It seems to me that it is easy
to fall into a funk but so difficult to get out of it. I think we can
allow ourselves to dwell on the gloomy and dark things a bit too much
and we miss the fact that God is there waiting and wanting to help us.
We can sometimes get lost in our sadness and can no longer see a way
out and then fall easy prey to temptations. God
promises to us that there is always a way out as we read in 1
Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation has overtaken you except what is
common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted
beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide
a way out so that you can endure it.". Notice that it doesn't say He
will do this for you sometimes but that there are some things He just
won't help you with. He will not abandon you. He has a plan for you.
He loves you more that you can really understand. Like the sun behind
the clouds in Longfellow's poem, He is there. If He is there when we
fail Him, how much more will He be there when we are hurting? Some
trials are really hard to bear. Regardless of what we know and how hard
we try to maintain our faith, some hard times are just going to hurt.
And then we can get easily confused and angry and ask God what He
thinks He is doing. But as James points out, these trials are designed
to build our trust in God. Rather than go it alone, believe in your
faith, trust in it, and seek God all the more.If
we remember Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for
the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his
purpose", we can make it through anything. There is some purpose in our
dark days, ones we may not understand just yet. But God is love and is
always there for each and every one of us. Seek Him out even more so in
the dark times and He will show you the way.
