What About Love?
What about the Love?
As I grow older I appreciate people who have learned to ask the hard questions. You know the kind of questions no one wants to ever ask like, “Is this all there is?” When you look at your life. This is a fair question because it often forces you to ask, “Is there possibly more, and I have missed it?”
After this, other questions soon gather the courage to speak.
Do the sins of youth ever end?
What is the root of wisdom that I trust, was it really God or have I made a mistake?
Is this really how people should be treated in the Body of Christ?
Why do leaders discard people like that?
Why are legalistic leaders so unloving when they claim their actions are rooted in love?
Who feeds the poor?
Deep questions create deep desires, it deepens the well and yearns for answers to fill the darkness that pushes so hard on your heart, can you feel it?
Surface.
I have never enjoyed “small talk,” in fact in most cases I loath it. It's on the surface, with no depth, nothing real. And in some ways, it feels to me like a thin coat of paint over rotten wood waiting to dupe the unsuspecting customer. Sure in some places I have had no choice but to engage in this kind of communication for self-defense. But it’s just…pointless.
Recent events over the last few days have brought this subject to my mind again. Amy Grant has an old song called, “What About the Love?” That just came across my Spotify feed.
In this song, she takes a serious look at problems in our Christian culture like; A new preacher who had turned into a Christian Pharisee. A loveless brother who makes money off the unfortunate and an old person being shut away for a lack of usefulness.
And in the chorus, she asks the haunting question. “What about the Love?”
The Asbury revival is now over, other places are either seeking revival for notoriety's sake, hoping it will balance their budget with the influx of people. Or they are seeking the face of the Lord of revival because the deep within them is now calling out to the deep of God.
Did you know that the revival in Asbury started because a young man went on stage and confessed to his hidden sins? The deep within him could no longer be contained with religious words and ceremonies, it now cried out for something greater than himself for help. A hunger was created and the Lord filled it.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matthew 5:6
Let the questions that arise, come into the storms of your life. Big things require deep roots and a deep foundation… otherwise, they will only get blown over. And the questions you ask help to plow the spiritual ground of your heart for deeper roots.
“When the storms of life come, the wicked are whirled away, but the godly have a lasting foundation.” Proverbs 10:25
Don’t be a surface person, rip open your heart and let the Lord stand in your chest. Do you dare to be so wild?
How are we to be known?
We are now in a new season. If we are to be a people known for our Love, what will the Lord see if he comes near to us?
Too much of the Body only live on the surface of today's issues, and in some ways, we have become a pale shadow of the zeal and wonder that we pretend to live. We could claim that this is because of the world today. But if you have any real understanding of our history in the last few hundred years, let alone two thousand. Then you know we have been slowly conditioned into a darkened corner.
The Body of Christ is the great sleeping giant who could make the nations shake. We did it in the first three centuries, so intense was our faith that the authorities would stop at nothing to kill us…at any cost. Nowadays, that's something you only hear rumors of from the missions field.
So, how about you? What are you willing to do to follow the cloud by day and the fire by night? And will your motivator be Zeal, Love or are you just trying to build your own kingdom while pretending your building the Lords?
One of Israel ministries has a lot of good videos, have you watched them? So many of the testimonies of Muslims coming to Christ all have the same message. It was the Lord they saw or felt that pulled on their heart that brought them to Christ.
When the Ashbury revival ended, many kids were changed… by a Love they had never experienced before.
When the storms of life come to someone, do you think they are going to care about your theology… or your love?
This is what gets me, as I have said before I have done the pastoring thing and I am not a fan of it. This is because professionals (as I was trying to become) are often more concerned about everything else than the things Christ wants.
Let's be honest, should a leader’s decisions to help someone be based on church budgets and membership roles or on what the Holy Spirit is saying at that moment? All too often for many leaders, the Holy Spirit is not even a part of the discussion.
What do you think?