Love Me, Love You

On February 19, 2021   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Matthew 22: 37 – 40

And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”

There is no more important topic than love. This is the topic which is foremost on the Lord’s mind. Actually, He never tires of talking about love. There are, however, three aspects of love. First and foremost is, love of the Father. That is exactly what Jesus points to in this passage. When asked what the greatest commandment is, he answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” That is number one. Second, according to Jesus, is loving your neighbor as you love yourself. So, there is another kind of love presumed here. That is self-love. Jesus expects us to have a healthy self-love. This is not narcissism. Narcissism is “selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.”

Healthy self-love means doing those things which promote a healthy life physically, spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. Jesus says that we should love others in our community as a healthy person loves and treats himself. Our community includes everyone we come in contact with. It is important that we recognize that “our neighbors” are not only our Christian brethren. Second, we are to love our neighbors equally with how we love ourselves. With this presumption of loving ourselves in a healthy way, we are supposed to love others in a healthy substantive way too.

Love God, love your neighbor, those are the two loves Jesus refers to in this passage and he insinuates a healthy self-love. There is, however, another love, and this one is the key. That which we have discussed is our expression of love towards ourselves and others. The most important love of all is God’s love for us. His love is what drives the universe. There is no savior, no salvation, no life even without the love of God. There is no love at all without the love of God. When I say that this love is the driver, I mean to convey that there is no ability for us to love ourselves, love others, or even love God Himself without first having the love of God expressed to our hearts. Only when we receive God’s love can we even reasonably dream of being lovely ourselves. It is His love with which we love others. The work of loving God and loving our neighbors takes place in letting God love us.

I want you to understand that receiving God’s love is not necessarily a passive process. When we slow down and commune our hearts with His then we are able to open ourselves to actually receiving His love. In other words, if you wish to make it your determined purpose to obey Jesus guidance from this passage, then the means, the only means for accomplishing same is to allow God to love you. It is not only the beginning point but also the ending point and everything in between. Loving yourself begins with allowing God to love you. Loving others is powered by the love God gives you.

The primary work of the gospel is to receive the love of God and subsequently convey it to others. That’s it – that’s the gospel. Easy, right? You know, for some of us this is the hardest thing we will do, letting God love us. Too loud in our psyche is our unworthiness, which I will write about next week and let you know how I overcome that issue.

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Love Rains

On February 18, 2021   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Matthew 5: 45

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

45 so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

We looked at verses 43 and 44 of Matthew 5 yesterday which contained Jesus’ directive to us to love and pray for our enemies. In verse 45, Jesus tells us why he requires a love lifestyle out of us. The first reason is so that we might prove ourselves children of His Highness, the Father. When we show love, especially in situations when it is atypical, we demonstrate what it means to be a child of the Most High. We show what it means to have the love of God working in us but also the strength of the Holy Spirit because it takes his kind of strength to love those who harass you.

Second, when we operate from a position of love, even to those not presently of the Kingdom, we act as our Father acts because He gives rain to their crops as well as ours. He causes the sun to shine on them as well as us. He does not show partiality but rather extends His love to all His children, even those who don’t love Him or have abandoned Him.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and so despite the very frigid temperatures, we are assured that Easter is on its way. As we begin to think about Easter and all it means, there is no better time to contemplate the love of God and what it meant and what it means to a hurting world.

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Jesus said What?

On February 17, 2021   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Matthew 5: 43 – 44

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

There are a couple of passages in the New Testament that I just don’t like. This is one of them. Jesus came along and raised the standard. We can’t even hate our enemies. Moreover, I’ve got to pray for those who persecute me. Does that even sound reasonable?

As I wrote last week, the love standard Jesus has raised for us requires a life lived integrated with him. I can’t love my enemies in my own strength and there has been more than one time I have argued with Jesus about having to pray for the people who have persecuted me. It just seems wrong at a very basic level. But that is just the thing, isn’t it? Jesus doesn’t want us to live a base existence. He wants me to follow in his footsteps. He wants us living the high life and that is more than just receiving the good things of life. There is a giving component as well, another side of the coin, if you will.

God, Son and Spirit want all good things for us, true, but they want us to live according to their lifestyle of love. Let me ask you this, though? Why do they call us to live according to the love standard? Why did Jesus instruct us to love our enemies and pray for those who hurt us? Is that requirement fair to us? If God wants only good things for us, could it be that this mandate is meant to increase goodness in our lives as well?

When we have been hurt, it is natural to want to either strike back or throw up shields. We aren’t natural beings though. We have been given the supernatural life. That is life beyond the natural and that is a critically important aspect of the Christian life. To live “naturally” is to live a worldly existence, and that is not our calling.

It cannot be said enough. You may able but, I cannot live the life to which we are all called without the imminent presence of the Lord walking hand in hand with me. In fact, it is a much closer integration than hand in hand. That is a far to external an analogy. He has got to intertwine his spirit with mine such that our spiritual DNA (and perhaps even physical DNA) are woven in and around each other. I need him to respond rather than me react so his spirit has to be present and alert.

Through the trinity, we can live this love walk. We can pray for those who use and abuse us because God’s grace supplants our self-oriented perspective. We can pray for people from His vantage point rather than ours. Jesus calls us to a certain kind of existence, one above and beyond the natural ways of humans. While it may be impossible to live the life he requires of us by the use of our own strength, he has empowered us with his own strength and gentleness of spirit. Of course, this intermeshing of our spirit with his comes by spending time with him in meditative contemplation, conversation and study of his word.

May the blessing of the Lord be yours today and may pondering this passage bring you peace rather than angst.

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Super Love

On February 16, 2021   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 13: 6-7

(Love) does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Speaking of love . . .. Last week I wrote on verses four and five. They set a very high standard for what love is and what love does. These two verses are no less challenging. This is precisely why we must live intertwined with God. I cannot walk this standard of a love walk in my own strength. I am too weak, too petty and too self-interested. I don’t know how I can live this passage but by the grace, and the power of our Lord. He has to be alive and vibrant within me. I have to live such that his life and mine are stitched together. It is his life within me that allows me to endure anything, much less all things. How can hope prevail in any of our lives but by the glorious grace and benevolent affection of our Lord.

Those without his life within are without hope and without the strength to endure. We must show them the love of God which includes patient tolerance. Those of us with God know these past 12 months have proved a challenge but those who don’t have His love intermeshed through every tendril of their lives didn’t stand a chance. Their hearts and spirits have been stretched beyond their limits and they don’t know what to do. We all try to adapt but let’s be honest, this has not been an adaptive situation. It has been a time of wrenching change and we shall never again fit back into the same form from which we came. People have thought they were rolling with the punches only to find out they were more like a rubber band which has finally been stretched beyond its capacity and has snapped.

It is incumbent upon us to be the ambassadors of love in a very troubled world. I know that sounds like a hokey oversimplification or trite maxim, but I believe it not to be. And, as I have tried to encourage before, we are the people who must be the leaders. You there, sitting at home, still in your pajamas, you really are the leader the world is starving for. No one else is going to see your grocery store clerk or hair stylist. No one else is going to talk to your friends and neighbors. No one else can reach them with the love of God.

We must follow after righteousness and truth. That is an absolute. We are not given the liberty to favor a position which suits our needs unless it comports with absolute truth and righteousness. We must be beacons of truth because our Lord is the truth. This beginning point must be the standard which we, not only carry proudly, but which we resolutely hammer into the ground marking our terrain. It is the flag standard under which we stand. From this position we forge on, loving the unlovely. Not only do we provide an example to hurting people, but we give them that which is God’s very essence, love. It is love which we and they need. We can do without food for a bit, water for a little but the lack of those can only kill the flesh. The spirit needs love and what we are seeing is people dying for lack of sustenance for their inner man.

Each one of us, yes us, must keep enduring and hoping. We must keep standing for truth and waving our banner. We cannot be spreaders of anything less than the love of God. Dissention, negativity, gossip must be arrested as we are called to spread the Good News which is that God loves each and every one of us. Love is a high requirement of the life of Christ. It is our duty, though, to let that love wash over us and through us. Christ is what love gave the world so that love could live in this earth through His beloved. That is you, the beloved of God, His prized ones, His chosen. Let His love transform your life and buoy you during these turbulent times and may that love that He shines on you be a sign to all who see you that, God is love!

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Always and Forever

On February 15, 2021   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 136: 1

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His faithfulness is everlasting.

I have come to like this psalm very much. Thanks to Psalm Mondays I have gotten to look at it with new eyes and I quite appreciate it. There are twenty-six verses in this psalm. Each looks like verse one with its two phrases, the second of which is always, “His faithfulness is everlasting.” Essentially, the author gives twenty-six examples of God’s faithfulness. They aren’t just twenty-six events but rather twenty-six ways the Lord is continually faithful. For example, some are about creation, some about routing evil kings, a couple about salvation from Egypt, and more. Throughout history God has shown Himself faithful and that is some really good news.

When you are faced with a challenging situation or a friend is, this faithfulness of God is the good news you and they need. God has not left the building. He is still faithful and dependable. What do you need? Get alone with Him and meditate with Him. It could even be that what you think you need isn’t the right or perhaps the complete answer. You will find out that you are brilliant and insightful when you are well partnered.

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Love Letter

On February 12, 2021   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 13: 4-5

Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered.

How great is my God, how beautiful and loving? I will tell you how amazing and fabulous my Father is.

This morning I called a friend to check on him. Yesterday he received his second vaccination shot and he recently pulled his hamstring and pinched a nerve in his back. I know some folks do not feel great the day after their second shot, so I just called to check on him.

We must recognize that people have been under enormous stress, accumulating stress, over the last 12 months. Sometimes that stress bubbles over. It did today and I was the unfortunate recipient of that pent up worry and stress. No one wants to be in my position but better me than someone else. Why? Because you and I have something within us that is up to the challenge. It is the love of God. Jesus showed up in this conversation and loved the speaker. Love didn’t hang up on him, it was patient and kind. It did not consider its own benefit, or mine for that matter. Love cared about the hurting soul who was lashing out.

I was planning on writing on comfort today, but I realized that what is needed is love. Love is the comfort we need as well as that gracious balm that the whole world needs today. I say my Father is great because He showed up and spoke love even as my heart was hurting. I want to share another thing though. Here is an immediate response by God to love on me too.

I had just finished emailing my good friend, Rene, saying that I better write on love for today’s Word of the Day. I wasn’t sure what verse to use and was rolling a few through my mind. I went to Biblegateway.com to look for a verse. The landing page for Bible Gateway opened with a Verse of the Day. Guess what that verse was. You see it at the beginning of today’s Word of the Day. Look at how the Father provided for me. He knew all this was going to happen and that I was going to need a love verse, so, He provided one. It was a message from heaven, and it met my need as well as communicated the Father’s love and care for me. Take this back one more step. He had to nudge someone at Bible Gateway to select that verse for today’s verse. Thank God that person listened to the Father. They probably do not even know that God was doing something in the selection of that verse. God truly is great.

So, the rest of the story – I have to let God be the master of this situation going forward because when things like this happen there are seeds planted. Are they seeds of offense or forgiveness? Are they seeds of humility or embarrassment? For my part, God says, love “is not provoked,” and “does not keep an account of a wrong suffered.” That means I cannot carry negative seeds forward. During these very challenging times, we are going to have to give people space. We need to be understanding and forgiving. We must let love speak in our place. Is it easy? Not if you do it in your might but if you let Jesus show up and show his love, it’s okay. Jesus understands how stressed people are. He wants to help heal bruised and injured hearts. Bless the Lord for His kind mercies. Bless the Lord.

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Hearing Check-up

On February 11, 2021   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Isaiah 30: 21

Your ears will hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left.”

Some people wonder if they are really supposed to hear God speaking to them. In light of this verse, what do you think? Of course, you know I believe in a close communion with God at all times. Not having it is what drove me to Anaheim. I went there determined to “get God.” I was already saved, had been for many years so it wasn’t a matter of salvation. I knew we were supposed to hear Him speak with us. I had read the Bible, and believed it. That meant I was missing something that had been promised.

God wants to speak to you. Better still, He wants to speak with you. He wants conversation, two-way exchange. He wants to live the “Intertwined” life which is the theme of Ivey Ministries. It was His idea. Daily guidance is achieved through hearing His voice in your ear as well as feeling the nudge in your spirit. If He is going to show us the path in which to walk, we need to be able to receive His guidance and that comes by God speaking to you and directing your steps.

If you don’t think you are hearing all of God that you should, let’s talk. Contact me and I can assist you. Here are some tips though. First of all, you might need to practice hearing His voice. Get into a quiet spot. Calm down your physiology and then quiet your internal dialogue. Some people like perfect quiet. I do better with nature sounds in the background. Breathe! That is my number one tip. You will be surprised what a couple of deep breaths do for you. Focus on your breathing. Perhaps you would like to inhale for a count of four, hold that breath for a four count and then exhale counting to four again. Do it for five seconds if you like. Counting helps bring your focus to your breath. Then, as you feel a calm descend upon you, begin to talk with the Father. Don’t “pray”. Don’t let formality enter in. Just say, “Hi Father. I thought I would come hang out with you for a while.” Then let conversation ensue just as if you were sitting across from a friend. You can ask Him a question. Don’t begin by asking the really hard questions, though. You will find it harder to hear because of your stress. Just talk with Him about bike riding or the weather. One of the funniest things that ever happened to me was a conversation with Him while I was riding my bike one day. It came so naturally that there was no doubt it was him speaking.

Also, I find the discipline of writing down what I hear going through my head helps me focus. I learned two-way journaling from my friends at CWG Ministries. Check out two-way journaling here.  You can also read some of what God has said to me while journaling here.  I took the 4 Keys to Hearing God’s Voice course. You can too.

The biggest part of hearing God’s voice, though, is deciding to. If you want to hear Him, if you are determined to, then you will. If it is not a priority with you, then it is going to be a bigger challenge. For those of you who understand that speaking with God is part of your inheritance, I wish to encourage you to seek this great relationship piece with all your might. Hopefully, you won’t have to fly 2500 miles away to get it but do what you need to do.

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