Idolatrous Love

"But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the chief seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings in the market places. Woe to you! For you are like concealed tombs, and the people who walk over them are unaware of it. " (Luke 11:42-44 NASB)

Jesus delivered a series of "woe's" to those in attendance at the luncheon. "Woe" is a word of denunciation and similar to our saying, "You should be ashamed of yourself". Jesus pointed out several things about which the men should be ashamed. First, they were diligent about tithing but they did it without justice or mercy. Love was not their motivation.

In the next woe, He revealed their motivation. Their love was for the chief seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings they received in the market places. These religious leaders did not simply enjoy the chief seats and the respectful greetings. The word Jesus used for their affection was agapaō. They loved the trappings of honor with the love that should be reserved for God alone. 

What the Pharisees felt for the adulation they received was a form of idolatry. They loved the rewards of their righteous behavior more than the One for whom they were supposed to be doing their acts of righteousness. They were not serving God by their good deeds. They were serving themselves. The good deeds and obedience to a list of rules were done simply for the rewards they brought, not because they pleased God.

The question of motivation is one that must be answered. For the Pharisees, the answer was nothing more than self-serving pride. They loved what right living bought them, not the God they supposedly served.

Theirs was an easy mistake to make. When we are "raised in the church", involved in "church work" most of our lives, it is easy for right living to become a matter of rote. Instead of works that are motivated by a heart filled with love for God, our good choices can become simply habit.

When that happens, it is a very small step to enjoying the benefits of right living more than the relationship that should motivate it. Rules are often easier than relationships, especially if maintaining the relationship requires change in us, and our relationship with God always requires us to change.

We must be constantly on guard against the Pharisaical error of misplaced agapaō. Our love must be focused on God and not the blessings He gives. For today, let's spend a few minutes evaluating our own hearts. Are we more focused on rules than on relationship? On what or whom do we lavish our agapaō? Let's be sure our love is for the One who loved us first.

We love because He first loved us. 

                                                                                        1 John 4:19 NASB

How to inherit eternal life, part 5: Loving with our whole hearts

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?" And he answered, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." And He said to him, "You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE." (Luke 10:25-28 NASB)

In the previous post, we considered the issue of Lordship. Loving in the way that pleases God begins with making Him our Lord, our Master. He must be the One in charge of our destiny. The only other choice is rebellion, so  we are compelled by the hope of eternity to submit to His Lordship. We cannot have it both ways. We can not love the Lord our 
God with all our heart, soul, and strength unless He is our Lord.

We turn now to the issue of loving the Lord our God with all our heart. The word translated as "heart" is kardia and refers to the muscular organ responsible for circulating blood throughout our body. Because Scripture tells us that "the life is in the blood" (Lev. 17:11), the heart was considered the center of life, mental and moral as well as physical. 

The reference here is to something done by the heart, as in loving God by our whole hearts, and indicates sincerity and lack of pretense. (thayer) Now we begin to see, don't we? Loving the Lord our God with all our heart involves loving Him with sincerity, and without pretense. There is nothing fake about it. 

We've all seen people who talk a great line about their faith, yet their lives tell a different story. We've likely been those people at times. Loving the Lord our God with all our heart, however, requires that we relinquish our "fake" demonstrations of love and truly love Him with every fiber of our being. 

This kind of love is a 24 hour a day love, in which thoughts of the One our heart loves are never far away. This kardia love makes every decision on the basis of that love. This kardia love has as it's goal the pleasure of the One we love. Finding ways in which we can we bring delight to the Light of our life becomes our goal. That is how we love and live when we love with our whole heart. 

Loving with all our heart requires an undivided heart. There is no one, no thing, that matters more than the object of our love. Our love for God becomes the most important love in our life. There is room for other loves, of course, but God shares first priority with no one.

The heart is a muscular organ unique in its properties. As such, it can get stronger with exercise, and the exercise of love will do a wondrous work in our hearts. The most amazing outcome of loving God with our whole heart is that, as we love Him sincerely and totally, our heart gains strength for that love and we can love Him even more. What is even more remarkable is that, in loving God more, we gain a God-given ability to love others more, as well. In a sense, by loving God with our whole hearts, we become a wellspring from which the love of God can flow to all around us. 

Selah. Pause and Consider.

By relinquishing our entire hearts to our Lord, loving Him above all others, we can become a wellspring of His love, flowing to everyone around us. What a beautiful picture of the transformation that divine kardia love can produce in us!  

Is that the way you love? Is your heart undivided? Is your Lord the priority love of your life? It is only in giving all our heart to Him that we can receive this extravagant outpouring of His love through us, and it is an exchange that is not only worth making, but also the most important exchange we can make. 

Oh, dear ones, if you have not given your "whole heart" to God, do it now and begin to let His love flow through you, unhampered, undivided. Let His love be your goal. Let His love be your priority. 

The Backwards Advent and Love Week

Yes. I realize this is a pitiful excuse for an Advent wreath. Once upon a time, I had a green pottery candle holder, but it is long gone (pottery shards). Usually I decorate this one with greenery and it is much more festive, but it's been a busy holiday season. Since I wrote an Advent devotional, it seemed a travesty not to celebrate Advent, so I pulled out a hodgepodge of candles and proceeded to light them and read the devotional every evening. 

Although I've celebrated with an Advent wreath for years, this year I couldn't seem to get the order right. Today was the Joy candle, and it is pink. You may have noticed that I have lit all the colored candles already. That's because I've tried to make every Sunday's candle the Love candle (hence the third purple candle) and we still haven't had the Love week! 

Doesn't that sound like a good idea?  A Love week? I don't mean a Woodstock lovefest. I mean an Agape Love week, where we who belong to Jesus would demonstrate Agape love (the unconditional love of Christ) to everyone we meet, no matter how unlovely. Isn't that a marvelous idea? It's worth considering, since Love Week doesn't actually start until next Sunday. 

I have considerably more to say about Advent, but I will save it for another day. For now, think about celebrating Love Week with me. It would be a terrific preparation for the birth of our Savior (since it's how we are supposed to live anyway). 

Love week. Seven days away. Get ready. 

The White Christmas That Wasn't

My five year old son wanted his daddy (my ex-husband) to come home again. With the faith of a child, he began to pray and to fast (sweets) for his daddy to "come to Jesus and come home to live with us".  After what appeared to be a miraculous transformation and the answer to a child's prayers, I remarried him. It may have seemed a naive decision, but I fully recognized the risk of the old problems resurfacing. I never expected what happened, however.

I certainly wasn't blameless, don't get me wrong about that. I could see something was awry, but could not seem to fix it, and pretty soon I began to wonder. Were the old problems back again?  

That particular Christmas Day was the best ever. All the children were home and we had a wonderful time. No one was ready to leave, so my husband went to visit his parents alone, and didn't come home that night.  In fact, he never came home. it was months before we saw him again. 

Christmas Day was the beginning of the worst few years of my life. I soon learned that he was having an affair with a much younger woman. Things went from bad to worse, and before a year had passed, she would bear him a son. 

As the summer months were waning, I began to think about the coming holidays. My dread was so great that I could hardly talk about it. Somehow, his leaving and Christmas Day seemed hopelessly intertwined. How could I celebrate the birth of my Savior on the anniversary of the death of my marriage? 

When I mentioned it to my sister, she had an immediate solution. She had been thinking that renting a cabin in the mountains where we could all be together for a white Christmas would be the very thing to do. Somehow, Cookie the Super Sister managed to convince our Mama, her husband, all her children, her son-in-law and the grandchildren that this white Christmas was what everyone wanted to do (or at least what they should do for me and my son). Ever the organizer and maker of lists, she soon had the holiday organized into easily divided tasks. Cookie the Super Sister assigned each of us a meal to cook, a time to clean, chores to do. It wasn't all work, though. She had planned games and activities that we could all enjoy. We laughed and played together.  We loved each other right out loud.  We enjoyed being together. Not once did the avid hunters in the group complain about missing prime hunting season. Not once did anyone complain about missing holiday traditions or long time routines. No one grumbled. No one argued. There was hardly any whining about the lack of snow!

What could have been a black cloud overshadowing the birth of Christ for years to come was transformed into the sweetest of memories by the agape love of God demonstrated by my family. Even now, the depth of my sister's love and my family's sacrifice astounds me and moves me to tears.  I didn't deserve it, but I will never forget it. In fact, I was transformed by it. Yesterday's pain has become today's cherished memory. 

I've begun to decorate my home for the holidays, dragging out all those cherished ornaments and nativity sets, again this year. The traditional family Christmas I have planned with my son this year will be all the sweeter because of the white-Christmas-that-wasn't and the love that was lavished upon us that year so long ago. 

There's a Christmas song that says "Love came down at Christmas". It certainly did!  Because of the love of a tiny God-man more than 2000 years ago, love came down again at Christmas in the form of a loving sister and sacrificing family. So much love...

Blessings of joy this Christmas season, dear ones. Merry Christmas!

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