Following the communion meditation,
the speaker led a congregational prayer thanking the Lord for His sacrifice on
the cross. Then, as though listening to his own words he added, “…but our words
are so inadequate.” Certainly our words are inadequate, but our actions speak louder than words. Jesus said, “A new
command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one
another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples,
if you love one another” (John 13:34-35 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----The Lord’s people have formed a chain of loving one another from that day to this one. It should not be surprising, since He gives new life to those who become His people. Should we be surprised that loving one another is part of the character of that new life? What we should be surprised at is how few people can articulate even the basics of what that love might be, and how many can more articulate criteria for the application of it.
-----God’s love is not phony. Man was made in the image of God, and therefore has a natural tendency to reflect what he thinks is God. It’s unfortunate man’s tendencies were not to reflect God actually. But God has His reasons for how He made things. Man reflects what man thinks about God. So also, God’s love made into man’s reflection is of what man thinks about God’s love. And as magnanimous as we like to portray “God’s love” to be, it shrinks worse that Saran Wrap in a microwave when subjected to the radioactive heat of man’s biases.
-----Allah is not without love. We can see this by considering the Muslim Brotherhood. All over the world it has established funds and organizations to build schools and hospitals and water and sewer systems where there were none. Allah’s love reaches out to embrace peoples with a better reality. And the more the peoples become Islamic, the more their built reality is better. And the more the regional communities become Islamic, the more Allah’s love begins to squeeze jizya from infidels to make reality better yet for Muslims. Just a little example of how that “group thing” works together with “love”.
-----I’ve always been amazed at how Baptist love has supplied Baptist needs, and Adventist love has supplied Adventist needs, and Pentecostal love has supplied Pentecostal needs, etc. Every denomination reaches out to help the unbeliever, but always through their own denomination’s hands. We’re even more running over with help and support and love for those of our own denomination, and so full of criteria, analysis, and disqualification those of most other denominations. A long time ago I used to wonder for a very short time in which denomination was God. But that question quickly lost its sense to me. So why not allow my sentiments to follow better sense than all these divisions by analysis? And why not allow my deeds to follow my sentiments? It always seemed my feet would be well directed if I let the Bible itself make more sense to me than the sense of all the Bible proponents of a thousand different groups.
-----That’s when I began to realize that every man is connected to the Lord individually. Every man receives the Holy Spirit from the Lord, not from a church denomination. Indeed, every man in the Lord must develop relationships with others in the Lord. Unfortunately, we get sloppy about controlling this group-mentality that’s so natural to every human heart and mind. It is purposeful for protecting the community of believers from what the Bible distinguishes as heresy, but it is also destructive to what should be loved in spite of ignorable differences. And there simply is no reason why Christian fellowships across the community should not pool money and effort towards a goal the Word of God says should be as common as loving everyone. After all, if love is real it will need some assets by which to work its stuff. But if love is really not aimed at everyone, let’s keep those assets and efforts all bottled up for our own little group.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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