Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Stop Staring at Your Chia Pet

Love. Spelled L.O.V.E. Symbolized by the heart shape, signified by cupids darting arrow, and simplified by McDonald's catchy slogan. And this, friends, is the image our world has painted for us in order that we might understand love and all that it means in our lives.

I think these are exactly the kinds of things Ed was referring to when he had to remind us all to stop thinking about lovey-dovey Valentines Day feelings each time he would mention the word "love." With this warped image set in our minds, we have difficulty loving the way Christ called the church to love.

Goodness. We are challenged by the reality that the greatest love is laying down one's life for another, as Jesus so evidently portrayed on the cross (1 John 3:16). I do not think Hallmark has a card with a verse like this on it. It probably would not be a top seller. Yet, as verse 23 of the same chapter explains, we are commanded to love in this way. Because it had to be commanded, we know loving the Body of Christ is not a natural thing. Nonbelievers can have great friendships and stay close, but I believe it is only through the love Christ gives us that Believers can truly love others with the greatest love possible. What are some of the differences you have found in the evidence of God's complete, unfailing, and redeeming love in a group of Believers verses good friendships any group can seem to have? Is it necessary that these look different?

Over these past few weeks, we have looked at the foundations of the Christian community and different areas in which Christ calls for obedience. Love is one of them. I know that a lot of the community that has developed in our ministry is a result of the love growing in our own relationships with God and then overflowing into each other's lives. Of course, we can always keep growing in this area (...even if you fail to grow in other areas, such as the mohawk on Mr. T's head. At least he never needed a hair cut, Ed). What are some specific ways you can think of to encourage a stronger bond of love in and throughout our ministry? The picture of everyone sitting together, praying together, and partaking in communion together is a great start!

3 comments:

  1. first of all...the title just cracks me up because i got a visual of myself staring down a literal chia pet. i do want to say though that since last semester, i have really begun to feel that love between brothers and sisters in ccf. i have always struggled with the brother concept especially because i have always found it hard to be very affectionate to my own little brother even though i love him to death and tell him so often. but at ccf i have found a few "brothers" that have taught me what it is like to be around guys and not be like, "oh...he's cute," but "oh, there's my brother-let me run and hug him!" i love love. and not the mushy kind-because i know all too well that love like that fades quickly :-)

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  2. I think the best way to encourage a stronger bond of love is to examine the specific qualities of love. Like Rebecca said, the world throws all of these different things at us with the title of love. But at further inspection its not love. I know Ed didn't go all the way through 1 Corinthians 13 because every one would think of a wedding. It's sad but true. We have been conditioned to think of romance and marriage whenever we hear love. In order, to love our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and to love unbelievers we need to examine 1 Cor. 13 love. We see that love is a many different verbs. Love is not just words but actions. An exercise that I learned this past weekend that really changed the way I look at love is this: if you take the word love out and replace it with Jesus so it reads "Jesus is patient and kind...," it fits perfectly. Now, put your name there. "(Your name)is patient and kind. I don't know about you but I don't fit very well. But if we abide in Christ we are able to do those things that love is. (Your name) in Christ is patient and kind. That's how its supposed to be. If we are going to love like we should, we have to constantly follow Christ. At the end of the chapter, Paul says that the greatest thing out of faith, hope, and love is LOVE. The reason....God is Love. Follow Christ and love like Christ and we will truly be know by our love for another.

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  3. love is exciting. i want to throw that out to start off my comment. love is the foundation of everything we do. there's a good reason that I Cor. 13 is placed where it is. and i know we talk about I Cor. 13 all the time, but i don't think we talk about it in the right way. a lot of times i think of paul's letters as a randomly thrown together set of rules, advice and greetings, and in so doing i don't give a brilliant man, and the Lord, enough credit.

    the great poem about love is dropped dead in the middle of a pair of passages on spiritual gifts. so paul's very intellectual and logical discussion of how we live our lives, how we minister to each other, how we glorify God, is interrupted by a beautiful poem about love. without even looking at the content of the poem, we can draw some conclusions from this.

    First, love is important. paul interrupts one of the clearest discussions on what is quite possibly the most divisive issue in church history (just think of how many denominations are founded on the practice of certain spiritual gifts) to talk about love.

    Second, coming back to my first point, love is exciting. i think paul got so excited about things that he just had to stop what he was doing and talk about something else. we see throughout his letters what seem to be random verses from hymns. these are almost always after passages where paul has laid out some bit of theology, or described the process of salvation, or talked about God's mercy towards us. i think this is an expanded example of that. paul got excited about what he was writing.

    third, this is not to say that this passage is an accident. paul knew where he was going in this letter.let's look at the last two verses of chp. 12:

    "Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts.And I will show you a still more excellent way."

    this was the destination from the outset of the letter. paul talks about divisions and sin throughout most the letter, but his exposition of spiritual gifts is not a random passage in a book about division in the church. paul ended up here because this is the linchpin. this is the key. this is what God is about, this is what we need to be about. Love. everything we do comes from that concept, that action, that mindset.

    where does this leave us? the only conclusion we can draw from this is that everything we do needs to have its foundation in love; primarily in our love for God, but almost as important, in our love for people. God created us to be a community. we read in genesis that God saw that man was alone and decided it was not good. so we set up chairs, run sound, hang out, play music, eat doughnuts, speak, sing, and show up because of love.

    peace

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