By Our Love…

Recent events have brought a thought to my mind…

…Namely the murder of a doctor while he was attending church…

…and a simple verse in the Bible.

“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35

It seems that The Church has gotten a little off of the narrow path as of late (and by late I mean over the past 1500 years or so).  We are supposed to love one another.  We are supposed to love those whom God has created – even if we don’t like the sin that they are committing.

There is another verse that these events brought to mind…

“Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written,
“VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,” says the Lord.”  Romans 12:19

… which is at the end of a passage on how we are to serve one another.  I highly recommend reading through Romans 12 if you have the time – if only for the reminder of how we are to treat one another within the body of Christ.

Then, of course, there is that short little verse in Exodus 20:13 (and Deuternonomy 5:17) which has just 4 little words:

Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Um… yeah.

So far I’ve been staying pretty high-level, common knowledge with these references, and yet so much of the Church at large seems to forget that they exist!  Why is God so often used as an excuse to show cruelty?  Just a few examples:

• The Crusades (it was really all about the wealth of the area… Europeans had never seen anything like Byzantium!)
• Hitler’s oppression of the Jews (and let’s face it, he’s not the only one!  Many “Christians” show heavy anti-symatism)
• the Religious Right using their bibles to bash anyone who gets in their way.
• The Pharisees & Sadducees who were the earthly force God used to hang Jesus on the cross… and who then persecuted His followers, forcing them to the ends of the known earth.

I said it was just a few examples… that list could go on and on and on.  We have all experienced it – someone using God or their faith as an excuse to put someone else down.  I daresay we have even done it once or twice ourselves.

But what does Jesus call us to?  Does he tell us to go out and sin against God in His name?  Does He send us out to steal, kill and destroy?  It seems to me that description was reserved for a different kind of roaring lion.

No, He called us to love.  To build relationships with those that we meet on a day to day basis, to share Jesus with them – and occasionally to use words.

Folks, our actions should show them Jesus!  We should be living our lives in such a way that people see HIM when they look at us.  We are called to be salt and light to a lost and dying world – something that is hard to do when our lives are no different than theirs, and is especially hard when we are behaving with less self control or morality.

Here’s a crazy thought…

What if we took the energy that we normally would use to cut down others or vent our frustrations and instead spent it on reaching out in love to a lost and dying world?

What if we focused our attention on taking a meal to the neighbor who lost a loved one or who recently had a child or lost their job?

What if we offered to watch the kids down the street for an afternoon or evening so their mom could have some down time or go out on a date with her husband?

What if we baked a double or triple batch of cookies and took the time to walk around the neighborhood and share the extras with those who live around us?

What if the next time we wanted to say something negative or derogatory about someone we reigned in our tongue and prayed for them instead?

What if instead of watching 3 hours of TV with your kids tonight, you played a game with them?  Or spent 10 minutes each night memorizing a scripture verse as a family?

What if we allowed the love that is God so fill our lives that it overflowed into everything that we did?

Somehow I think that if The Church would focus on Love, we could change the world.

They will know us by our love and be changed, or they will see us through our hate and turn away.

01-we-are-one-in-the-spirit-_-by-our-love

One last reminder… revival starts in the heart – yours and mine.

I think I need to go bake some cookies.

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