The One About Love
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Happy Valentine's Day! So many people hate on this day because they're single, or because they believe that it's just another day but over the past couple of years I've decided that Valentine's Day is so much more than cringey couple stuff. It's an awesome opportunity to express how much you appreciate and value someone. If they ask you why you're getting all sentimental, you can say "it's Valentine's Day and I wanted to appreciate you." Too often we think that love is all about romantic relationships and that's it. But love is so much more; we love our parents, we love our friends, we love our siblings, we love the people that we don't like. Wait. Did I really just say that we love the people we don't like? Yup, you heard me.
We are called to love all people.
That is something that I've been struggling with a lot recently. There are a couple of people in my life who I just find so hard to love. I often catch myself thinking 'God, are you suuure you're asking me to love this person?' Yes. He is. 1 John 4:19 tells us that "we love because He first loved us". Those seven words hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday when I Googled "Bible verses about love". God chose to love us; He sent His Son to die for us. Who are we to say 'nah, I don't feel like loving so-and-so today"? Where would we be if Jesus had that attitude? We are called to emulate the character of Christ, therefore we must love others as He has loved us.
Now, I'm one of those people who likes to believe that God has a sense of humor. Today is Valentine's Day, and God is teaching me about love. How comical. When God is teaching me something, He tends to make that very evident to me through various examples everywhere I go. Last night He put a certain person almost everywhere that I went. He led me to a blog post that talked about unconditional love. Today the Bible verse of the day on YouVersion is John 15:13 which says, "greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." I got to church early this morning and I was taking a look at the bulletin and noticed that the verse that my pastor was preaching on this morning was 1 John 4:19; there it was again!
I have a few options when God teaches me things. I can listen to Him, take to heart what He says, and then act on it. I can pray about it, but not do anything because I feel like God will do all of the work for me. I can also just ignore everything that God is impressing on my heart. I'm generally more inclined to lean towards the second option.
I've been struggling to love a couple of certain people for awhile now and this morning I was convicted of the fact that while I'm praying about loving those people, and I'm praying for those people, which by the way is hard to do, I'm not actually loving them. I still get really mad whenever they come around, I dwell on the things that they've done to hurt me instead of reflecting on their positive character qualities, I compare the nature of my relationship with them to the relationships that others around me have with them. Someone told me this past week that we are called to love people, but we don't necessarily have to like them. That concept has always baffled me, but I'm finding that it makes a little bit more sense than I initially thought. I can love these people because God has commanded it:
"My command to you is this: Love each other as I have loved you." {John 15:12}
But I don't have to like these people. I need to treat them with love and grace, kindness and respect, but I don't have to hang out with them all the time and expect to be their best friend.
One more nugget of wisdom that I am constantly reminding myself of when God is teaching me something is this; tears are okay. For some reason I used to think that if I was crying about a situation then clearly it was too hard for me to fix it, give it up, or do whatever needed to be done. But I'm learning that tears are healthy and they show that I'm human and I struggle to do what I know I need to do. They also prove to me that I'm weak and I must rely on God's strength to do what I deem to be impossible.
On this Valentine's Day (and every other day for that matter), let's remember how important it is for us to show love. Not just to a significant other. God has called us to love everyone.
All I Have Is Christ
Thursday, February 4, 2016
The other day I had to submit an assignment for school talking about some type of extra-biblical art form (song, poem, picture, etc.) and talk about what it says about the spiritual life, and how it impacts me personally. I was kind of dreading writing this assignment. I didn't know what to reflect on; I knew I wanted to reflect on a song, but I love music so I didn't know which song I would choose. Once I decided on a song, it was easy to put together five hundred words for this assignment. I was so happy with what I had written that I decided to post it here. The song that I decided on was "All I Have Is Christ".
Enjoy!
“All I Have is Christ” was written in 2008 by Jordan Kauflin. He is an artist with Sovereign Grace Music, and has also been a pastor in Arlington, Virginia since 2010. According to their website, Sovereign Grace Music has had forty-six albums (as well as EPs) released starting in 1997. That seems like a crazy amount of music to be releasing, so it’ll probably help if I mention that over the years there have been thirty-nine different artists writing for the group - twenty-three of them being songwriters, as well as there have been thirty vocalists, and ten producers involved with all of that album/EP releasing.
I didn’t hear “All I Have is Christ” until last year, and I have my freshman year chapel team to thank for introducing me to this song. I was asked to sing lead for it, and I didn’t have much notice in regards to learning it, so initially I didn’t like it simply because I was intimidated by singing lead for a song that I didn’t know. Something that struck me about the song right away is that its chorus sounds like an anthem to me; it simply goes like this: “Hallelujah, all I have is Christ. Hallelujah, Jesus is my life.” I remember joking to my chapel team that this song should be the national anthem for Christianity.
“All I Have is Christ” is so powerful; I can never bring myself to skip it when it comes up on shuffle. I think that one of the reasons why I love it so much is because of how accurate the lyrics are for the Christian life. The first verse talks about being lost, and how I probably wouldn’t have chosen God if He hadn’t chosen me first. The second verse talks about how God saw how helpless I was and led me to Himself, and that “He bore the wrath reserved for me, now all I know is Grace”. The chorus then comes in and is followed by the third verse that talks about my strength to follow God’s commands comes only from Him, asking Him to use my life in any way that He so chooses, and expresses desire to live only for Him. I really appreciate the openness and honesty that is displayed in “All I Have is Christ” and how it walks through being lost and needing Christ, being saved, and then instructs us to live only for Him.
This song has impacted me quite a lot, especially in the past seven months of my life. I’ve lost two people who meant a great deal to me, and I went through periods of depression and pure hopelessness because of that. When I would hear this song, the chorus hit me so hard, just reminding me that I really don’t have anything else in this world other than Christ. That can often be a daunting thought; Christ is all that we have, and everything else is temporary. But the way that that is expressed in “All I Have is Christ” is so beautiful. By putting the word “hallelujah” into the chorus, it’s expressing thankfulness that Christ is all that we have. When I hear this song or sing it, all I can think of is how grateful I am that I have Christ, and in Him I have the hope of seeing my two loved ones (as well as others that I have lost – and still others that I inevitably will lose) again for eternity...that is, if they are Christians. There is so much joy and hope to be found in knowing Christ, and this song always causes me to stop and remember that. I know that we are to be joyfully and expectantly anticipating our heavenly Home but before this past summer, I had never experienced that deep sense of longing. I find it so cool to have that desire now; although I definitely want to graduate, get married, have a family, and all of that adult stuff, I also know that I am only doing all of that in order to “pass the time” in a sense until I get to go Home. Hallelujah, all I have is Christ!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Social Icons