Sometimes loving is hard

Jesus told his disciples, and through them, the whole world the two most important things we should be about:
Love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all our mind. Secondly, we are to love our neighbors like ourselves.
With just these two things, if we could really just do them, we would accomplish everything that we were ever meant to do. Everything!

I think that deep down; everyone desires to do just this but….. sometimes loving is hard.

To love God wholly and completely. What does it mean? Can we possibly comprehend loving anyone in that way? At the very least, this would include doing everything possible to want to please that person and never allow any of our actions to offend or hurt them. In our personal relationships with those around us, it is often very hard not to offend someone. Not because we do something wrong, but rather because the other person cannot see or understand our real motives. With God at least that is never a problem since God sees into the very core of our being. There is nothing hidden from Him. God knows when we don’t want to offend or hurt Him, but at the same time He also knows when we are apathetic or flat out rebellious towards Him.
Often we tell people close to us that we love them with all our hearts. It just isn’t true, because there is no way we can give all of the love within us to just one person without leaving out others or ourselves. Often, we would rather have our desires met before looking out for the needs, wants, and desires of others. Be honest. Then too, sometimes even after we do something kind or loving towards others, we may secretly, deep down want some sort of recognition for it. It may be something as simple as a “thank you”. Even if it was just wanting that much, it means in a small sense that our motives weren’t entirely selfless.
I believe that Jesus Christ offered to the entire world from eternity past until eternity future complete, unselfish, pure love without expecting anything in return. It’s been said that there was no need for them to nail Jesus to the cross; His love would have held Him there. Could we ever imagine experiencing the things that happened for a perfect stranger who even may even have hate and malice towards you? I don’t think that God ever calls us to go to that extent in showing love to others but I know we are supposed to do so much more than we are used to doing.
Every one of us has things which we are committed to. That isn’t a bad thing, and we should be diligent to carry out our responsibilities. Some of those things; in no special order are, family, church, work, school, relationships. We should all have a desire to play an active role in things like these, but there needs to remain a balance in our lives so that there is time and room in our hearts to reach out and love others in tangible ways. Even for people in “full time ministry”, too often more time is spent on “ministry” organization and administration activities rather than on personal involvement with others.
All I’m trying to say is that for us to really love others, it takes more than just saying “I love you”. It takes help from God and so we should ask for that help. Then maybe we can be more like the people God wants us to be. I hope and pray to become that person.

Quotable quotes worth quoting

Dost thou wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that shall pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430)


“To worship God, is to approach him. And if the heart be full of His love and fear, out of the abundance of it the mouth will speak; but there are many whose religion is lip-labour only. When they pretend to be speaking to God, they are thinking of a thousand foolish things. They worship the God of Israel according to their own devices.”
Matthew Henry –


If worship does not change us, it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Worship begins in holy expectancy; it ends in holy obedience.
Richard J. Foster (1942– )


You don’t learn to praise in a day, especially since you may have been complaining for years! New habits take time to develop. But you can begin today, and practice tomorrow, and the next day, until it becomes part of you.
Erwin W. Lutzer (1941– )


More spiritual progress can be made in one short moment of speechless silence in the awesome presence of God than in years of mere study.
A. W. Tozer (1897–1963)


You don’t drift into intimacy with God. It is a choice.



When everything is stripped away, we are to recognize that
God is all we ever really had.

Malawi

My recent trip to Malawi was incredible. I still am having difficulties putting it into words. It was an experience that is much better to have been felt in real life as opposed to just telling or reading about it. Words cannot convey what it was really like.
As for logistics, we left on July 4th and returned on July 17th. No way was that long enough for me. The flights were long and took up way too much of our time. I would much rather have spent that time there.

The warm heart of Africa. That’s what they call Malawi. It could not be more true. The people we met there were some of the most gracious, giving, loving, caring people I have ever been humbled to meet. And once you meet them, it takes all of a few minutes and you feel like you know them. There was not one person that I met there that wasn’t overtly friendly. If given the opportunity, they want to give you the best that they have. Even though we have more than they could ever probably imagine.

I have been many different places in the world and have seen poverty before, but never like I saw it in Malawi. The people there live on so little. Most people throughout the country live in mud brick homes with either corrugated tin or thatch roofs. The floors are dirt and there is no electricity or running water of any kind. Many only have a couple changes of clothes and some of those are shreds. The blessed ones have bicycles to ride or they just walk everywhere no matter how long it takes. It is the stereotypical Africa that you think about with the women carrying large heavy loads on their heads and having the baby slung on their backs. And they are so graceful about it too.

More than anything while we were there, we just spent time with the people there. Our trip was more relational than anything else. I think it meant a lot for the kids at the Noah’s Ark Orphan Care just to know that they are loved by complete strangers from thousands of miles away. And it was so easy to love them all. Now that I am back, it is so hard because I miss them so much as well.

I truly miss the warm heart of Africa. I can hardly wait to go back again.

This I believe

I believe in LOVE. I believe in the love that God has shown to every one of us. The kind of love that caused Him to send us His only son to die for us. The kind of love that caused his son Jesus to be willing to die for us. That kind of love is easy to believe in. It is supernatural. I guess the problem is that there is so little evidence in the world today of this kind of love. Is man even capable of it? There is the occasional example of people performing heroic acts in an effort to save somebody which results in their own death. But unfortunately sometimes there is something that would even lead us to question the motives of those people. Is it from a pure love for mankind or is it from selfish reasoning. One, they feel they cannot live without the other person. Two, a feeling of pride to do something that most other people would not consider and the thought of coming out of it alive resulting in their being known as a hero. There are examples of a parent freely doing something for the sake of their own child which is motivated solely by love, but would that same person act the similarly for a stranger, or better yet, for somebody who has wronged them?

Love is hard for us. That kind of love does not come naturally.

The Beatles were on to something. Of course there are a number of devotees that would say “Duh!” to a statement like that, but be that as it may, I really believe that in one song they wrote, maybe inadvertently, they came up the premise for a life changing credo; all you need is love. Said another way; love is all you need.

Love is patient
Love is kind
Love does not envy
Love does not boast
Love is not proud
Love is not rude
Love is not self-seeking
Love is not easily angered.
Love keeps no record of wrongs
Love does not delight in evil
Love rejoices with the truth
Love always protects
Love always trusts
Love always hopes
Love always perseveres
Love never fails

The word love gets abused a lot. People say things like; I love your hair. I love that dress, I love pizza, I love classical music, or even I love you. But let’s face it, all of those things are pretty trivial and then the words can become hollow and meaningless. What happens when you wake up in the morning after a good night’s sleep and now you’ve got bed head? Will they still love your hair? Fashion changes by the season or by the latest pop star. Please tell me how many people even like pizza with anchovies let alone love it? Do all people who like Baroque care for Medieval era music? It’s still classical. What about this I love you business? How many people fall out of love as easily as they fell into it? We’ll use Elizabeth Taylor as our example here.

The kind of love I’m talking about is pure love. By pure I mean unadulterated, authentic, and free; without boundaries, hesitations, restrictions, or preconditions.

I think the best example of this kind of love has been around for a very, very long time.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever should believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life.

That is true love and it really doesn’t get any better than that.

Washed up on a beach

A while ago, I went to bed. I laid my head on the pillow and began to pray.
God, forgive me. It had been since driving to work that I really made any effort to pray or communicate to Him. I felt that I had betrayed a friend. It shook me.
I realized the depravity of mankind and me in particular. It was at that time that I said in my prayer that I thanked God for saving me. I was sinking and You washed me up on a beach.
I had never thought about, said or prayed those words before. They repeated at least two more times in my head all by themselves. It was supernatural in nature. Then I began to envision it.
I was in the ocean. It was dark. The waves were high and moving fast in every direction. It was the perfect storm. I don’t know how I got there. I was in the middle of the ocean with no known land anywhere. No hope.
I tried as best I could to stay above the water. It wasn’t warm water. It wasn’t too cold either. Just cold enough.
I had a sense of confidence that I could stay up. I tread water the way you are supposed to.
Then, out of nowhere something would grab me and pull me down. It was just enough so that I would come up afraid and needing to breath. Then the spray would hit my face and I could taste the salty water.
The next thing I noticed, I saw myself from above. An out of body kind of thing. There I was laying on a beach. The tide was out somewhat. I was in the wet sand. Waves kept washing up onto my legs. My feet were always in the water.
It was then that I realized it was a spiritual analogy. On my own, I cannot survive. Even though I was “doing” the right thing, outside, (evil) forces pulled me down. Never enough to keep me from getting up again, but enough that I wore out.
Then I know God rescued me. I had been overcome from the struggle. Too tired to fight it any more, I knew that I had gone under and passed out. Instantaneously God took me to a safe harbor away from the middle of the ocean and away from the storm.
It is only by grace we are saved. God’s grace saved me. I will always need Him. I know He loves me.

Lest we forget

My son told me a joke the other day. It goes something like this.
A scientist determined that he could create life and that God was no longer needed. God got wind of it and decided to prove the scientist wrong. The plan was for each of them to create life. God was first. He took some dirt, blew on it, and a new life was created.
Next the scientist grabbed some dirt. “Stop!” said God. “Get your own dirt”.

To me this only reconfirms, in a humorous way that without God, there is nothing we can do. Without God, nothing would even exist.

Too often we try to do things on our own and end up ignoring God throughout the day. Too often, the things of the world get us all wrapped up and we lose sight and thought of our only TRUE friend, lover, comforter, healer, helper, etc. I hate it when I stop long enough to realize this.

God forgive me for leaving you out of my day.

Thus we begin

This is the first blog for me. I don't know what it is I will blog about but I hope that somebody will find at least something I write about of interest or thought provoking in some manor or another.
My creative life is sporadic. There are times that the words or artistic moods I have are plentiful and frequent and then there are other times that I cannot come up with anything original so there will be no guarantees of any sort of blogging schedule.
I hope that in reading this blog you may be inspired and or challenged to make the world a better place for all people as I hope to do with my life.