One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn in relatively recent history is how to love. I mean really love... let's face it. Sometimes there are people who tax the limits of our ability to love. It's easy to gloss over our weakness to love people, if they are our boss, a co-worker, even the neighbor, but the weakness of this inability to love really shows it's ugly head when selfishness gets in the way of truly loving our family.
Selfless love does not serve in order to prevent its own harm or to insure its own welfare. It serves for the sake of the one being served, and serves in the way it likes being served – whether it ever receives such service or not. That level of love is the divine level, and can be achieved only by divine help... Unregenerate man can never come up to the standard of selfless love – the love that loves others as oneself and that treats others in the same way that one wants to be treated.
~John MacArthur
my inability to love difficult people is not because of them...this time it is all about me...
I want to learn to love from a pure heart. A heart that doesn't love like the rest of the self-centered world. Unconditionally and without expectation of anything in return. A healthy, God-glorifying, self- trandscending love. But a love like this cannot come from me...I can only hope to be a conduit that channels the flow of God's perfect love.
The world's kind of Love focuses on getting and using. The world values things based on their "usability". We may think we can love unconditionally...but attitudes are quickly hung out naked on the cross when expectations are not met, or comfort zones are violated. I have a problem being a servant to those whom I claim to love when it is not convenient for me. I have a problem loving them when they are not responding to me, or giving to me the way I think I deserve. Has the real goal of disciplining my children been to get them to be more "user friendly"? According to the Bible I am supposed to discipline my children because I am commanded to....not to change them or try to get them to please me.
I must trust God to change their hearts. God may actually give us a stubborn child to see if we will obey His word and trust Him.
As a sinner, I was of no use to Jesus Christ except as an object who drew out of Him the love of His Father.
~Norm Wakefield
As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous, not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.”
~Romans 3:10-12
We are incapable of giving anything to God! And yet He loved us enough to send His Son to die on a cross so that we could be redeemed. My sinfulness offers the occasion for God, the Father, to demonstrate His kind of love~a pure giving love. The great value of the ones who are difficult to love is that they cause you to go to your Heavenly Father.
Coming across difficult people or difficult situations are opportunities for God to demonstrate the reality of our relationship with Him. As He loves through us...we realize even more how much we are loved by God. If we only know how to love the way the world does; self-centeredly trying to get a need met by using others, sin's powerful grip on our hearts will be evident in our inability to love.
According to the scriptures, idolatry lies at the heart of every sin.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.Whenever someone looks to anyone or anything other than God as the Source of all things, he commits the sin of idolatry. Looking to people to supply what only God can supply is replacing them for God! For instance...a husband may look to his wife to make him happy instead of God. An employee may be looking for validation from their boss, or a mother might idolize her children... if she is looking to them to make her feel significant.
~Colossians 3:5
When I look to God to supply all my needs...I am worshipping God.
If someone doesn't distinguish between the world's kind of love, and God's kind of love, he can be fooled into thinking he is loving when in all actuality he is using someone for his own selfish interest.
Love can only take place where a relationship is free of idolatry and a person recognizes God as a source of everything. The moment we look to someone to be the source of supplying our comfort, we put them in the place of God.
~Norm Wakefield
How I react to difficult people like a boss, or a co-worker or my children...may reveal if I am ruled by the spirit of idolatry. If I truly believe all my needs and expectations can only be met by God, I am freed from the demands of self-significance and pride and God's powerful love can then flow through me,
because you cannot love someone you idolize.
Jesus lives and gives us His Spirit so that His love may be perfected in us. I must allow the Holy Spirit to reveal God's purposes behind circumstances and relationships, so I do not look to them to meet my needs.
Father God...Help me to continually receive all things and all people as an opportunity to reject the spirit of idolatry, and to turn to You for the power to love. Help me to recognize this destructive, deceptive spirit. Forgive me for seeking from others what only you can provide for me...
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
~1 Corinthians 13:11-13
Jesus reduce me to Love...
Always Seeking Higher Ground,
Nora
That was really thought provoking and convicting. I had a co-worker this year that I have had to work with and this person has a reputation for being very difficult and down-right mean. (Actually sort of crazy...) It has put me to the test several times, and to be honest, several times I have failed. While I have shown great patience and restraint...in talking about her to other co-workers, the conversation I am sure was not pleasing to God. This very thing challenged my ability to be Christ-like for this person's words hurt others including students as well. It was really a difficult situation which I am glad is now ending (this person has been forced to retire). I loved what you said about placing always are expectations on Christ. Yes, people always disappoint us and then we are not so loving as we should be.
ReplyDeleteYou have beautiful insight into the heart of scripture and I hope to write with such wisdom someday. Thank you.