Love is a Verb

"Dear Children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth." -1 John 3:18

"Love is a verb. Love-the feeling-is the fruit of love the verb or our loving actions." -Dr. Stephen Covey

Something that has been on my heart recently with the whole debate of gay marriage is love. (Although this blog applies to so many other topics as well and the whole controversy itself has sparked many other things in my heart.) So many Christians I know responded to this debate with the cliche, "I can be against homosexuality and gay marriage and still love the person" or the "Love the sinner, hate the sin" mentality. While I believe that this is true and you can definitely do this, I must inquire what they believe love is. Here's what I think love is not. Love is not a thought. Love is not proud, rude, selfish, or easily angered. Love is not a feeling. Love doesn't just happen.

Here's what I believe love is...Love is a choice. Love is patient, kind, and does not boast.  Love protects, trusts and perseveres. Most of all, LOVE IS A VERB. It is an action. In the verse above, John spells it out beautifully. "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth." Actions of love can be numerous things that include, but are not limited to, giving to someone in need (as the above verse is used in context), it may be standing up for your fellow brother and sister in Christ, it may be bridging a gap between people of different viewpoints, it may be spending time with someone to show that you care, or it may be doing unto them the best display of love you can, verbalizing the love of Jesus Christ to them. 

As the above quote says, the feeling of love is a fruit of our loving actions. I found this interesting as it implies that we do not act because of our feelings towards a person, but rather our actions induce our feelings.  Feel free to disagree with me, but I think that Dr. Covey is on pointe (although I realize he was not necessarily referring to Biblical love but rather romantic love).  

Here's the challenge for this blog...If you say you love someone, prove it. 

Running on Empty

"He replied, 'You of little faith, why are you so afraid?' Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm." -Matthew 8:26

Recently, I was reading a friend of mine's blog where she simply keeps a running list of things she is thankful for.  One of the things on her list stood out to me more than the others.  This thing was simply a picture of her gas gauge on empty, and said she was thankful "for the times when we run on so little."  Immediately, many circumstances flooded by mind.

How often do we find ourselves running on empty in our lives, and yet we make it through.  Everyday we run on just a little gas, a little money, a little patience, a little bit of time, a little faith and yet, we make it to the next morning.  When we run on so little, there leaves so much room for God to intervene.  When we make it through, we know it was not because of our own doing, for if it were we would have had a breakdown a long time ago.  The stress and lack of faith that comes from running on empty matters to God, and I am convinced that ends barely meeting and bridges barely being crossed are His little ways of showing He cares for our everyday lives.  We can rely on Him and, while He does not always get us out of the times when we run on so little, He always gets us through it.  For even when we feel like were going uphill with no gas in the tank and we start sliding backwards, we have a God who loves us.  He comforts in our failures, celebrates in our successes, and loves always.

I challenge you to look for God to show His glory and love for you in those moments when you are running on so little.

Senior Year and I Know Nothing

"While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer "God Is in the Manger:  Reflections on Advent and Christmas"

So I haven't had a really heartfelt blog in a while and its been for a few reasons.

#1-I am a SENIOR in college and have been busy trying to figure out plans for the rest of my life (and 3 months from now). When I have not been planning, I have just been worrying or fine-tuning my senioritis with Netflixs, naps, or trips to the gym.

#2-I have felt really inadequate about talking about God recently. No, it's not because I've fallen in my faith or had some sort of major traumatic event that has changed my relationship with God. The opposite has actually happened.  I have learned about God so much in the past 8 months or so.  I have found new ways to encounter, love, and serve Him and I have dug into his word like never before.  The main thing that the past few months have taught me about God is how much I know about Him.  The sum of everything I know about God is..........nothing...and that is becoming more and more apparent everyday. I am restlessly searching to know God better and more deeply and yet the more I find out, the more I find that I do not know. I am stuck in this paradox of knowing that the more I know about God, the more questions I will have and the less I will know in the grand scheme of things. Despite how frustrating it sounds (and it can be at times), it is a blessing to know that I have a God that is so far from anything I can comprehend and that because of this, I have faith that He knows better than I do.  He is an unfathomable, loving Creator who loves me and, even though I cannot understand him, I rest in security that He understands me and my struggles and He knows my heart.

I simply challenge you to step back and examine what you do (or do not) know about God.

College Proverbs

Its been a really long time since I blogged, and, just for fun, here is a lighthearted blog.

College Proverbs (some by me, some I found):

When it rains, go inside.
Tuition is greater than the sum of your classes.
Group projects are the root of all evil.
You can judge a Facebook by its cover photo.
Procrastination is the best motivator.
There is no greater way to better oneself than to try to beat your best time on minesweeper.
When a Freshman, do as the uperclassmen do.
When the going gets tough, take a nap.
A picture is not worth anything in a 1,000 word essay.
Keep your friends close, and your smart friends closer.
You can't make an omelet without setting off a fire alarm or two.
God helps those who study.
A watched clock never moves.
There's no time like Friday at 3 pm.
Good things come to those who suck up to the professor.
Two packs of Ramen are better than one.
Your average is only as high as your lowest grade.
You can lead a girl to college, but you can't make her think.

Provide

"But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights." -Jonah 1:17

It has been forever since I have blogged, but I felt the need to share something that hit me so hard this past Tuesday. I was in my Bible study group and we were talking about Jonah chapter 1. I had read chapter 1 four times prior to going to Bible study and of course I still managed to miss some things that the other wonderful ladies managed to pick up on. One of those being in the very last verse of the chapter. It is posted above.

From a young age, anyone raised in church knows the story of Jonah. Jonah was punished for his disobedience to God. ...or was he?  So many people see God as a spiteful being who pours out His wrath on those who disobey Him. He sent the fish to swallow Jonah, yes; but one thing we found very interesting in verse 17 though was the word "provided." God provided a fish for Jonah to be swallowed by. That one word, often overlooked, can change the whole context of the story. Yes, Jonah was being reprimanded for his disobedience, but without the "punishment" of being swallowed by the fish, he probably would have died in the middle of the sea.  He would have lost his life due to one mistake, but God so mercifully provided a way out. God still needed his work to be done and offered Jonah a second chance. The provided fish is a representative of all the roadblocks that God puts in our lives. He provides difficulties and things that may seem like punishments, so that His glory will shine though at the end of it all. In the end, He is always providing for us and has our best interest and His glory in mind.

I challenge you to switch the context next time you feel like God is working against you. Look at the situation in a different context and see if you can find how God is providing another option or a better way for you.

Nontradtional

""It's going to be an awakening experience when conservative Christians get to Heaven and realize there are no pews and everyone is acting like a fool. You can't fully worship God in the comfort of the box that you've put up around your faith." -Anna Joy Wells

I haven't blogged in over a month! This is not because I did not want to, but rather because I have not found the time to, and when I have had the time to, I just haven't had anything remotely interesting worth blogging about. But alas, that streak of nothingness ends with this blog! Recently I have been thinking a lot about worship, how it is perceived and how Christians react when it goes out of what they consider the "norm." I think we as southern baptists, Catholics, and most other denominations are too traditional. I LOVE tradition, don't get me wrong. I love hymns and tradition; but who among us has not sung a hymn and was just singing the words, has participated in other traditional conservative church service that had no meaning to them? Everyone has done it at one time or another. One question that was brought to my attention in the summer of 2011 that I really honed in on was the question, "why do we continue to follow traditional worship, if it has completely lost its meaning for some of us?"  I was challenged to sort through the parts of Christianity that I have been taught all my life and to pick out the traditions that are meaningful to me and figure out why others had lost my sincerity. Because, as I have come to find, without my heart in it, "worship" is not worship.
Challenge #1-Find what traditions are meaningful to you and do those. Discover which ones have no meaning and find out why. Above all, have sincere worship however that worship my manifest itself.

In addition, a friend of mine put another idea I was thinking into words. She said, "It's going to be an awakening experience when conservative Christians get to Heaven and realize there are no pews and everyone is acting like a fool. You can't fully worship God in the comfort of the box that you've put up around your faith." I can criticize Baptists because I am one, but here's what I realized, our...umm... ostracism (for lack of a better word)...often stops people from participating fully in communal worship. As Baptists, if you raise your hands in church, you may get a weird look, but nothing too bad. If you sing super loud and off key, you may have some people around you move from their pews. And heaven forbid you....DANCE!...I think Christians, especially Baptists are in for a huge surprise when we all get to Heaven. I don't care what you say, I'm dancing in Heaven. It will all be with a heart of worship that will have thrown tradition aside and be fully engulfed in glorifying my Lord without fear of what anyone else has to say about it.
Challenge #2-Take God out of the box you've put Him in, and let Him guide your worship rather than going by what you think everyone else expects your worship to look like. I really think God could care less if your worship is traditional or not as long as your worship is directed at Him with love and sincere affection.

*I have a feeling that there will be more blogs on this idea of "nontradtion"...but here is the first of many.

The Apostle Paul and Luke Bryan

"Hey I'm a little drunk on You and high on summertime." -Luke Bryan "Drunk on You"

"Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything." -Ephesians 5:18-20

This blog may be taken as a bit blasphemous, but I promise that I mean no disrespect. Even though I am almost positive that neither Paul nor Luke Bryan had the other in mind when they wrote these two things above, I found a neat connection.

In the song above Luke Bryan is referring to a girl and he talks about drinking and talks about taking clothes off, but the point of the song is that the girl is the "best buzz [he's] ever gonna find." That her love is more addicting than any alcohol. I kinda thought about that and, through a long stretch, made it relate to my relationship with God. (I have a tendency to try to do this with almost every song I ever hear.) Again, it is a long stretch for some people, but I honestly find myself feeling "drunk" with the Holy Spirit sometimes. Above, you can see where the apostle Paul urges the church at Ephesus (and ultimately us) to be filled with the Spirit and to be thankful for everything.  I believe that this song encompasses a small part of that. God's love is the best buzz I can ever find. I desire to be filled with Him and to go 'bottoms up' with His word until I know if from cover to cover. I want to be drunk on Him so much that His glory spills out of my mouth like a stream of incomprehensible babble may flow from the mouth of an alcoholic.

As I sit here staring out at the beach at in Edisto Beach, SC I am drunk on Him and high on summertime. I challenge you to be filled with Him, take Him in and be drunk on His love.