love

Encouragement for your Daily Life

The Trap Of Loving Yourself Too Much

Too many Christian teachers today have adopted that secular counselor’s message of heightened self-love. They see the commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and claim that it contains the hidden commandment: “Love yourselves more.”

I understand why the world cheers on greater self-love (what other option do they have?); but I can’t understand why Christians, like lemmings, leap into this trap as well.

Thomas A Kempis wrote, “Self-love is more harmful to you than anything else in the world. The proportion you give love to a thing is the proportion that thing will rule you. If your love is pure, simple, and well ordered, you will be a slave to nothing.”

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Encouragement for your Daily Life

Stop Falling In Love With Jesus

Many pastors and teachers are doubling-down on the relational language – encouraging their flocks to “fall in love with Jesus” or “have a love affair with Jesus.”

Here are three more reasons to avoid romantic imagery: It’s unbiblical, it’s unhelpful and it’s uncomfortable.

When I think of my faith, I do not imagine it as a love affair. I don’t envision myself sitting across a table in a candlelit restaurant, staring into Jesus’ eyes, casually flirting with him. I don’t picture myself walking hand-in-hand on a beach, opening a love note from Jesus, or climbing into bed next to him. My “relationship” with Jesus takes place on the battlefield – not in the bedroom.

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Encouragement for your Daily Life

Overnighters: A Modern Day Parable Of Loving The Unlovable

What do we do with the people who are seemingly beyond repair? Where is the church in the ministry to the most broken in our world, the ones who will never have the traditional redemption story, who will never be self-supporting, who always fall by the wayside of addiction and rootlessness?

I am reminded of David. Not the handsome boy-king who saved everyone, but the adulterer, the murderer, the warlord, the absentee dad, the unhinged. God consistently uses the most broken, damaged people to bring his kingdom. In the end, the very worst parts in ourselves can become the very place from which love and empathy flow freely.

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Encouragement for your Daily Life

You Don’t Need To Be Useful To Be Valuable

I would much—MUCH!—rather wash the feet of Jesus than have him wash my feet. I would have done something valuable. I would know I’m of use. Instead he washed my feet.

We want God to consider us as useful; instead God thinks of us as beautiful. We want God to think of us as helpful; instead God says he delights to have us as friends. We are an end in itself.

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Encouragement for your Daily Life

Sons Of God: A Documentary About The Love Of God

This video is a short trailer for a new documentary about God’s work of reconciliation in Christ. The documentary is called Sons of God. It features many noteworthy contributors who share stories of how God has healed people and broken hard hearts to reveal his love. Check out the trailer above. Click the “Read More” button below to see the full documentary for free (no sign ups required).

 

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Encouragement for your Daily Life

Love Your Enemy: Is That Even Possible?

Using the word “love” for an enemy makes the word “enemy” obsolete. You can’t love an “enemy”! Maybe that’s Jesus’ point: the more we love our enemies, the less enemies the world will have. There will no longer be no “us” or “them.” There will only be “us.”

All the pain and suffering we’ve inflicted on one another will be recompensed in the next life, and as you forgive in this life, you will be forgiven in the next. You have one life now. Make sure you’re using it to fully become more like Christ, forgiving and loving generously.

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Encouragement for your Daily Life

How To Avoid Being A Clanging Cymbal

The question is actually not if you are a fake, but rather, how often? Unless you love perfectly, you are at least sometimes a fraud, a playfake, a wanna-be; you get the picture.  I mean, it doesn’t get any clearer than 1 Corinthians 13:1 when Paul says,

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

We can’t be perfect at loving, but if we consistently do things without love, our faith is worthless and as fake as the healthiness of Diet Coke.

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Encouragement for your Daily Life

A Story About Loving Ones Neighbor

Our first shock when we moved into our low-income apartment in a Midwestern inner city was the amount of substance abuse that surrounded us. Suddenly, alcohol is no longer fun. Instead it is a substance that changes my friends and neighbors, making them unpredictable and unsafe; it leaves me feeling helpless and afraid and vulnerable. It makes me question my faith in God, struggling to find hope for those who are addicted. In my neighborhood, it was becoming clear: righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit were tied to breaking the chains of my neighbors’ addictions. Since so many were caught in the cycle of stumbling and picking themselves up again, it became good for me to not drink, as a way to stand with the brothers and sisters I was learning to love. I didn’t give up alcohol because I wanted to flee the evils of the world. I gave up alcohol as a way of engaging the evils of the world.

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