GALATIANS: TRUSTING JESUS FOR GOD'S LOVE
By Steve Behlke
August 8, 2008
One of the really important, really huge and awesome things that we trust Jesus for, is God's love.
Think of it, if we are not trusting Jesus for God's eternal love, what are we trusting Him for?! Forgiveness? Yes, but not just forgiveness; God's forgiveness so that we can be reconciled with God and in good fellowship, the good graces of God. Eternal life, yes, but what is eternal life but knowing and living in union with the God who so loved us that He spared nothing to reconcile us to Him?!
Knowing Jesus Christ as our God, and knowing God's love in Christ, is the very fuel of the Christian life, it is the motivation to trust and love God. And loving God, we pray; loving God, we obey; loving Christ, we tell others about Him; loving Christ, we deny ourselves, we love others, we follow His lead. It's quite exquisite how Christ's life is manifest when God's love in Christ is front and center.
So what do we trust Jesus for, ultimately, we trust Jesus for eternal life in a loving relationship with God — for union with God, God's love, His good graces, His blessed assurance, His sweet promises, His beautiful Self — now and always and forevermore (even more wonderfully in the "forevermore" aspect of life). This reality liberates us, gives us hope, courage, joy.
This is what we see in the lives of those who trusted Jesus in the New Testament accounts of Christ's earth-life. Take for instance, the woman at the well, Zachaeus, the woman busted in the act of adultery, and Matthew the tax-collector. Think of every "sinner" who met Jesus and who trusted Him.
What did they trust Him for? What did they receive from Jesus?
They each received forgiveness! They found incredible hope, based on reality, based in Jesus. They each felt loved by Christ and accepted by God! Clean! Whole! Profoundly free!
Freedom is so much a part of the Gospel, this is particularly clear in Galatians.
Having trusted Jesus, Matthew, Zachaeus, the woman at the well and the lady busted in adultery, put their hope in Jesus for God's love. That's what Jesus gave them.
Then two days later Jesus put each of them under new and rigorous rules, took away their freedom, made them question God's acceptance and told them to persevere in holiness or be booted off the team! WHAT? NO! OF COURSE NOT...
Jesus didn't put them under religious laws or oppress them or rub their face in their sinfulness.
Yes, Jesus was clear when He told the woman caught in adultery to stop it! "Cut it out!" he said. Of course He did! Grace never promotes sin. The Gospel offers liberation.
Jesus told her that He loves her and that she is forgiven and that He in no way condemns her; and He told her, in light of receiving His love and entering this new relationship with God through Him, to sin no more. You're free, sin no more.
And even in these words, from the heart of Jesus the thing that we sense most, and the thing that absolutely blew away each person who received the grace of God from Jesus, was a keen new sense of God's love, God's forgiveness, of "feeling clean", and knowing God's acceptance, and, no doubt, of incredible freedom in Christ, sweet freedom in Christ.
And knowing Jesus in this way, they wanted and we want to follow Jesus!
It's in being with Jesus, really being with Jesus, trusting Jesus and having God's love, our hearts are drawn toward holiness, repentance, purity, and even toward actually wanting God's will for our lives (which is the most unnatural thing in human imagination: wanting someone else's will for our lives).
But trusting Jesus for God's love, we want to obey Jesus no matter what! Trusting Jesus for God's love does that! Knowing Jesus in a way that we know God's love, does that! Mere commandments, threats, rules, hurdles, laws, etc., don't touch our hearts. Jesus does. God's love understood does.
When we trust Jesus for God's love...
When the Gospel really is Good News to us...
When our relationship with God is real and concrete and not subject to recall because on our sins...
... We want to obey God from our hearts, and we want to pray and love and forgive and be patient and kind. And we even begin to endure the crud of life, lulls in marital bless, teenagers, and bosses from hell...
... And when we do these things in response to God's love in Christ, filled with hope and the Spirit, we do them "freely," gladly, from the heart, as a product of faith, as a fruit of grace — of Christ Himself manifesting His life in ours. That's the Christian life.
WONDERFUL WOMEN AND CHURCH LEADERSHIP
By Steve Behlke
August 5, 2008
I don't know how many of you read the comments in my recent post "CHRIST IS EVERYTHING," but someone accidentally and inadvertantly opened up a huge can of worms (Gabe, you know who I'm talking to). It's kind of fun, actually, but very serious and worthy of further inspection, conversation, humility, and prayer.
Really, a whole line of questioning emerged from this thread of comments. On the surface these questions relate to maleness and femaleness. Are men more important to God than women or more gifted than women? Of course not! So, in this enlightened day and age, why shouldn't women be ordained as pastors or elders or leaders in Biblically-conservative, Christ-loving, God-fearing churches? This is how the questions seem to present themselves.
But the deeper issues seem to relate to other things like ecclesiology and biblical hermeneutics, that is, a theological understanding of the church and of interpreting God's Word.
In presenting the underlining questions in writing, I am tempted to ask each of you what you think? In your following comments I will discover your opinions and I'll be thrilled to read them. But in the path to truth, the truth that transcends human reasoning and lies in Christ Himself, I want to cut past what you think to what God thinks and Christ did and the Word says.
The reality is all of us — male and female — are products of our fallen environment and our various upbringings and family biases and personal prejudices and experiences and hurts and all of that other stuff that we currently call "baggage." We all have loads of baggage that unwittingly shapes and twists our thinking and our motives. Add to that our human zeal to prove ourselves right, and our religious sense of wanting to rubber stamp God's confirmation on our tightly-held beliefs, which most certainly are true and best and enlightened compared to others, right or wrong regardless at times of God's revealed Word.
And indeed, there is a right and a wrong, at least, if we believe in the God of Jesus Christ.
And I do.
So, in this light, my question is not really what do you think but what does God think? What did Jesus do? And what does Holy Writ actually say on this matter?
Here are some of the implied questions to ponder that were recently raised in your comments:
- Are women to be made "pastors" in a Bible-believing, Jesus following, God-fearing church?
- Why or why not?
- Are women to be made "elders" in God's church? Why or why not?
- What then is a pastor? Or what is an elder?
- What if the men are spiritual couch potatoes and a woman is the most gifted and passionate person in the church to be the pastor or elder; is she to be made the lead pastor or elder? Should she step aside when a male is ready to step up to the plate?
- What did Jesus teach in this regard? Or what did Jesus do in this regard? Which women did He set over the church as elder? Does it matter?
- What does the New Testament teach about this? What was it's practice? Which women were set up in the churches to be pastors or elders? Does this matter?
- Are the biblical statements, some of which seem to limit women from such roles, merely cultural? If so, explain how Jesus and even Paul honored such cultural traditions when they seemed to break them in every other case?!
- If you are convinced from God's Word that women are not to become ruling elders or primary teaching pastors, then what do we allow women to do? Simply serve in the nursery and put up flannel graph Jesus' in the preschool classes?
- So, what about women leadership in the church? What about incredibly gifted women? Where are they most needed? Best able to serve God and others? What about the many godly women who are also gifted to lead, to teach, to shepherd?
Clearly, Abba Almighty is not anti-woman. He created woman with man as co-equals in God's image. His plan of salvation includes men and women. He loves each, no more than the other.
The Holy Spirit is certainly not prejudiced in this matter. He calls us to Christ, male and female. He gifts each of us, male and female, black and white, rich and poor, Republican and Democrat, French and Iraqi.
Jesus Christ is the most clearly and obviously unbiased in this regard. He was a liberator not an oppressor. He did not subject Himself to cultural biases and prejudices. Christ, I am told, in every New Testament encounter with a woman broke one or more of His culture's norms.
Don't go overboard and associate Jesus with feminists, but in Christ, there is no pecking order, no sex is better than any other. Rather than oppressing women, actually, Christ liberated women. Jesus reached out to women. At least two of his BFFs were women...
... But did Jesus set any woman up in church leadership?
Sure, Jesus received love and clothes and food and worship and foot-cleanings and prayers from women, and He gave abundant and shocking grace to women, and He protected women and honored women...
... But did Jesus confer upon any woman leadership, eldership, rule and authority in the church?
... Does that matter?
My question, What do the New Testament writings say about women as primary pastors and elders with teaching authority and rule in the church?
Please, don't right lengthy tomes. Only a few people read long comments. But get out your concordances, open your bibles, and seek God's Word and His expressed will on these matters, as best you can, and tell us, ever so briefly, realizing others will respond, what you have found: chapter and verse and brief explanation.
Do me a favor. Keep the gloves on. Love one another. Don't take this personally. Speak what you believe to be the truth in love — I hate to utilize it, but realize I do have the right to post your comments or not. 
And GUYS, you may be wise to hold off for a few days and let the women theologues discuss this first!
GALATIANS 1:4 -- RECONCILED RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
By Steve Behlke
August 5, 2008
The Gospel is not a command that we must do something great for God. It is the announcement and assertion of fact that God has done something great and awesome for us: Christ gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age (Galatians 1:4).
Christ gave Himself, all that He is, for us. Christ gave Himself to be incarnate, to be hated and crucified, to be the "Friend of Sinners," and to be God and Savior, Healer and Brother of the weak, sinful and hurting, of the morally corrupt, the socially and religiously marginalized, and of those beat up by Satan, and sick and tired and wanting freedom and life, wanting God Himself.
Christ gave Himself as the Anointed One who grants abundant forgiveness and eternal union with God forever. He is all this to us and so much more. And He grants these graces to us and so much more, and so freely and generously in Christ and with Christ and through Christ.
The Gospel is essentially the Great News of what Jesus has done to reconcile — that's relationship talk — humans to God.
Again, the Gospel is the Good News of WHAT GOD HAS DONE FOR US: Christ reconciles sinners to God, freely and generously, to all comers, all who simply trust and thereby receive Christ and all good things with Him. This is the Good News and it is not subject to any additions, stipulations, fine-print, requirements, demands, or traditions, expectations, or conditions.
To believe the Gospel is to trust Jesus. To believe the Gospel is to receive Jesus as our God and Savior and to receive YAHWEH as our God and Father (What could be better?!).
Indeed, we trust Jesus for an eternally reconciled relationship with God. And it is this relationship that Christ grants to us, which is the chief need for human flourishing and eternal joy.
This great reversal or reconciliation happened when we first trusted Jesus, but each new day, Christ must make this real to us, you know.
So, let us press forward in faith and in God's grace through Jesus Christ, and jump head-on into the River of Life, and re-submerge ourselves, re-baptize ourselves daily immersing our desires and expectations and goals and plans into this relationship, into this reality, each day.
May God grant you to set Jesus apart in your heart daily! May we set ourselves apart to trust Jesus! Prioritizing the simple way of noticing God in all things; of being with God, relationally, contentedly; of listening to God for the purpose of loving God and receiving His grace for life, for the purpose of worship and fellowship and obedience and joy.
May God grant our hearts to be attuned to His Spirit, depending on Him for all wisdom and understanding and strength for the small stuff and for the miraculous; and to re-receive God's daily grace through faith; and to experience the fullness of God's love; and to live by the Gospel's promises; and to love Jesus Christ above all things; and to value this relationship and to vault God to the top billing of our hearts and be the highest priority of our lives each new day.
CHRIST IS EVERYTHING
By Steve Behlke
July 24, 2008
Hi, it's been awhile. I went back to CA to visit the church that we'd spent 10 years of our lives with, loving and being loved, ministering to and being ministered by. We've been gone nearly 2 years now and after a tiring process they just hired a new pastor. I am so happy for them!!!
This actually isn't what the blog is about — I myself have gone through it and our church is currently going through it for an associate pastor — but it strikes me as peculiar that churches "hire" pastors. And in hiring a pastor, what are we really looking for, what are we expecting, critiquing, searching for, demanding... What is the "perfect" pastor? May we see the myth of this. And may God truly bless Charles and his family and also my left coast church family with humility, love, unity, breaking, healing, failure, success, grace and love and truth and power and weakness...
Well, ever since I've been back in MA I've been behind on everything. Including writing this blog.
When I was in CA at that church, a teaching elder referred to a few paragraphs from Colossians 3. I'm not sure which version he used but the words were slightly yet significantly different than what I have become familiar with. When Cliff read verse 11 as part of the bigger passage, God struck me with three words that sounded a chord in my spirit that still resounds: "Christ is everything!" This is so significant to me,
Christ is everything, not me
Christ is everything, not my background or education or sex
Christ is everything, not what I bring to the table
Christ is everything, not what I lack
Christ is everything, not my sins
Christ is everything, not my felt needs
Christ is everything, not food
Christ is everything, not sex
Christ is everything, not God's Law
Christ is everything, not good morals
Christ is everything, not anything that I might do
Christ is everything, not my faithful prayers
Christ is everything, not money
Christ is everything, not America
Christ is everything, not what's on television tonight
Christ is everything, not the economy or the price of oil
Christ is everything, not being respected, understood and appreciated
Christ is everything, not having things go my way
Christ is everything, not having the perfect marriage
... or the perfect kids
... or the perfect body
... or the perfect yard
... or the perfect car
... or the perfect clothes
... or the perfect vacation
... or the perfect church
... or the perfect pastor
"Christ is everything" - how does that resonate with you?
TRUSTING JESUS
Steve Behlke
July 5, 2008
The apostle Paul wrote of Jesus Christ, "Whoever trusts in Him will not be disappointed" (Romans 10:11).
Chew on that for a moment, it tastes really good. Look at what it says about Jesus. Look at what this teaches about our dependence on Jesus Christ.
It is always wise to trust Jesus. It is always foolish not to.
In any situation that you trust Jesus Christ, your faith is well placed.
Paul immediately adds, "Whoever will call on the Name of the LORD will be saved" (10:13).
As we stop relying on our tired, old, self-preserving, self-trusting, and self-serving ways of dealing with life's inconveniences, hurts, and crises, and we really — consciously, relationally — turn to Jesus open-minded and open-Bibled and humble, leaving our "agenda" at the door, seeking only Christ, pursuing His teaching, being willing to do anything that Jesus says and anything that reflects the real Jesus of the New Testament...
... And as we pray or "call on the Name of the LORD" open-handed, expecting to hear from God and expecting to hear from Him something different from what we might want to hear...
... And as we are ready to obey God even if it doesn't put an end to our immediate suffering, loss, or pain; even if it leads to something as abnormal as denying ourselves and picking up our cross, trusting that Jesus' words are infinitely wise and that they alone lead to flourishing life and true peace — we will not be let down or disappointed!!
Or, to put it positively, we will taste God's goodness, we will experience the reality of this promise, and we will see the hand of God at work in our lives and not just in our bibles or in the lives of ancient saints, and we will know real peace, peace like Jesus talked about and promised those who trust Him, and we will flourish as our trust is rewarded by a God who is all together trustworthy, superabounding in grace and power, consolation and love.
Believe Jesus for this, for "Whoever trusts Him will not be disappointed."
SAFE ZONE
Steve Behlke
July 4, 2008
A very good friend of mine who understands grace very well, just sent me the following blog from www.nakedpastor.com. She said, "... it exemplies real grace." I agree.
It's a simple question:
Can You?
Can you speak your mind…
Can you openly confess your sin…
Can you share your perpetual struggles…
Can you make a mistake…
Can you question the bible and theology…
Can you lose your faith…
Can you come out of the closet…
Can you fail…
Can you crash…
Can you be chronically depressed…
…Without fear of reprisal, alienation, demotion, isolation or removal? If you can’t, find a place where you can. Because there are such places. I know this for a fact.
He's right. The church with whom you are learning to trust and follow Jesus, with whom you meet together to worship God, and with whom you labor to bring the Gospel to those who could really use the "Good News," should be such a place and such a people!
If your church community is not such a people, don't just leave, ask Why not? What is being done to bring grace to life in your church? Anything?! What are the leaders doing to nurture "real grace" in our church? Anything?! What can you do to help?
My theology is indelibly shaped by the teachings of Jesus Christ, who makes it pretty clear that we all sin, we all screw up really bad and really often...
... And that we grow most naturally in a family-type of believing community that "gets" this about human weakness and which celebrates the light and truth and grace and love of God that are ours in Christ Jesus...
... And that the church with whom we worship should be the safest, most receptive, and most hope-inspiring group of holy people with whom we can be real and honest and open and safely encouraged and loved and guided to follow Christ and grow in Christlikeness.
So, for a church not to jump for joy and celebrate and pray and rejoice but to actually frown on and even to punish human honesty about human frailty, perpetual struggles and even failure; and for a church to actually make it safer for people to stay IN THE CLOSET than to come OUT OF THE CLOSET is as wrong and contrary to Jesus Christ as evil is contrary to good.
Let us love each other, trust Christ with one another, and value such virtues as authenticity, vulnerability, honesty and integrity...
... Let us give others the opportunity to see these Christly virtues in us...
... And God help us to guarantee others the right to freely and boldly express these to us, for these not only lead to holy living but these truly exemplify holy living.
TRAGIC BEAUTY AND THE GOSPEL
By Steve Behlke
June 30, 2008
Tragic beauty, Ruslana Korshunova, the 20 year old supermodel from Russia, committed suicide on June 28th by jumpring out of her 9th floor apartment in Manhattan.
This reminds me that it is not just the poor and marginalized and outcasts who need to have the Gospel demonstrated to them, who need to be made aware of God's grace in Christ; but also the young and beautiful, the rich and successful.
We've seen this tragedy happen to too many young, famous, wealthy people. Chart-topping singers, crowned athletes, paparrazi flashable actors and actresses get to the top of their game and find that it is all vanity, they wonder what life is really about, and admit to their profound sense of loneliness, emptiness, drug addiction, disillusionment and despair.
Too many similarly tragic lives are ignorantly celebrated then end in tragic deaths. Yet, their fans idolize them, wanting to be like them, wanting to be with them, using them, setting them up for failure, assuming that they have life made, that they love life and have learned to make life work.
Ruslana wrote in March, "I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?"
Jesus said it's actually not a bad place to be, to "lose our self," so long as we learn to find ourselves in Christ, turning to God, trusting Jesus for the truth.
Ruslana knew she was more than outward beauty. She recently said, "I'm a bitch. I'm a witch. I don't care what you say!!! ... I know what it is. I know why my other relationships didn't work out, 'cause I'm unpredictable. Why are you afraid of it?!"
Imagine had she heard and took Jesus' words to heart, words that affirm God's love for her, God's unconditioned acceptance in Christ, that He's not afraid to love her wholly and totally.
Imagine the transformative power of Jesus' words creating within her a sense of incredible and invaluable identity as God's hand-selected treasure, His beloved and holy child, who is called and chosen and cleansed and filled with infinite grace and worth and destiny.
Imagine her young heart bubbling over as Jesus tells her she doesn't need to be perfect, skinny, or flawless! And that she'd be loved and delighted in by God even when she's "over the hill" at 30 or "overweight" at 115 lbs. Seriously.
Imagine her hearing and believing that God doesn't WANT anything from her. God does, however, desire that her heart be soft and open to His love and open to trust Jesus Christ so that He can speak healing and liberating words of truth and grace, affirmation and protection, loving direction and eternal destiny into her heart.
Imagine ending a long day of false glitz and brushed-stroked on glamour and cheeky phoniness, of having people, even her closest friends, lusting and using her for their own self-interests and entering into the care of a loving, giving, humble community of gracious Christians who "get" Jesus and seek to emulate His life, His purity, His protection, and His love.
What would she have felt, believed?
What might God's love have done in and to her?
How might she have been freed, transformed?
I think this highlights at least one key aspect of what a Church should be!
This type of alternative grace community, offering the poor and marginalized as well as the young and attractive GOD'S GRACE and TRUTH and LOVE and SAFE HARBOR in order to be real, vulnerable, and to know the true Jesus Christ, and to be known and loved, and to be safe and so changed by a God who loved the world and sacrificed everything to reveal His love and very Being and glorious salvation to us.
CREEP (*acoustic) By Radiohead
![Creep [CD-SINGLE] (December 20, 1999)](http://music-video-books-store.com/radiohead/creep-radiohead-cd-big.jpg)
June 28, 2008
No, it's not a Christian artist and it's not even directly about God, but this is a great song in order to get into the head of the past couple blogs regarding our need for love and our fear of rejection. This song reveals many a person's sense of self-loathing and lack of belonging.
CREEP by Radiohead
When you were here before
Couldn't look you in the eye
You're just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You're so very special
But I'm a creep
I'm a wierdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here!
I don't care if it hurts
I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
When I'm not around
You're so very special
I wish I was special
But I'm a creep
I'm a wierdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here, ohhh, ohhh
She's running out the door
She's running out
She run run run run run run
Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You're so very special
I wish I was special
But I'm a creep
I'm a wierdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here
I don't belong here
Now imagine Jesus meeting this singer face to face. Imagine if he got who Jesus was and what Jesus is really about and if this guy saw into the heart of God. And imagine if he trusted Jesus for the grace that God offers him. And imagine Jesus speaking to his receptive heart, affirming God's love to him and God's choice of him, and affirming his identity as a child and friend of God, forever holy and chosen, beloved and free.
Imagine people like this, who are everywhere, meeting Christ in us.
*If you listen to this song, it's a great song, but make sure you listen to the acoustic version; many of you, like me, will not appreciate the lyrics on the other version.
WHAT IS LOVE?
By Steve Behlke
June 16, 2008
The last blog on "Fear of Rejection and the Grace of God" addressed this same subject from the fear side, the fact that we fear rejection. Positively stated, the fear of rejection points to our desire, really our God-given need to be loved. Even the roughest and toughest men in the world have a deep-seated need and longing, a pining to be loved.
But what is love? This is the first of two questions: (1) What is love? (2) How do we live in the realm of love?
(1) WHAT IS LOVE? The Bible says, "God is love." One might look up Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 13 for a more detailed definition of how love looks. But simply put, "God is love." And Jesus Christ is the divine face of love. Jesus is Love incarnate.
So to know Jesus Christ is to know God's love.
This raises the question, How well do you know Jesus? I'm not talking about how well you know some of the stories about Jesus or His cultural background. But how well do you know — personally, as a friend — Jesus Christ? Another way of asking this is how secure are you in God's love? Again, what is love?
If it's true that to know Jesus is to know that God loves you: Do know that God loves you even when you are covered in the fresh guilt of your worst sin? Do you know that God loves you even when you act unloving or when others don't seem to love you or when your circumstances are so crummy that you might be tempted to think that God does not love you?
To know Jesus is to know that God loves you. "For I am convinced that... nothing can separate us from the love God that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:37-38). And to know Jesus in a real way, is to experience and live in the realm of God's love.
But let's look at love in another way too,
WHAT IS LOVE? Love is the meeting of our needs. Love is the commitment to meet the needs of the beloved* - not the wants, not the desires, but the real needs of the beloved.
Our biggest need, before trusting Jesus Christ, was for the forgiveness of our sins and the gift of eternal life, the restoration to a favored, everlasting, soul-satisfying, God-glorifying relationship with God as Almighty Dad. As an act of needs-meeting love, God committed Himself whatever the cost to fully meet these fundamental needs: For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
So love is the commitment to meet the needs of the beloved.
Now, consider the previous blog. Our fear of rejection signifies that we all have a genuine need, but for what?
We all have a basic, God-given need for acceptance, to be fully known and fully accepted. This need hit crisis-mode in the human race through the Edenic Fall! There we rejected God and experienced the unthinkable, God's rejection. We also experienced human rejection. This new experience is part and parcel of the human condition apart from God's needs-meeting love in Jesus Christ.
Since we now fear rejection we hide the things about us that are not considered attractive, things that might warrant rejection. So we buy Head & Shoulders to get rid of our flakey white stuff. We wear clothes that are more flattering to our body. We buy impressive cars that we can't even afford.
In light of this human condition, WHAT IS LOVE? Love is the commitment to accept the other! Where you fear rejection, love betrothes itself to you forever. Where you fear being known and rejected, love fully knows and fully accepts you. Love means never having to fear the Lover's rejection.
Again, God is love and Jesus Christ is the face of Divine Love. God fully knows you. And through Christ and the work of the cross, God fully accepts you, unconditionally. He chose you. He gives you eternal life with Him. He gives you His Holy Spirit as a pledge of His eternal commitment to accept you. Where you fear rejection, Christ commits to accept you, to delight in you, to never leave you or forsake you.
We have other needs to, which God commits Himself to love us in. In your weaknesses and fears and vulnerabilities, love is the commitment to protect you, to defend you, to be strong for you.
In your fear of poverty and need, love is the commitment to provide for you where you lack.
The list is as long as our God-given needs. Love commits itself to meet the beloved's needs. We know we are loved then, when our needs are met by another.
(2) How do we experience God's love, how do we live in the realm of God's love? A couple of words come to mind: Trust and Humility. A Person comes to mind too, Jesus.
God loves you! He revealed His love on the cross, through His Son. He wants you to know Jesus and to trust Him and to never doubt God's love.
We live in the realm of love by trusting Jesus and also by humbly owning up to our neediness in light of God's commitment to love us.
In other words, "boasting in our weakness," we look to Jesus and allow Him to love us, to meet our God-given needs however He chooses to. Humility allows us to approach God with empty arms and open minds and hopeful hearts, because we know Jesus and trust God to do what He loves to do.
We further clarify God's love in our lives and live in the grace of Divine Love, when we are in a community (a family, church, small group, close friends) that gets this about God, that gets this about our needy selves, that gets love and grace, and commits to love, to accept, to speak truth to, to affirm, to protect, to nurture, to be there for, to listen to, and to help out one another. We live in the realm of love when we live authentically with others who know Jesus in a way that fulfills them.
Finally, we experience God's love when we are able to love others in the same way as God loves us. This is when love is perfected or completed (1 John 4:12). When God's love meets our real needs and fills our hearts to overflowing grace and when we act in needs-meeting love toward others.
Where are you at in this?
* Bill Thrall and John Lynch are instrumental in this understanding. See also the book True-Faced by the same.
FEAR OF REJECTION AND THE GRACE OF GOD
By Steve Behlke
June 12, 2008
The other morning I grabbed for my shampoo and, for whatever reason, remembered a Head & Shoulders commercial from the early 1970s. A handsome (I assume) young man in a black tuxedo was at a fancy party and was doing really well trying to impress some young "fox" (remember, it was the 70s) until she looked at his shoulders, gasped at the "flaky white styff," and rejected him!
She rejected him simply because of a few flakes of dandruff on his shoulders!
I was only like 10 years old and probably wasn't into girls yet but I think I begged my mom to buy like a case of Head & Shoulders - and I didn't even know what "dandruff" was before I saw that commercial!
Humans fear nothing more than rejection. (Okay, torture and abuse are really high on the list, but each of these seem to me to be extreme forms of rejection.)
Regular people fear and strive to avoid rejection, especially from those we want to like us the most. So we suck in our stomachs, dye our hair, lie about our incomes and buy cars that we can't even afford; we purchase new clothes every season; we give the impression of being nicer than we are or more successful or like we have it all-together or that we're more spiritual or intelligent than we really are (how we try to impress people all depends on who we're trying to impress and what impresses them at the time); we pretend to be holier, less depressed, or less lonely than we really are (you get the point by now). That's just the human junk we all carry. Yuck.
Deep within we fear rejection.
Yet this underscores how we were created for connection, relational acceptance, community; to experience love, commitment, and grace; and to walk closely with God and others in deep, authentic ways.
It's normal, since the Fall, to fear rejection. But throw a bunch of rejection-fearing people into a "religious" club and give them a whole new list of laws and rules and merit points and demerit points and performance standards that are pretty much impossible to meet; then add to this the fear of judgment and eternal condemnation and the threat of Divine Wrath, and you've got a potent mix, a steroid enhanced communal fear, a toxic brew for creating the Phoniest Hypocrites you would never wish to meet.
Christians - the only people on the planet who might actually know the grace of God in Christ - oddly enough, can be the phoniest, most judgmental, hypocritical people of all. That baffles me. It makes me wonder sometimes if some of them really do trust Jesus for the grace of God to them, if they really do experience grace in a personal way. You know, a way that makes them smile, sing, forgive someone, or to just be kind to someone?
Of course, every Christian claims to understand God's grace and most of them who've been around the block can rehash the theological facts and standard faith-terminology that we've all read in our Bibles and theology books. But I'm talking about grace as a life-experience! Grace that is so real it transforms our hearts, and forever changes our understanding of God, and alters our self-understanding, and truly lifts and liberates us in Christ.
I think fear and control and pride are at the root of graclessness (or ungrace or whatever the opposite of grace is. Actually, the opposite of grace might be pride or selfishness or independence or self-sufficiency... pride.) The antidote is the Gospel. The antidote is Jesus Christ. The antidote is faith, repentance, maybe enough junk and pain and tears and being sick and tired of trying and faking and isolating and pretending. But the answer is Jesus, maybe Jesus plus a community that gets Jesus, that understands and practices grace. That might be good too.
Christians who are not part of a transformed, grace community; Christians who trust Jesus for heaven but still carry out their relationships in a rules-checking, grade-giving, freedom thwarting, affirmation-depriving community can be the phoniest, most difficult to please, rejecting, non-maturing, self-adoring people of all. That's what I've heard from those who've suffered rejection at the hands of Christians, both those who are Christian and those who are not.
This is not a criticism but a warning, a siren sound, a loving friend waking another friend up from a bad dream.
I don't want to be like that. I hate it. I don't want to be part of a community that is like that. I don't want to be part of anything that stands in contrast to the truth teaching and grace-relating ways of Jesus Christ.
Look through the gospels. How did Jesus communicate grace, scandalous grace, radical acceptance, undeserved forgiveness, unlikely friendship, and "why them?" partnership? Did He ever do this? If so to whom? How did Jesus reach out and engage with those who feared God's rejection and felt everyone else's rejection? What was Jesus' solution to rejection? What was His solution to sin? Was it a temporary bandaid or was it something eternal?
Jesus Christ wants us to trust Him and to be totally secure in God's grace, assured of God's eternal acceptance of us through Him. He wants us to trust Him for this and move on in our relationship with God confident in this, to move on, to mature, to become like Him in conveying grace to others. He wants us to be confident in God's love, no matter what, God's forgiveness no matter what, God's power. He puts all of this on Him, not on us: "I will never leave you or forsake you," that's His promise to people who sin and fear rejection and feel rejection.
As those who trust Jesus, we are to be as confident as Paul was, that "nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus." These promises aren't tied to our being good or meriting acceptance or our perfect obedience to the Law or our determination to try harder to be a better person. These promises aren't tied to Law but to Grace, to Christ's promise that is by grace.
Rejection by God, for a Christian, in Christ? That's not an option. Trust Jesus for this.