Revisiting the Love Cycle

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.—Galatians 5:13

I don’t know about you, but I have less of a problem with the serving part of this command and more of a problem with the being served.  

I think that our ability to graciously accept service from other believers—true, God-love-motivated service—is just as much a sign of our spiritual health as being able to serve others in a godly way. This is a realization I’ve continually had throughout my close walk with Christ, but for some reason I keep forgetting about it. (Sheep’s memory.)

I think that if we are able to be served, our perspective about ourselves and God is right….and if we aren’t…we may be thinking as the world thinks.

A couple weeks ago, I posted a blog about the love cycle: realizing and walking in the realization of God’s love for us, and thereby being enabled to love others. I want to add another element to that realization. It’s just like God to add more and more layers, just when we think we understand something. He’s like an eternal layer cake of love that goes on forever.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.—Philippians 2:1-3

You’re thinking: “Yes, Paul, of course! We should serve others as more important than ourselves and avoid all this rivalry business.” These instructions may seem silly because the idea behind them is so obvious. But it’s amazing how often pride (ie: the opposite of humility) can creep into our service.

The world tells us that everything is a competition. Watch less than five minutes of any television show (and especially the commercials), and you will see an explosion of egos gone wild. Every message we hear tells us that we should distinguish ourselves—that we should look better, think better, act better, dress better, run better, eat better, even sleep better than our peers. And it’s not just America. It happens everywhere. Even in the most ancient societies, people fought and killed each other over who got to be king of the village.

I think that’s called “rivalry,” with more than a pinch of “conceit” thrown in. Mmm…pride soup. (Not an eternal layer cake of love.)

That’s the world’s mindset, manifested in an endless plethora of ways. It tells us we should count ourselves better than others. We must outdo everyone. The message slips in when we least expect it.  And we least expect it in Christian service.

I like to be the leader; I like to be in control; I like to pride myself on how much I serve. I also like to serve my friends more than they serve me—to get ahead of them in acts of service. I mean, most of the time, I am not consciously thinking about this. However, in the drawer in my mind where all of crazy American cultural ideas are stored (along with some discarded habits and a few forgotten grudges), I keep the “tit-for-tat” mentality. Service is a debt; if someone serves me, I must repay them. And, if possible, I want to be in the black—I want to have done more acts of service for my brother or sister than her or she has done for me.

This is the world’s mentality, and it must be broken.

Notice that Paul does not instruct the Philippians to “be of one heart.” He tells them to “be of one mind,” and that’s how they will complete his joy. The mind is where perspectives—wrong and right—dwell and battle it out. Humility—understanding who you are in relation to God, and then in relation to others—is a mindset.

Paul is urging the believers in community in Philippi to all count each other more important than themselves. We tend to forget that this passage was addressed to an entire community. If the whole community is counting others more worthy than themselves and serving like crazy, then who are they serving? Each other, of course. That means, at different times, some people are serving, and some are receiving service. Someone has to be receiving service at some point. (It’s really hard to wash someone’s feet while they are washing someone else’s feet.)

You can imagine how crazy this would get if everyone were keeping tabs. “Well, last week Susie washed my feet, so I have to wash her feet this week…but dang it, Johnny washed her feet today! Shoot, I’ll just have to invite her over to dinner and count it even.” If hundreds of people were doing this (millions, in the entire body of Christ), it would get pretty confusing pretty fast. Not to mention the fact that all of these people would be operating separately, keeping their own tally of what’s happened, as if all of their service belonged to them in the first place.

Jesus said, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (Luke 14:12-14)

It’s easy to say, “Sure, Jesus—I can give all my money to the poor who can’t repay me. I can feed the homeless. I can run the food pantry.” Those things are wonderful, and we should do them. Physical needs being met for those who can’t repay—that’s mercy. But it’s harder to admit that, when we enter into the body of believers, we have to sometimes become those who can’t repay.

After all, a leg without an eyeball is blind; an arm without a leg is crippled. Within the body of Christ, the love that we exercise in service toward one another isn’t our own. It—along with we ourselves, by the way—belongs to God. We cannot do His magnificent works without His power. And we pretty much never can do anything great or important or powerful for His kingdom without each other. It’s the way things are.

I got to thinking about this because I have had to accept a lot of service over the past six months. I have had friends and relatives offer me shelter, food, clothing—you name it. They have literally met my physical needs. All of my friends serve at church, and they serve me in so many ways on a daily basis. I have also had to accept the service of nearly 100 volunteers who work with me to get my job done. All of these things have been things I haven’t been able to pay back, yet, in my worldly mentality, I have attempted to pay them back anyway.

Some of my service and gifts to other believers has been because I genuinely want to serve them. But these pure motives often get mixed up with my pride, which makes me want to ensure that the service tab has been paid, or to make people admire my service. Then I become uncertain of the reasons for anything I do.

I thought to myself, “Maybe this is just a season when I need to relax and be served.”

But no, that’s not the case; I am actually serving at church and at work now more than I ever have before—like, an insane amount. Then I realized: when other people serve me—feeding me, keeping me warm, helping me relax—they are enabling me to serve others. It’s that simple.

We need to serve one another, because how can we go into the world and do the hard work of serving the lost if we don’t have someone feed and clothe us and offer us refuge? Missional living is something you cannot do alone. You don’t just strike out, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and get to work. Missional living is not the American way—and neither is Christian community.

Within the body of Christ, the love cycle isn’t this: you serve your friend, she serves you back the next day, and we call it even. The love cycle is me serving you; you serving the next person; them serving the next person, until the whole body “builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16), and it’s always even, because we’re all part of the same body, and we all benefit, because we belong to one another. When I serve you, I am serving myself, too; when I accept service from you, I am serving you by allowing you to serve. Real humility comes when we realize that service--giving it and receiving it--is not about us at all, but about the entire body.

Let that blow your mind for a second.

Love God, love your brothers, Jesus and the gospel-writers say repeatedly. They also mean, Be dependent on God, and be dependent on each other. The world would say that’s unhealthy.

But, as we’ve already established, the world’s mentality is unhealthy. (Watch MTV for a few minutes if you don’t believe me.)

Paul continues speaking of a healthy mindset in Philippians:

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (chap. 2, v. 4-8)

We have the mind of Christ. We are members of His body, after all. He is the head that joins us all together (Colossians 1:18).

So if you are having trouble with this accepting-service thing, an immediate and temporary cure would be to go watch TV and make yourself sick on the world’s mentality. But what you should really do is press into the head of the body, Jesus Christ—the one who served even to the point of death on a cross because He knew that it would lead to the joy of being able to call you home, into His body, where you belong.

Peace to You

Earlier this week, I got stuck in traffic. I know, shocking in DC, right? But this wasn't normal traffic. It was the dead-stop kind, the kind that makes people lose their minds and honk at the drivers in front of them, even though they can't go anywhere. It took me about 30 minutes to even get onto the interstate, and then much more time to get home. Do you know what it feels like to literally go 5 miles an hour? Because I do.

It wasn't more frustrating than I could handle, and surprisingly, I didn't have such a bad attitude about it (thanks to God). But I kept thinking I would eventually see an accident, or a closed lane, or something that would explain the traffic. I didn't. It was completely unexplained. I still don't know why it was moving (or not moving) that way.

As I was sitting there debating whether or not to try a different route (and probably get lost), I was also thinking about how my life has felt just like this in the past week or so--like I am sitting here spinning my wheels, unable to see the reasons why I am going nowhere. I am frustrated both at work and in my personal life. I feel like I have worked so hard, and there is still so much I want to do.  I am starting to falter.

This feeling is what they call "discouragement." It is the reason Paul and the other New Testament writers were always writing to the churches to encourage one another, to take courage, to endure and be steadfast. When you begin to look at things from a human perspective, well...it's pretty discouraging.

Before I launch into a pathetic country song about my feelings, I would like to clarify that, for the most part, I am discouraged because I allow myself to be discouraged. Just like Jonah sitting under the shriveled tree at the end of his book, I am pleased to be angry, to make my life about me and what I can or can't see.

But I am not who my life is about.

Let's take a dive into scripture. (Come on, you knew it was coming.)

In Luke 24, we read about the risen Jesus approaching His disciples on the road to Emmaus. By the way, the angel that met the women at the empty tomb had told them to tell the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee (Mark 16:7). But instead of following these directions, they were wandering around in the country outside Jerusalem, probably unsure where they were going. Like the disciples, we all find ourselves depressed and wandering about without direction, because the circumstances of our earthly lives weigh us down, and we simply don't trust the directions He's given us.

Isn't it great how Jesus descends and meets us where we are: lost?

As Jesus talked to His disciples on the road (they didn't recognize Him, by the way), they told Him that they disbelieved the women's testimony about His resurrection. Jesus said, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!" (Luke 24: 25).

Slow of heart. I don't know about you, but I am much more  often slow of heart than slow of mind (although that happens a lot, too). Especially when it comes to believing what the prophets have spoken:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, 
     because the Lord has anointed me 
to bring good news to the poor; 
     he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, 
to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
     and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, 
     and the day of vengeance of our God; 
to comfort all who mourn; 
     to grant to those who mourn in Zion--
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, 
     the oil of gladness instead of mourning, 
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; 
     that they may be called oaks of righteousness, 
the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.
                               --Isaiah 61:1-3

That's a lot of promises right there. But too often, I am slow of heart, and I leave my garment of praise in the closet, next to the rain coat that doesn't get used very much. That's because the garment of praise belongs to the Lord, and the faint heart belongs to me. And, if I want to make my life about me, it's obvious which one I should put on.

Note the last phrase of the last verse of this passage from the prophet Isaiah: that he may be glorified. I want my life to glorify the Lord. And it is my belief that, if I am following Jesus, He will glorify Himself in me, and there's not really much I can do to stop it. But I can definitely dishonor Him with my words and my attitude, especially when I know full well what He's given me.

Discouragement has to do with not knowing the ending, with not being able to see the good that is to come--or knowing about it, but losing sight of it because of circumstances. Discouragement means turning your eyes to look around you rather than at the One who has guaranteed His good intentions toward you. It has to do with walking by sight and not by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Discouragement is normal, especially around this time of year, when it's cold and it seems like we're working a lot without seeing much fruit. I don't think God is surprised when we are discouraged. I don't think He is surprised even when we are discouraged on purpose, in spite of knowing His promises to us. In times of discouragement, He appears to us like He appeared to His disciples after they had seen Him on the road to Emmaus and were still full of doubt: "Peace to you!" He says (Luke 24:36). Of course, the disciples were still quite upset--I mean, this man they thought was dead had just materialized in the living room. This was not what they had expected. So Jesus continued: "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself" (Luke 24:38).

When we are discouraged, He comes to us with that rhetorical question, asked in such a gentle voice: "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?" And He says to us, "Remember who I am. Remember when I brought you through that trial, and when you saw me work miracles. Remember. Don't falter. Don't be faint of heart."

"See my hands and feet, that it is I myself." Jesus invites us to see not our circumstances, but to see Him.

I don't know what I want to say in this post except that, if you are discouraged, know that God isn't surprised. Look to the reality of the promises of Jesus. He's there, and He's waiting to walk through the wall and say, "Peace to you!"

The Love Cycle

And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

                                                                                                   --Matthew 22:37

So, I haven’t written in awhile, and I am going to blame this on actually having friends that I hang out with all the time. It’s a big change from sitting in my room by myself, listening to All Sons and Daughters on repeat and journaling about my loneliness.

But having friends is just what I want to talk about anyway.

Over this past year, I have been praying to understand love a lot more than I do. Shocker (get ready for this): God is answering my prayers. He has been gently and patiently instructing me in love, and the more I learn, the more I feel like I don’t know.

The thing about love is, it can be confusing when you are a human, because real God-love is pretty much an alien thing beyond our imagination, yet we are programmed to search for it.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.—Ecclesiastes 3:11

I don’t feel frustrated by this, though, because I know that He makes everything beautiful in its time—including me. I can’t make myself beautiful. Only He can do it. And if I ask Him to teach me about love, He will teach me much more about it than my pea brain can comprehend, because He doesn’t teach my brain—He teaches my spirit.

And that’s a good thing, because the only way we can understand His word is by His spirit.

Speaking of the Word, this is the passage that kind of rocked my world a week or two ago.

     Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

     By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

                                                --1 John 4:-7-20

I know that’s a lot, but it’s just too good to cut.

I’ve always thought this passage was redundant and a little too circular, as if John was just struggling to convey a message that wouldn’t come out right. But I see now that it is meant to be circular. It’s a description of the love cycle.

God loved us first, while we were still running around in sin, hostile to everything holy. He loved us by doing something, by acting: sending His only Son to be a living sacrifice who would pay for what we were doing. But, according to this text, that’s not when His love was perfected. It wasn’t even perfected when He raised Jesus from the dead.

Let’s reiterate: So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

His love is perfected when we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us, and when we stand confidently before Him without guilt or shame. It’s NOT perfected when we say, “Well, I guess God loves me, but I don’t think He is going to heal me.” Or, “I mean, I know God loves me, but I am not sure He is really going to provide for me, so I am not going to ask Him for what I need and try to get it myself.” His love is perfected when we come to Him as children, as His own Son would: because as he is so also are we in this world. His love is perfected when we are no longer afraid of punishment, of condemnation: because perfect love casts out fear.

There’s one rhetorical question I need to ask: are you harboring any shame or guilt in your relationship with God? If so, please allow His love to be perfected in you. This perfection is an ongoing process, a daily thing, and we all must make the choice to allow it to happen.

So this is the love cycle: God loves → us, we receive that love, and then we love → God.

And there’s another essential part of the equation. When we love → God, we can also love → others. ….No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. Honestly, the only way we really can love other people is by the power of His Spirit, as new creations. In the flesh, we just don’t cut it.

It’s just a big circle of love. But it does have a beginning. And the beginning is God loving us, and us receiving His love.

Unfortunately, most of us try to do it backwards. We head counter-clockwise against the flow, always running in circles and continuously frustrated that our efforts are getting us nowhere. We go after all kinds of stupid and crazy things to make us feel like we’re worth something, like we’re important and valued. But what if the thing you use to fill yourself up isn’t a thing? What if it’s a person?

It’s one thing to know you shouldn’t be sacrificing your heart to money or drugs. It’s another when the thing you are trying to satisfy your heart with is a human relationship, or an assortment of human relationships. This is the most dangerous form of idol-worship, because relationships are good. God made us to be relational. He created Adam to be in communion with Him, to walk with Him in the garden; He created Eve not to fill a void in Adam, but to enrich his relationship with God, to share in it and spur him on in it. This was the purest triad of relationship.

Trouble happened the minute Adam trusted in someone else’s word rather than God’s—even if the person he trusted was walking with him in the purest human-to-human relationship the world has ever seen. At its core, original sin was relational. It was a distrust in God. Humanity started to think, “Maybe God is a liar. Maybe we will not surely die….maybe this other person is right….”

Think about it for a moment. There is probably someone in your life—a friend, a mentor, a spouse, a family member, or even your child—whose opinions you value, whose company you cherish above all others’; a person for whom you would bend over backwards (which I literally did one time when one of my dear friends asked me to take a yoga class with her). This person could be someone who is not literally in front of you now, but in whom you are hoping—like a mystery future spouse. Are you using this person to fill the relational hunger in you for God? If you are, you are setting your relationship up for failure.

I’m not trying to condemn here. I’m only telling you what I know from experience. Replacing God with someone else is always painful. There are no exceptions.

It’s good to submit to one another and value others above ourselves. That’s biblical. But there is a fine line between submitting in love and submitting in affection. I have seen a lot of “good people” fall into the trap of the reverse love cycle: we love → other people, and we think that this helps us to love → God, who then in turn will love → us.

The problem is, you can’t start with yourself, because, on your own, you can’t love anybody. You have to know the original source of love, and He has to abide in you. You can’t manufacture love on your own. You only have affection, which is simply the result of natural preferences. Affection is conditional, and it lends itself to favoritism and blind loyalty, which leads to jealousy and strife. Unfortunately, this is how most of the world understands the word “love.”

God, on the other hand, shows no partiality (Romans 2:11). Even when we are faithless, He still sets the love cycle in motion by being faithful to us anyway (2 Timothy 2:13). As humans, we have a hard time comprehending this. It’s just not how we operate.

Good thing we get to be recreated by the Holy Spirit. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

The Spirit is the keystone of the equation.

We are meant to have close friends, to have wives and husbands, to have children. That’s biblical. And, naturally, there are certain people with whom we click better than others. Jesus had 12 close buddies, and even among those, there were 3 who spent more time with Him.

But the sin occurs when we attempt to replace Jesus with these other relationships, when our hope rests in them. When we expect others to be Jesus, we will always be disappointed, because we are seeking something from them that they cannot give. This is not love at all. It is feelings and behavior that are motivated by our desire for affection, attention, and affirmation, and have little to do with the other person (and his or her best interests) at all.

We all seek to fill ourselves with others at some point—and, if we don’t watch out, these relationships can destroy us. Be on the alert for our adversary, who loves to take the beauty of relationships, which God created, and make a shipwreck of them. It’s kind of his favorite hobby. All sin is relational sin, because ultimately, we are sinning against God and destroying our relationship with Him.

The worst (or best) is when you realize you are replacing God with another person, and that you have to give this up. It’s a hard decision to make. But once you give that person (or more than one person) to God, He will bless you back with an abundance of love—real, pure love.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from who the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.—Ephesians 4:15-16

Isn’t that the most beautiful image? What a sweet letdown to realize it doesn’t matter whom you love, as long as you are loving the Lord; and that you are free to love everyone in His Spirit. Jump on into the love cycle. It’s a beautiful process--and He will make you beautiful in your time.