Called to Love

The neat thing about being a Christian is that our job description never changes. We are called to love. We are always called to love God and love others, regardless of the changing environment. Sure our roles may change as a child grows into an adult, or women becomes a mother. Our roles change when we take on a new job or move to a new city, but the basic job description never changes. We are called to love.

And so as Jason and I head overseas, many things will change (food, people, weather...possibly increased vomiting) but God will not change, and neither does his calling for our life. Me and Jason will be called to love, just as you are called to love wherever you are at. We are called to love all people in every circumstance. It isn't a request from God, it is a command. He doesn't tell us to love when it is easy, but calls us to love at all times, and when we don't feel like loving others we must go to the cross where Christ extended love when we least deserved it, and because of that, we must choose to extend love even when people don't deserve it. This is our duty - to love.

With such a "simple" calling, you'd think we would learn to do it well. But being the depraved creatures that we are, we are good at twisting and we are good at sinning. Something I have learned over the past couple years is that there is a danger of idolizing "working for the Lord", and losing sight of actually loving God. I don't mean that we do too much for God, but rather that we actually lose sight of why we do what we do. We get caught up with "doing ministry" but fail to do it for the right reasons. Maybe we do it out of pride, trying to show off how good of a Christian we are. Or maybe we "do Christian work" in an attempt to earn God's love or salvation. But if we are toiling for any reason other then seeking to love God for His glory, we are toiling in vain. Our actions must be driven by a love and passion for God, not an attempt to earn anything or show off for our peers. We must not idolize works above Christ, but do works out of love for Christ.

I have been reading an INCREDIBLE book called "The Heavenly Man". (which you seriously all should go buy now...I even linked it to Amazon). In this book Brother Yun, an absolutely amazing disciple of Christ, falls pray to this temptation.

"Working for God had taken the place of loving God...If you are a servant of the Lord, let me encourage you to please, please humbly watch that you don't slip into the same error I did. The Lord God jealously desires us for himself. He is the lover of our souls. If we ever put anything before our relationship with Jesus - even our work for Jesus - then we will be ensnared."

So let's love. Let's love God, let's love others, and let's choose to love when it gets hard, because in that decision to love we become transparent and Christ shines through. We decrease, He increases.

We may not know exactly where we are going, or what we are doing, but we know who we are following...and that's enough for me.

All for His glory.