Brother

P 2357 Love is about choices – not feelings.

/ DVH

Hubby and I just celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary a couple of months back. I still think he is the nicest and best man I ever met. But SOME DAYS … that’s a choice not a feeling!  And I’m pretty sure he shares that sentiment with me. 😂 Not as often, of course – ‘cos I’m MUCH nicer than he is! Okay. That’s a joke. Haha!!

What I mean is this – some days we have to choose to love each other, because we don’t always understand the other person’s POV. I so-o don’t man-speak and he has no clue how to speak female, so we collide. Because we are both quite passionate people, there are times we collide loudly. No fun is had either side in that collision. People make times like that about individual issues – points of differences – you won’t get anywhere that way, trust me. The real ‘issue’ that needs to matter in those moments IS THIS: who is gunna repent and ask for forgiveness first? Sigh. It is usually him not me – he’s way better at saying ‘sorry’ than I am. It’s mega-annoying. 😡

I said all that to say this:  just because we disagree and feel horribly abused, misunderstood, and uncomfortable – that does not mean we quit the marriage or give up on the relationship. It simply means we have temporarily lost our common ground – and one, or both of us, has dug their heels in and refused to compromise or even listen to the other one. My particular fault in these matters is that I always have a point, plus I absolutely loathe not being listened to! 

People often say sagely: “Marriage is about compromise.” Phooey!! Marriage is about CHOICES. I choose to forgive because it’s in the bible! That’s true wisdom. At that moment when I am no longer feeling like my precious hubby is the nicest man in the world – I still have a life-mandate to fulfil. I promised to follow Jesus and He is offering me a new opportunity to choose to follow Him and die to self. These moments are the little foxes that spoil the vineyards of a husband and wife’s love for each other – we need to seize those moments for the Lord’s sake. The power of agreement opens doors that will not open any other way – we need to cherish and protect it.

If I choose to stop fighting the current issue and instead ask the Holy Spirit to help me keep my mouth shut, I will accomplish two things. The first is establishing His Lordship and the second is an opportunity for the Lord’s wisdom to prevail instead of chaos. I may have to insist about these two choices … and, to be fair, I quite often fall into the trap of seeking to be understood – instead of working to see the other person’s POV. However, even if what is happening makes no sense to me – it makes sense to the Lord – I know He can guide me through it.

It is extremely difficult, but not impossible, to lay aside your claim to be right – when you do it for the Lord, and not just for the other person. When you lay down your arms for His sake, whether you are right and they are wrong, THAT IS WHEN JESUS’ LORDSHIP PREVAILS! In that moment I have yielded my control back to Jesus and the Holy Spirit because I love Them more than winning or being right. Meanwhile, do not be fooled – those moments are hard. The other person may not have the same view of Lordship you have.

Here’s what I have observed – it only takes one person to turn things around … but that Person needs to be Him! Get a load of this scripture: “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates (works against) his [Christian] brother he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20) At this point you could be thinking that you don’t ‘hate’ your spouse – yeah! But at this moment you are not in the middle of some dumb argument that you both feel it is imperative to win!! You can hate anyone given enough provocation trust me. Plus spouses often know each other so well they can lean all over each other’s buttons. In the middle of an argument neither of you are working together!

One of our biggest faults as Christians is that we try to wiggle around what He said in the book so we come up with a hundred reasons about why this particular verse does not apply to me. We all hate to be wrong and in those moments we forget about the One Who hung on that tree for our sake, so we would have the power to resist temptation. Please remember this line: It is not about winning a point or an argument, it is about losing the Holy Spirit’s Presence and YOUR PEACE. We have a choice. Selah. 😶 👋🏻

P 2149 We just gotta learn how to love like this….

/ DVH

… SO … I suggest we make love our aim, and daily pray for the Lord to give us His strength to live that way, because His strength is made perfect in our weaknesses. Plus we can use all the help we can get! The other day I was watching a non-Christian fictional story about a surfing manufacturer’s beginnings. I shan’t bother you with the plot, except it was set somewhere that hubby and I have been to, and we’ve seen those particular waves. Sooo cool and incredibly beautiful – just like jade jelly. 😊 

Anyhoo, back to the film. There were these two brothers who loved each other deeply … it took half the film to establish that fact. And one of them is out surfing in a surfing competition and the other is watching in the crowd on the beach. Man that surf is so-oo bad … it is like … out there!!  And the surfing brother gets dumped by this massive wave, and he does not come up. He is drowning. 

Instantly his older brother starts running. He strips off his outer clothes and he leaps into the incredibly dangerous surf to go and rescue his brother. A crowd of people are watching the surfers and someone yells at him -“What do you think you are doing man? You’ll die too. That’s nuts!” The older brother hits the water and yells back: “THAT’S MY BROTHER OUT THERE!”  …  … I cried! That whole scene hit me right in the spirit;  because that’s what God Himself did for all of us. Ya might want to stop and thank Him for it.

Meanwhile, back to the surfing saga, the older brother saved his sibling, of course … because it was fictional! And I started to think that it was a shame that lately, the only illustration of the power, strength and steadfastness of Love, the way God sees it, had to be fictional. Why are Christians settling for jovial, pleasant and nice, when there is more? One of the most deadly things we can do to our faith is to be comfortable and safe, and yet we all strive for that end. 🤔  

Lately I’ve been watching the rocks cry out in some of the story lines that have come up in whatever I’m reading or watching. I’ve come to the conclusion that this world’s rocks are now shouting at the top of their lungs, because we are very bad at communicating what love and faith look like to the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet! We are often all talk and no action. And so the Lord has to use the-people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet to teach and inspire US. Have we forgotten the story of the Good Samaritan already?? You know, Jews looked down on Samaritans, I think that’s why the Lord Jesus picked them for an illustration! Sadly, when we make Christian movies, we don’t seem to be able to produce stuff with strong, pithy story lines, so we end up looking weak, soft, soppy and wobbly. 

More’s the pity. We have the greatest story of all, and it’s true. As we both know, Calvary’s story is not about Jesus looking like some kind of a softie! Christ was a strong powerful man that strode into that temple with only a whip in His hands and scared the greed and avarice right out of those money lenders and closed down their miserable businesses. It was a real man who faced that cross, and bore all that pain, and still loved the people who did it to Him! We simply must stop thinking of the Lord Jesus as a nice man with blonde hair and blue eyes in an oversized nightie. He held His own with fishermen. Meanwhile I don’t know too many people who could have kept up with His schedule for three and a half years!

Back to my point! That surfing movie I watched illustrates the kind of love the Lord Jesus is looking for from us. The kind of love that would run unreservedly into danger, without thought, because our brother or sister in Christ is in danger. We just gotta learn to love each other like that. That’s the place where your problem becomes my problem – where I care about your soul, and your life, more than my own safety and reputation. We won’t be able to keep people out of our churches when we love like that. 

John 15:12-13. “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 13:34&35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” 

Can you see that the way we love each another is the very best kind of advertising – ever! We cannot pretend this kind of love because it is HIS KIND OF LOVE. And we can’t skip over the process, either. Father God has been so generous to His family. Most of us have interesting  (??) immediate earthly family members we can practice on. Because if we can’t love our families of origin then the church family is in big trouble.

And yes, I know personally from my own experience, that most of us have origin family stories that would blow anyone’s mind. Moving on… we must always remember that He’s the God of the impossible. He simply loo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ves 💕 doing stuff we think He can’t do. 💕 Just to prove us wrong … teehee. 🤣 Let’s start each new day asking Him to be strong in us in the area of loving, because we are all weak there. 👋🏻

‘Lord, please give us all Your kind of love. A love that is willing to die for our brothers and sisters. We are not good at Your kind of love Lord and we need Your help, thank you. Amen.