Love is a choice

P 3322  What’s so important about obedience? 

/ DVH

“For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey Me, and I will be your God and you will be My people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you.” Jeremiah 7:21-23.

“Why are you so polite with Me, always saying ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘That’s right, sir,’ but never doing a thing I tell you? These words I speak to you are not mere additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundation words, words to build a life on.” (Jesus is speaking.) Luke 6:46.

Without obedience, our foundation in the Lord can be a bit wonky. He will never let go of us, but if we ignore Him and don’t obey Him, we are letting go of our relationship with Jesus. It really does matter if the Lord tells you to go and fix things with this or that person. Obedience is not just witnessing about Him, it is the every day practical submission we carry out as we deliberately obey His Words. The Lord Jesus loves us so much — He doesn’t want us to carry those things around inside us. That’s a burden that needs to be thrown down at the foot of the cross. He carried it for us, so we don’t have to.

When it comes to forgiveness there are no exceptions.  God tells us these things for our own good, not because He is a control freak. Why would we choose to walk around in satan’s backyard when God has already picked out His pathway for us to walk on? Unforgiveness nails one foot to the floor, and then we go round and round talking about it – trying to figure out what to do next about that person. Ruminating over imaginary conversations that never work out IRL. Instead, go and ask for the Lord and your abuser’s forgiveness for ‘not loving your enemy and not doing them good.’ It’s probably best not to use those exact words BTW. Remember – healing often needs time – and forgiveness sets me free. 

God’s plan for us is a plan for our good, it includes righteousness, peace, love and JOY, as we walk with the Holy Spirit. He has plans to give us a hope and a future. We can short-circuit His processes when we choose not to obey Him, and our foundations will rock and creak. That’s because they are not fixed on what Christ already did. Jesus did what He did so we can have the freedom and grace to forgive others and live free from all kinds of angst and fear.

Forgiveness is not about giving permission for someone to keep tormenting you. Instead it teaches us to speak one of Almighty God’s languages. Some things work so much better when they are a fixed part of our lives, and obedience and forgiveness are two of them. Jesus forgave us. He didn’t just forgive the men who killed Him – those words from the cross have echoed down the centuries and provided access for us here and now. Forgiveness is a lifestyle choice not an optional extra. 

When we live in unforgiveness, we are rebelling against the very thing that the Lord came here to do for US. Living like that will expose us to self-deception. His blood is our permanent refuge, so put the past under His blood. I don’t care what the person who is still hurting you did. You need to be free of it.  Freedom doesn’t always come when the other person acknowledges their sin – it comes when we choose to put our focus on Him. If you don’t put those carelessly repeated actions down and walk away it will strangle your own faith.

You don’t have to like people to forgive them. And the bible doesn’t say “feel like it” – it just says do it! Remember love is a choice not a feeling. We put our hearts into compromising positions when we harbour unforgiveness. Please remember there are often a lot of things we don’t know about that other person that could be causing them to behave the way they do. Plus I have noticed that when two people collide, one of the best ways of finding resolution is for one of them to change the way they respond to any oppositional stimulus. Be that person – the peace-maker.

I have forgiven a number of people a great deal of manipulation, hurt and vicious behaviour, some of which was deliberately malicious and some of it was unwitting. Some have even insisted that I vindicate their behaviour … but I declined, because their behaviour is not my responsibility. I refuse to take somebody else’s response into account, or let it influence my own actions, as I continue to move forward toward Him. 

If I need protection from an aggressor then the Lord will tell me to avoid them. He has told me to “leave now,” when I was in danger of being hurt again. At the same time, I’ve learnt some things can’t be easily resolved. They need REST, not instant RESOLUTION. Forgive, and then let Jesus do what only He can do. At the same time resist the temptation to hold a grudge. If it comes up again then I forgive again, and give it to back to Him again. We forgive others because God says so. We do it because He told us to do it. It becomes so much easier to do the things He asks of us, when we choose to obey Him. That’s why forgiveness is foundational in its importance. Bye👋

P 2936 DEMONSTRATING.

/ DVH

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8. Sometimes one word changes everything! God demonstrated His love toward us. That freely-given love was His choice, based on what Jesus willingly did for me. It is extremely clear that His love was not about my performance. Almighty God loves all of us and He didn’t just talk about it – He visibly showed us.

Now, let me try to qualify what I think that sin is, in His eyes. I think sin is anything that is outside of His own pure nature. The bible itself helps us to see sin and the cross as the most glorious demonstration of love this world has ever seen or known. So is learning about Who He is, from the bible — what He did, and who He loves, what sin means to Him – all that helps us with our own lives.

In the past the church has fixated on what they see as big sins, and sort of swept the other supposedly ‘little stuff’ under the carpet as normal human stuff.  However I think that sin is anything that hasn’t been born out of love … and I’m not talking about feelings. God Himself is the only One Who can define love, because He is pure loving goodness, through and through —it is His nature. He didn’t just talk about loving us, He gave us a personal demonstration of that love. We get into difficulties when we try to define Love or Who He is through our own filters, because His love is not at all like ours, His love is a choice. 

This means we cannot use our own perception of love, or anything gleaned from our own families — their rules, habits, background, even our lives etc.— as a measuring stick. That standard is not the one God reveals to us in the bible, and it is His standard we need to use. Jesus is His standard – and because of His obedience, Christ demonstrated what God’s love looks like to us. God’s love LOOKS LIKE SACRIFICE.

Our biggest daily challenge is to live a life of love and demonstrably forgive those who trespass against us… not in theory but in practice. It is a choice we make and live by, in our own lives every single day. I don’t imagine Jesus felt like forgiving the people who chose to cause Him all that torture and eventually killed Him. When we choose to love others we are deliberately demonstrating our love for Him and others, because we die to self in the process.

This is how I do that: I ask Him HOW to love the person who has repeatedly, and endlessly done things to hurt me. I ask Him, because the real truth is this, I don’t know how, and by my own efforts I will end up even madder at that individual. By the way, never ever forget that there is an enemy of love loose. It is a good thing to recognise that the other person isn’t our enemy even though they may be inadvertently serving him. A change in my attitudes all came down to my willingness to die for them.

You know, if someone continually hurts me it is all too easy to grow suspicious, and start reading their behaviour from an internal observation list. I’ve found if that list gets long enough in my head, I won’t bother consulting it anymore, I just add the person’s new transgressions to the pile of old ones! My list-taking can be influenced by my personal experiences in this life, and if that other person sounds like, or acts like someone else who has hurt me – they will probably face a bad reaction. Then love goes right out the window – my love-of-God demonstration is short-circuited.

My advice is to chuck any lists we have out! Getting rid of our lists is part of dying to self. They don’t help anyone repent or repair anything, instead they are a tool of the enemy to keep us enslaved to our unresolved feelings!  By the way, going over and over someone else’s sin makes loving others harder. I had a situation just like this, with a person particularly close to me. They just kept piling up things they were doing that hurt me. Every time I saw them I walked into what I perceived as abuse. 

But I was the one who was actually held captive! The other person in this little drama was just bubbling along being themselves. One day the Holy Spirit said to me: “How long are you willing to be held captive to your shared past with them? Forgive them and love them the way I told you to. Start demonstrating My love toward them by choice.” So I did what He said as an act of my will. And boy did it hurt -it was like giving up an old trusted friend who protected me. EW! Any-way, I gave up retribution and vindication, and inward disdain, and forgave them, once and for all. I did it for HIS sake.

Quite quickly I became surprised to see that there was no longer the same power behind what they said or did. that stuff did not have the same impact on me anymore, because I had put our shared past under the blood. Then I prayed and discerned what they saw as love and started doing that for them, using my FAITH.

Even though my emotions and thoughts screamed at me that I was making a mistake.

“Owe nothing to anyone except to love and seek the best for one another; for he who [unselfishly] loves his neighbour has fulfilled the [essence of the] law [relating to one’s fellowman].” Romans 13:8. Love needs to be demonstrated.

Bye. 👋