Enduring Love & Gratitude

Psalm 136

verse 1 - Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever.

verse 2 - Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.

verse 3 - Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever.

verse 26 - Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.

Reasons to give thanks:

1. God is good

2. He is God of all gods

3. He is Lord of lords.

4. He is the God of heaven

5. HIS LOVE ENDURES FOREVER

Gospel Fueled Love

"A gospel fueled love energizes you to love others, especially the unlovable ones. Moving beyond your ability to love, is Holy Spirit driven love." Chan Kilgore (sermon, October 24, 2010)

Let the gospel (good news) feed your soul as it pours love out.

Hope Drives, Love Steers

If hope drives us, shouldn't love steer us?

As we travel down the road at break neck speed with hope as our North Star, let love be how we maneuver our vehicle through traffic. Travel with hope, steer with love.

Love as Compelling and Constraining

"Love is both a compellent and a constraint."

Gray said it so casually, my ears had to perk up. I had to ask him to repeat it, and then ponder it.

How true: Love both compels us into action and constrains us from other actions.

Think about how your love is compelling you and how it is constraining you? Or, how it should be!

Faith Goes With Love

"The deeper our faith, the greater our love."

"The greater our faith, the more freedom we have to love others."

"Love and faith cannot operate independently. They are conjoined. It takes faith to love."

Chan Kilgore

(sermon October 24, 2010)

How is your faith leading you to love?

How is your love growing your faith?

Learning Love By Listening

"Just as love of God begins in listening to His word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them." Dietrich Bonhoffer

Learning to listen is learning to love.

Finding God by opening yourself to Love

"The surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love."

This is credited to Rev. John Powell, Professor, Loyla University.

I don't know if the email is correct or not, but the sentiment is.

We try to find God by our intellect. We want to use God for our improvement.

We want God to fix our problems. When we open ourselves to love, we discover He is there.

Reasons for Love

"Sometimes we hear sermons teaching that we should learn to love ourselves so that we can love others as well. But in the Hebrew of Leviticus 19:18 where this command is given, it can also be interpreted in a slightly different way: "Love your neighbor who is like yourself." In other words, they are not so different from us. Maybe that's what is hard about loving them, they are like us.

The author continues, "The time when we show the most love is not when people are easy to love, but when they are unlovable."

[Page 128, Listening to the Language of the Bible, Tverberg & Okkema]

The Paradox of Love

"I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt but only more love."

Mother Teresa

Sometimes we are afraid to love, because we might get hurt.

Perhaps, we should be afraid of what we'll become if we do not.

Can you do one thing well?

Ann Spangler says "if I could learn to do one thing - to love people in whatever circumstance I found myself. Why? Because love lasts. Because love never fails..." Then she goes on to to detail all that love does from I Corinthians 13. She continues, "Love, in fact, is the hardest, most powerful thing in the world...Love is the secret to making a lasting impact." (page 335, Praying the Names of Jesus)

Love Fervently

1 Peter 1:22 instructs us to "love one another fervently with a pure heart." Greek's Strong's definition of the word fervently tells us this involves: fight, labor, strive.

What an eye opener: Love involves strife. Love involves fighting for each other and love and purity. Don't be disillusioned: love is not always peace. Love involves a good fight, a fair fight, a worthy fight. If you are going to fight, make it for LOVE.

Love Sincerely

1 Peter 1:22 instructs us to have sincere love, to love sincerely. Strong's definition (#505), says sincere is without hypocrisy, which means playing a part in a play. This would denote doing this without acting, but truly being that person who does this. In other words, not to play the part, but to be that person. This verse contains purity and sincerity. They are linked. Link your pure love with sincerity.

Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart.

The Miracle of the Common is the Miracle of Love

"This inborn ability to find and enliven a common beat is the miracle of love." (page 40, The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo)

Are you looking for a common beat with someone around you?

Are you discovering you have a common beat with someone that surprises you?

Discovering the commonness among us is the discovery of love.

The Blessing of Love Indwelling

First John teaches us "since God loved us, we also ought to love one another." (4:11)

This instructs us in what we are to do, since we are loved. Since we are loved - BY GOD - we should love other people.

Isn't that interesting? Since God loves us, He doesn't requests or behest that we love Him (back). But that we love other people. What a gracious God.

The next verse (v. 12) tells us though if we love other people, then God lives in us. Isn't that amazing? If we love other people, which is a response to God loving us, then God will dwell in us. What a choice. What an invitation. What a blessing.

The Love Potion: We are Loved

First John is chock full of love nuggets. They should call First John, the love potion.

Take this potion:

"This is love: not the we loved God, but that He loved us." (1 John 4:10)

We get love so turned around. We think it's all about us. First John sets the record straight: It's all about God.

This is love: not that we love, but that we are loved.

Loving is Giving & Forgiving

"The shaping of more loving relationship patterns - is also a description of forgiveness...[the] remarkable parallels between forgiving and loving. Both are gifts, no commodities to barter. Forgiving is, after all, a specific kind of giving...Giving and forgiving, then are embedded in an economy of love...In an economy of love...forgiveness means surrendering our defenses, our excuses, even our wounds." (p. 230,231, The Beautiful Risk)

Writing Love into the Script of Life

James Olthuis challenges his readers to "begin to write a different - more loving - script for our lives." (page 224, The Beautiful Risk)

How would your script read?

Now, write it more lovingly.

Write love into your lives.

Loving More Effectively

One of James Olthuis' patient journaled about "being led to a place where I can, in fact, love more effectively." The patient described how he had "to gain some sense of myself as having a legitimate stand in the world of love, a place where I can own love for myself. It is one thing to say you want to love, but quite another to know that love can go through you, because you're not blocking it off by the refusal to be loved yourself." (page 212, The Beautiful Risk)

The Miracle of Love

"The beginning of the miracle of love: [is] being open to another, guards down, and - no questions asked, no demands, no judgments - being respected, received, affirmed, and blessed. To show oneself as the person we are - wounded, blemished, hurting, longing - and to feel welcomed and accepted is to experience grace." (James H. Othuis, The Beautiful Risk, p. 207)

The Circulation of Love

"Unattended anger, fear, or despair clogs the arteries of the heart, slowly cutting off the circulation of love necessary for the full embrace of life." (James H. Othuis, The Beautiful Risk, p. 185)

What is strangling your love today?
What needs to be tended to in your life to free you up to love more fully?
Whatever it is, you need to, as my Father would say, "take care of your business." So, you can get on with life ~ fully embraced in life.

How Precious is the Gift of Love

James Olthuis commented, "how precious the gift of love is, how breath-taking, how easily tarnished." (page 210, The Beautiful Risk)

How precious, how marvelous, how awesome is love.

How easily we can abuse it or misuse it.

Be careful how you treat your gift of love today.

In Love

There are three "in love" citations in Ephesians 4:

verse 2 - bearing with one another in love

verse 15- speaking the truth in love

verse 16- edifying itself in love

These are three great ways to be in love.

Make sure you are in love in these ways.

The Goal: To experience Love

James Olthuis says the goal is to experience love. He goes on to say, "The experience of love is so crucial because it is in being loved (or not loved) that I come to love (or not love) myself and others. It is in being seen (or not seen) that I come to see (or not see) myself and others." (The Beautiful Risk, p. 207)

What's your goal?

The Time of Love, the Right to Be Extraordinary

"Hope is the time of love and the space of grace." (James H. Olthuis, The Beautiful Risk, p. 153) He goes on to quote Julia Kristeva with "love is the time and space in which 'I' assumes the right to be extraordinary." (IBID, p. 154)

If you love, assume the extraordinary.

If you love, there is hope.

Using Your Brain to Think & Love

Listening & Observing the Mystery

"Listening is a primary gesture of love." That's how James Olthuis puts it in his wonderful book, The Beautiful Risk. He goes on to say, "Listening gives space. Listening says, "I am available, open, ready to hear your call, eager to meet you and travel with you. Listening with the ears of the heart is to take in the other, not as a problem to solve, but as a mystery to meet." (page 153)

Listening to take in the other person as a mystery and not a problem.

What a great idea!

We all love a mystery. Listen to yours today. And don't complain, be amazed!

Love is Being With

James Othuis calls it "with-ing." "With-ing is a healing dance in the wild spaces of love, a meeting-in-the-middle to mark out space together...With-ing is a two-way movement of connection, a matrix for healing." (page 130, The Beautiful Risk) His term, "with-ing", seems to be describing love. Love is being with someone. Nothing more, nothing less. Be with someone today in a meaningful way.

Eyes of Love

James H. Olthuis calls us to live a life that is "listening from the heart...(and) seeing with the eyes of love." (page 110, The Beautiful Risk)

What do you see with your eyes?

Are you seeing with love, or with resentment, or a critical spirit?

What you see effects how you act and who you are.

Use your eyes not only to radiate love, but to look for love.

Love as a Currency

"Loving is the currency of authentic human life: trading in anything less is counterfeiting." (page 101, The Beautiful Risk, James H. Olthuis)

What currency are you trading in? Guilt, manipulation, pride, or even self-gratification?

What we exchange life with each other is our trading currency.

Make sure your exchange rate is love.

Love as Your Pulse & Rhythm

"To live is to let love well up and stream through us as the beat, pulse, and rhythm of our lives..." (James Olthuis, The Beautiful Risk, p. 44)

What is the undercurrent of your life?

What drummer do you march to?

What is the meter of your life?

If it were a song, what would the rhythm be?

Today left love well up in you and carry you in ways you never dreamed. Let it be the rhythm of your life.

Loving & Thinking

James Olthuis in his great book, The Beautiful Risk, challenges us:

"Instead of 'I think, therefore, I am' - Descarte's classic starting point - it is 'I was loved, therefore I am,' and 'I love, therefore, I am.'" At this point Olthius says thinking then defines humanity. "When by contrast, 'I love' becomes the mark of authentic humanity, relationships with others, with God, and with the creation" then takes it proper place at the top of our crown. (page 69 and 70)

Asking the Right Question

"The fundamental human question is not - as we have become accustomed to think - Hamlet's "To be or not to be." The cardinal question that marks and measures our humanity is "To love or not to love." We love in order to be and become who we are." (page 69, The Beautiful Risk, James H. Olthuis)

As Robert Fraley used to say, "If you're not getting the right answers, you might not be asking the right questions." Make sure you are asking the right question. It's not so much about what you do, or even who you are, but if you love.