LOVE: THE VERB

Tonight's Read: Matthew ch. 25 and Mark ch. 1-3

As I have written before, I am still learning how to live a life yielded to the Holy Spirit. I suppose this learning will be a life long process. Since the desire of my heart is to have closeness with the Lord and to honor Him, I have a huge task before me. I have never been a 'legalistic' christian. In fact, I probably could have described myself in the past as completely the opposite, a 'grace abuser', if you will. Since I have decided to give up on my life for myself and live His life for me, I have noticed a shift in myself. For one thing, the desire to honor Him has become much more complete. On the flipside, however, I have sensed myself struggling with a spirit of legalism. I don't mean the type of legalism where I justify indulging in certain sins while behaving saintly regarding others. I mean more of feeling guilty to do everything 'right', to the point of overthinking many of my actions. After all, Jesus himself said "If you love me, you will obey what I command" (John 14:15). When you think about that short verse, it's pretty intimidating!

When I read in Mark tonight, I noticed that in Jesus' ministry, the first person to proclaim Jesus as the messiah was a demon! (Mark 1:24) This was so startling for me. It reminded me of James 2:19 that says "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder." What this spoke to me was that it is simply not enough to 'know' and 'love' God in your heart-- you must do something with those thoughts and feelings. Although there have been many things that kept me at a pace of crawling in my walk with the Lord, one thing that allowed me to stumble so consistently is that I was relying on my 'feelings' of love for the Lord to be enough to make me walk. The truth is, that is simply not enough. I heard a quote long ago that has really stuck with me that says "Love the feeling is a fruit of love the verb." I realize now that my 'feeling' of love was likely so inconsistent in intensity and devotion because I almost entirely lacked my use of love the 'verb'.

So what now then? Like I said, I am struggling somewhat with this spirit of legalism because I want to exercise this verb of love by 'doing what [He] commands'. He tells us how to exercise our love verbs in Matthew 25 (v. 35-36). But I don't want to do these things just to do them. I want to do them with my love for Him in my heart. I want to learn how to love others in action as He did and as He commands us to. When He talks about these things in Matthew, there is no mention of loving people by pointing out their sins, or waiting for them to be polite, demanding that they contribute of their talents and resources, or you name it. The way He tells us to love is with no strings attached. Not to 'love if they______' (insert anything you wish in the blank.) He implies that we are to love for love's sake. We are to love because He loves. We are to love because He loved us first. And, most importantly, He loved us by doing, not by feeling.

This is certainly something that I cannot do on my own. I cannot love people who I don't feel deserve it. I cannot love people who are difficult or emotionally unavailable. I cannot. But He can, through me. So, I suppose, my act of love is to simply be a vessel for His love to sail through. This is definitely something that I must carry in prayer if I want to exercise my verb of love.

Lord, teach me to continue to yield my spirit to you so that I don't do things out my own will, but out of the power of your loving spirit. The greatest thing that you have given me is love. So, please, teach me to be obedient by teaching me to love. Give me a heart like yours--- a heart of love.

1 Corinthians 13:13 "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."