Fruit of the Spirit Series // Love

I mentioned in a previous post how the Lord has called me to understand more of what it means to live by the Spirit; thus, I thought a good exercise would be to write a post on the individual fruit of the Spirit. Here's the first:

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love.

So here's the way I see it, these fruit are two fold.

Equal parts discipline & promise.

Paul mentions that those who sow in the Spirit will reap life. I believe, during the seasons in which I've been particularly disciplined to sow in love, I reap it.

Not to say, exactly, that if I am more loving to others than others will be more loving to me. There might be a little bit of truth in that, but really it seems that the more I choose to place others above myself, the more I am able to do it.

If I consistently guard my thoughts against entitlement & frustration when I have to keep sacrificing on behalf of my little ones, it becomes easier to do so.

There have been a few times, even, that I have been filled with joy at three in the morning. Completely content as I wake up again, and again, and again to meet the needs of my kids.

I know. Miraculous.

If my husband is going through a season at work that is busier than usual, where he is gone every other night of the week on top of having long days; and, though I know he loves me, in all practicality he doesn't get that much time to show it. During these seasons, if I discipline my mind to not begrudge him my own love because he has not been able to give me much of his, I find it becomes more natural to love him freely. I cease to care if we've been loving each other in equal measure.

I have been pretty terrible at that one, actually. But I shoot for the stars, nonetheless.

I believe love is one of the most scandalous fruit because it is extremely unfair. Love, at least the sort Paul is talking about, doesn't often worry itself with if it's needs are being returned or what tomorrow will look like if it extends itself too much.

It calls us to sacrifice things that might be valid needs for the benefit of another. It pushes us to the limit and tells us to not expect a standing ovation for it, but rather be thankful for the opportunity to be pushed.

Perhaps it is in human nature to walk the opposite direction of sacrificial, holy love? It is mine. I will, if left to my own devices, hardly ever choose someone over myself.

I will, even, be unloving against my own mind, body, and soul. I will choose my immediate desires and wishes over what would be best for me.

I will choose what is easy over what is good.

By grace, though, I have been made new. By grace, I am able to live a life by the Spirit, and it is by this Spirit that I am able to choose, willingly, to sacrifice.

This passage has been particularly convicting as I think about how evident this fruit may (or may not) be in my life:

"Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much He loved us by sending His one and only Son into the world so that we may have eternal life through Him. This is real love - not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and His love is brought to full expression in us." - 1 John 4.7-12, NLT

This is real love. The Gospel.

This fruit is tied to the message Christians are supposed to proclaiming as often as we can. Perhaps that is why Paul says that out of faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love.

Or why the two greatest commandments both have to do with love. First, to love God and second, to love others.

Here are some conclusions I have drawn about love:

It is a non-negotiable. We must love. To love and to follow Christ cannot exist outside of each other.

It is complicated. It is a weak, flat sort of love (if, indeed, it could even be called love at all) that only exists when it is agreeing with everyone, and it is a rash sort of love that burns the candle at both ends and feeds its passion on feelings. I do not advocate a love that divorces itself from truth, or running oneself into a brick wall of burn-out. To love well is complicated and hard. I think that's why the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential. He is the source of healthy, life-giving love.

It starts small. It's common to see stories/blog posts/videos about these people who do insanely selfless things. There was an adoption video that went viral awhile back about a family who has adopted several children with special needs. And everyone (including myself) thinks, "How do they do that?"

Maybe their journey began by letting their spouse choose what TV show they would watch that night, or giving their kids the last scoop of their favorite ice cream. Something mundane.

Look where it ended.

I am convinced that, done by the Holy Spirit, an act of sacrificial love does not return void.

This encourages me. It encourages me because my heart, like Dr. Seuss so aptly said of the Grinch, feels "two sizes too small" in a lot of areas.

To know that I do not love as I should, but that it is well within the Spirit's power within me to forge the same radical, scandalous love that held Christ's hands to the cross rolls a burden off my back.

Because I desire to love like that. I recognize I am too small a person to do so currently, but there was a time when the way I love now seemed impossible. (Like the waking up at 3am thing....)

I am asking the Lord to grow a dangerous love in me. I am scared to ask for this, but the Spirit within me presses me on to ask for it anyway. 

New Life

Love is dangerous. 

It redeems, you know. And redemption is never something to be trifled with because redemption incites change. Deep change. 

And the love of which I speak is not human born & fed, but divine. 

Let's face it, we humans are not perfect and while our love can have something of the hushed & holy, it can also damage. Because people can damage. 

God, though, God redeems and refines and restores. He does not damage. 

He might deconstruct, but always, always, always, His love leaves wholeness in its wake. 

And while love from another person can feel like a warm fire on a cold night, God's love comes like the dawn. Bringing not only warmth, but light & color & a whole new way of seeing things.

The love of God? It is good. 

It is good because it has no beginning and no end. 

It is good because it calls life out from those who were thought to be long dead.

It is good because it has not only been spoken, and written, but also lived.

Through death and back again.

I'm looking forward to Easter, more so than any other year. This spring has worked something new in me and I am desperate for any moment to be filled up and over with this new life that comes from Him loving me.

Maybe His love requires surrender? And, maybe, after twelve years, I'm just beginning to wave my white flags and His feet start pounding that long dusty path toward me.

I think the Father loved the Prodigal Son when his feet carried him away from home just as much as when they carried him towards it.

And Jesus has been loving me for a long time, much longer than I have been hit-and-miss loving Him. 

And the Greatest of These, Pt. 2

I didn't intend to make my thoughts on the love of God into a series, but maybe I will. It does seem to be something God is working in me during this season. There may be no continuous thought or idea in the posts other than what God is showing me about love. Here's the link to the first one. 

When one of our church deacons held his new daughter, and her almond-eyes looked back at him as he introduced her to the congregation, his voice trembled joy and her face shined peace and my heart filled.

In my stubbornness, only a few hours earlier I had muttered a prayer for the Sunday service, asking God in early-morning lack to bring me some well-deserved happiness, thank you very much, after a few days of tears.

Then there was talk about the Prodigal, and I remember his story. About the prostitutes and the pig slop, about how when he came back he didn't ask for happiness; but rather for the role of even a servant if it allowed him to return to his Father's house.

And how the Father didn't run toward a servant, but a son; and didn't give him happiness as much as hope.

More talk followed about understanding what God did for us. Understanding in a way that leaves us changed. Maybe hearing His own voice tremble joy and His feet pound the earth as He runs toward us?

This kind of love is not for the understanding but for the trusting? Like the deacon's daughter, who is too young to understand the love that brought her across an ocean and two continents to be home, but maybe she can trust it.

Yahweh, the Prodigal-Lover, stands at the end of that road whispering healing-words that turn my heart toward Him long before my ears are wise enough to listen.

This, then, is largely my story. What I have to share with those who haven't heard the same healing in different words meant for their heart, only.

From the beginning nothing and no one has loved me as He does. When a love like this was spoken to me, a love that makes a king a willing fool in the eyes of others, that makes the prideful willing to be pitied, what could I do but trust and follow?

The only other option is becoming the worst version of myself. It is the choking grip of control, fear, perfectionism, and anger; and I write that last sentence from what I unfortunately know, not what I assume. As a wife, soon-to-be-mother, sister, daughter, friend and Christ-follower, I can scarce afford to not respond.

For me there is nothing else but to be loved.

And The Greatest of These

Love never gives up.

Love cares for others, more than self.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

Love doesn't strut,

Doesn't have a swelled head,

Doesn't force itself on others,

Isn't always, "Me first,"

Doesn't fly off the handle,

Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn't revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. 

- 1 Corinthians 13 (The Message)

The fact that I used to read this passage as if I had it figured out leaves me speechless. Years I spent, bumbling around with the love of God, trying to apply it to my life and the lives of others in a severely inadequate way.

I could blame my lack of affect on those around me. I was hurt! There are scars! I couldn't love them! While the pain was real and the scars show it, maybe what was more to my detriment was thinking I could understand, fully, how to handle His love.

As if, really, I could get my hands around the deep.

I see now it is not for me to be a master of God's heart as much as I'm to be a channel for it. And wasn't this Christ's ultimate example? Only God, Himself, could show us how to be perfect channels of such a powerful force.

Arms up, head tilted back, and eyes shut. Couldn't this ... the receiving posture of worship ... be an echo of the posture of the Cross? Receiving the deep, the lasting, the dangerous, the redeeming love of the Father; carried perfectly through the Son; and rushed into the hearts of man by the Holy Spirit.

Now I read that passage and I am filled with a holy trepidation. Knowing how little I understand of the love of God, how much I need to grow in reveling in it; and how I cannot communicate what I have not experienced, and what does it mean when I see a lack of love-fruit in the lives of those around me?

And I can be rest assured that love does leave fruit. It does not leave people unchanged. There are signs when love is present, and signs too when love is absent.

May my life show the abundance? May I not forget the road of channel-love is a hard one, well worn by the feet of martyrs and murderers, of housewives and harlots?

May I keep my heart open? Never closed in deceptive self-protection. May I not attempt to hoard this love like day-old manna, and let it harden and grow stale inside me?

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves