Love is not about my happiness

A childhood friend often said about marriage, “Get him young and train him right.” Both of us later married and soon found out that does not work very well! Today’s devotional explains why. It says:

Many lives are marred and made miserable by the selfishness of (someone ) who, under the plea of exceeding love, will not allow the least liberty of action in the loved one and will do everything possible to hinder development in every area that does not add to their own personal pleasure or is not agreeable to them. Surely such a course, however it may be disguised, can spring from nothing but selfishness.

God’s love is described as giving rather than taking. It wants the best for others and does not do good to anyone for personal gain. This love is both convicting and yet sets me free. If I’m living and abiding in God’s love, selfishness is a non-issue. I must confess, this does not always happen. God reminds me again that His love needs to reign in my life.

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:9–12)

His love motivated the Father to give up His son that our sin could be forgiven and so He could live in us and even perfect that same love in us. This happens because…

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:15–19)

First, faith in Christ removes my fear of being punished for sin. Yet not only that, faith in Christ gives me confidence that I am loved by God and therefore have no need to use or manipulate anyone to somehow gain their acceptance. That firm, eternal, and unconditional love of God sets the human heart free to love others. His love is not selfish, and it is inexhaustible. With it, I cannot treat others unselfishly to the point where my ‘love bin’ is empty without any more to give!

The ‘how’ of it is to drop all efforts to manipulate others to be what I want to make me happy. Instead, I must want God’s best for them just as God’s love wants the best for me. Jesus sets the pattern:

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. (John 13:34)

The NT explains how my efforts to care about others fall short without Christ, but as He said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15) and “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” (John 15:10) Love is not having my way with people. Love is doing what God tells me to do.

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13:8–10)

This is not about trying to earn salvation by law-keeping. It is about living out my salvation by sharing what God has given me — His perfect, unselfish, unconditional love.

PRAY: Jesus, so often I measure my actions by what others will do for me rather than by how I share Your love with them. Years of practicing selfishness is a challenging hard habit to overcome. Great grace and Your incredible patience are needed.

Why Obedience?

Bowed before God is a holy place. Listening to His Word is a holy place. Doing what He says is also a holy place, even the menial daily tasks when done as He commands and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I love Bible study, but hearing is not enough, for hearing without obedience is deception. Being made clean from sin is not enough either. The whole point of my redemption is that I obey God:

“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” (James 1:21–22)

God says that obedience is like building a house upon a rock, like the houses in Italy that have stood for hundreds of years: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24)

Obedience is an expression of love and opens my heart to receive God’s love. It also opens my eyes that I can see Jesus: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” (John 14:21)

Of course continued obedience keeps me in that loving relationship, the same as the obedience of Jesus kept Him there: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” (John 15:10)

Obedience declares and maintains freedom from sin: “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” (Romans 6:17–18)

Not only is the Holy Spirit needed for obedience, He is further poured out when I obey the Lord: “And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:32)

Obedience delivers me from self-deception and I am blessed in the doing:

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” (James 1:22–25)

Obedience is the icing on the cake of faith: “You see that faith was active along with (Abraham’s) works, and faith was completed by his works.” (James 2:22)

And that icing produces assurance that I am redeemed and it gives me confidence in prayer:

“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.” (1 John 3:18–22)

Tozer says we do not lack the power to obey, but the will, making this my responsibility. Yet the Word of God says:

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12–13)

Even that will to obey is a work of God!

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Jesus, there is so much work to be done in Your kingdom. Some days I feel so utterly useless. Yet You are the King, totally in charge of who does what. I’m thankful that Your commands are both general and specific. I know that I’m to think and talk like You and have Your attitude. I also know that You always tell me what is on my to-do list.

Obedience or Popularity?

While it is not my aim to make enemies, the Bible tells me that if I do right and stand for truth, I will be in conflict with those who are not interested in either righteousness or truth. I will make enemies.

Lately I’ve realized how easily I can slide into a subtle compromise. Just being silent when I should speak is one way, but there are others. Any time that I go along with the world’s value system, I am denying what I believe. 

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17)

A worldly value system is more interested in satisfying self and personal desire, being comfortable, even being exalted, than it is interested in obedience to God. It is one thing to love the world more than God, but how often have I encouraged this value system in others as well? How often had I lifted up status over godly character or achievement over integrity? What did I praise in my children’s lives to encourage a love of God rather than the love of things in the world? And did I do things like this to avoid losing relationships?

The motivations for taking the world’s route can be as simple as not wanting to make enemies. Christ may be the Prince of Peace, but He also said this . . . 

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. (Matthew 10:34–36)

When His light came into my life, it did not necessarily come into the lives of those around me, including my family. The presence of light should make darkness flee, but if resistance to Light refuses to yield, and if truth sticks to its guns, there will be conflict. Truth always puts lies underfoot, and those who believe those lies will shake their fist at the putting.

This includes those close to me, but it goes farther. Spurgeon says, “If you follow Christ, you shall have all the dogs of the world yelping at your heels.” That means that if my life stands under all tests to my faith, the world might first applaud, but it soon will not speak well of me. Those who are true and faithful to Jesus Christ will find others resenting that unflinching stand because it is a testimony against their sin. It was true for Him and is also true for me.

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’ (John 15:18–25)

Today’s devotional reading also says I need the courage of a lion to pursue such a course, because it will turn my best friend into my fiercest foe. For the love of Jesus, I must be courageous to stand for truth, knowing such a stand is hazardous to popularity and acceptance, even from my own family.

Only the Holy Spirit can do this. When pressed to choose between reputation or obedience that risks the friendship of others, my natural response is to back off and be careful, to say as little as possible. But when I do that, I am a spiritual coward. I am forgetting the life of Christ and how He never wavered.

I’m also forgetting that His life lives in me. When I choose to obey, He will come forth, giving my lips and legs and even my heart all that it needs to do what He asks. Whether my words and actions are embraced or rejected, appreciated or ridiculed, it is better to experience the worst of reactions for a brief time or even a long time, than it is to see a frown on the face of my Savior.

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Lord, I’ve an attitude to confess. I want to be a “sweet little old lady” — which is not a bad ambition, but if my motivation is a desire to have everyone love me, then I must ask for Your forgiveness and grace.

Instead, my desire must be to always love You and not be concerned what others think of me. You said, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10). Abiding in Your love means obedience, not compromise — even for the sake of merely being a sweet little old lady.