{"id":3221,"date":"2019-01-10T14:30:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T20:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jfbelievers.com\/?p=3221"},"modified":"2019-01-10T14:30:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T20:30:29","slug":"a-chance-to-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/10\/a-chance-to-love\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chance to Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Does love come easy? Should<\/em> love come easy? No<\/em> and no<\/em>. It doesn\u2019t<\/em> and it shouldn\u2019t<\/em>\u2026of course not. Right? We\u2019re smart people; we know this. Love takes work<\/em>, love is \u201ctough<\/em>\u201d; love hurts<\/em>! There\u2019s nothing easy about it! Every good Christian knows that Jesus Christ is the epitome of love, and His whole life shows us just how hard love is going to be. We would never<\/em> expect love to be effortless. We need to love like Jesus, and we are ready to do it! (Theoretically)<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, however, our working definition of love is often quite different. Our approach toward relationships betrays a defective understanding of what real love is. We believe<\/em> that love can be hard, seem tough, and feel painful, but we operate<\/em> in a way that says love should be easy, exhilarating, and pleasant. We avoid love when it requires too much work, and give up on it if it\u2019s too difficult. We expect love to find us<\/em>, rather than making any effort to go and apprehend it<\/em>. When love hurts, we trade it away for a cheap substitute that you can simply \u201cfall\u201d into. We prefer a kind of love that springs up in a moment and makes us feel a certain measure of fleeting delight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(I\u2019m starting to wonder if we\u2019ve confused love<\/em> with serotonin<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Priceless love\nis seen in history <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Bible unveils a mysterious kind of love that seemed\nto be common among Christ and His Apostles, yet seems to elude modern man. It\u2019s\na kind of love so foreign to most of us that we don\u2019t even know what to call\nit. We mislabel it as \u201cloyalty,\ncommitment, <\/em>or discipline<\/em>\u201d, when\nit\u2019s really none of those things. It\u2019s more, far<\/em> more. It\u2019s real<\/em> love.\nIt\u2019s a love so strong, it overpowers the natural instincts of self-interest, self-preservation,\nand pride. It\u2019s a love so precious, it\u2019s fought to be kept. It\u2019s a love so\ngreat, it often gets the one who has it killed<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the kind of love that put Jesus on a cross and buried Stephen beneath stones. Love is the real reason that John the Baptist died as young as he did. Love is how James & Peter ended their lives. These guys loved to death<\/em>, and the love they had was anything but easy, exhilarating, or pleasant. Their love hurt<\/em>. Theirs was tough<\/em>. If these men wouldn\u2019t have loved<\/em>, they wouldn\u2019t have died<\/em>. None <\/em>of them. Certainly not like they <\/em>did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’ll know you have real love when neither torture nor death is able to make you trade it away for a certain measure of fleeting delight. You know its real love when it gives up its own life for the sake of somebody else. These guys had love. Earnest<\/em> love; costly and priceless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serotonin shouldn\u2019t be getting the credit for a eulogy like theirs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kill the man,\nconfirm his love<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Extraordinary love wasn\u2019t the only thing these\nmartyred men had in common. They also had incredibly ferocious enemies. Their\nlove for Christ was deep enough to incense those who had none. Curiously, however,\nthe unstoppable opposition & violence of their foes became the very means\nby which the extent & sincerity of their love was confirmed. Practically\nspeaking, a love that\u2019s never challenged is a love that\u2019s hard to see, and a\nlove that\u2019s unwilling to die, is a substandard love. Love comes into focus with\never-increasing clarity only as the hatred & hostility against that\nindividual intensifies. Nothing proves the quality of love like dying because\nof it. Therefore, no one on earth can test the quality of your love better than\nyour enemy can. The properties of genuine love are best revealed in the fiery furnace\nof animosity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside of Christ, one of the best illustrations of sacrificial love that we have in Scripture, is that of the Apostle Paul. He was a polarizing man. Some loved him, but many hated him. He was harassed, persecuted, and eventually killed, yet still managed to love in spite of it all. He had love for Jesus that exposed latent hatred in others, but didn\u2019t flinch when that hatred rose up against him. Instead, he loved them in return. He wrote, with utmost sincerity, about his personal desire to trade places with the unsaved Jews and go to hell in their stead (Ro.9:2-5). The same men who made Paul the target of their loathing became the target of Paul\u2019s love. Sadly, this kind of love is hard to find, even among Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cheap love is\npriceless in our culture <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The American church is full of people who will never have the chance to love like this. The reason being, they have no enemies. The love they have for Jesus isn\u2019t deep enough (or visible enough) to incense anybody, and, as a result, no one really opposes them. They get along with everyone. Nobody actually hates them, and, consequently, no one is truly loved by them. Christians in this way, aren\u2019t much different than the world. They go on loving whoever they like, giving their life in small increments, only to those who love them in return. They don\u2019t polarize like Paul and they don\u2019t enrage people like Stephen. They\u2019re nice. All men speak well of them, and Jesus doesn’t like it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A love so strong, it overpowers the natural instincts of self-interest, self-preservation, and pride…a love so precious, it’s fought to be kept<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What would it take for us to love like the people we\nread about in Bibles & biographies? What do we need in order to live in a\nway that makes our love more than merely emotional, but visible<\/em>, so that the whole world sees it, and \u201cknows that we are Christ\u2019s disciples<\/em>\u201d? Is love like this even\npossible for people like you and me, or is it only given to guys like Paul &\nJames? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be assured, it\u2019s not God\u2019s desire that love be withheld from anyone. He doesn\u2019t have a limited supply from which He rations it out only to His favorites. Love like this is available to anybody, in great measure, but it comes at a cost. Real love is expensive. Very<\/em> expensive. Love like this requires becoming the target of animosity & attack. It will mean suffering injustice, receiving opposition, & enduring persecution. And for that to happen, we\u2019ll need the help of our enemies. We can’t do this without them. If you have no real enemies, it’s impossible to fulfill Christ’s command to love them. And if you only love Jesus secretly, you’ll never have any real enemies. This is where it all begins. Only when we\u2019re hated by the world for our undying, undeniably visible love toward Christ will we have a chance to love like this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore: Love Jesus passionately, and love your enemies\u00a0unflinchingly<\/em>… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(And don\u2019t blame serotonin for what happens next). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does love come easy? Should love come easy? No and no. It doesn\u2019t and it shouldn\u2019t\u2026of course not. Right? We\u2019re smart people; we know this. Love takes work, love is \u201ctough\u201d; love hurts! There\u2019s nothing easy about it! Every good Christian knows that Jesus Christ is the epitome of love, and His whole life shows … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pastors-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}