I’m sitting in the sunroom at what I call our Polly Pocket house. We downsized when we bought our home because we thought it was the Christian thing to do. We were tired of having more bedrooms, more living spaces, more garages, more bathrooms and more dining rooms than there were people living in the house. It might sound holy, but downsizing is not for cowards. If you don’t really love Jesus don’t even attempt it.
It’s Monday and I’m tired. We had a busy Friday, Saturday and Sunday, blah, blah, blah. Not even a good cup of coffee, and the Blonde makes the best cup of coffee, is helping me press on the gas this morning.
I’ve been getting ready for a Bible study that we have on Monday nights at church. We meet in a room with a fireplace, how cool is that? Tonight’s study is about love, and I don’t know about your experience, but I don’t see a lot of this going around. What I mean is we are nice to each other but being nice and loving one another are two different things.
By the way, nice is overrated. As far as I can see in Scripture Jesus never told me to just be nice, and for the most part I would not describe Jesus as nice. He was kind, He was loving, and He was great, but He said a lot of things and did a lot of things that our culture would not call nice. And after all they don’t nail nice people to a tree, do they? They don’t spit, cuss and beat up nice people. We make them leaders at Rotary and give them plaques and tell them thank you for being nice. I hope all of that made sense?
Back to tonight’s Bible study. One of the things mentioned in our study guide is, “What is the mark of a Christian? A fish on the back of a car? (I think the study guide was written in the 1990s.) A cross worn around the neck? The right theology? The point is made that we look for signs of authenticity in the wrong places. Jesus said the markof someone that follows Him is, “If we love one another.” He said, “They will know the church by its love” (John 13:35).
In Matthew 26:34-35, Jesus tells Peter that he was going to deny Him. Peter tells Jesus that He’s wrong and declared that he would, “Die with Jesus, I will not deny or disown You!”
Jesus knew Peter would not be that bold because Peter didn’t really love, not really. Peter would get what love is later and he would die for Christ but not that particularday.The good news in this article is that love is a process. Learning to love like Jesus takes time. We might not love today but hopefullytomorrow, right?In John 13, we have the story about Jesus getting up from the table and washing feet. This is something the new employee got to do, kind of like cleaning the bathrooms at work—the boss just doesn’t do that kind of work.
We are not very good at serving others, are we? We call this “Christ likeness” and the catalyst is love. Think about the last church potluck dinner you went to. You saw those people cleaning tables, cleaning dishes and taking out the trash, but did you get up from thetable?After Jesus cleaned the bathrooms He said, “You call Me Lord. If I am your Lord (which means master) and I have washed your feet, you ought to—it is your duty, you are under an obligation, you owe it—to wash one another’s feet. I am your example and you should do what I have done for you” (John 13:13-15, my paraphrase ofthe AV).Jesus said they will know that we love because we do what He did and it did not include a bumper sticker, a piece of jewelry or words. Love is expressed by action.
He told me to tell youthat.
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