The Love of Christ part 4
Love is what matters in this life. Because you can't have life without love. The tricky part is when you understand that love is never about getting. Because love IS giving. It seems backwards, and upside down. But that's the way of the Kingdom. James 4:10, "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall life you up." Or Matthew 20:16, "So the last shall be first, and the first last..." (Which actually makes even more sense when you understand that JESUS is the first AND the last. The beginning AND the end.) It's almost like the Kingdom goes out of it's way to defy conventional wisdom. Which, I think, is the point. The Kingdom isn't about "figuring something out." Or about taking something with the violence of human effort. The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Love. And love IS giving. So, once again we see the backwards effect: The more you take, the less you have. The more you give away the more you experience. Because, really, that's what love is; it's an experience. It's sharing what you have with someone else. Even when Jesus was preaching to the masses, and they were hungry, He knew what to do. Not, "Go get food." But, "Give them what you have." You can't give what you don't have. And you can only give what you do have. The problem is that we often don't KNOW what we have. We think we're lacking something. So we look for love in all the wrong places. We run around like chickens with their heads cut off and we rob ourselves from experiencing what we've already got because we're too busy trying to get the very thing that we've already got! What we ought to be doing is giving it away. Giving everything we have and everything we are. That's love. Laying our lives down for our friends. That's the love of Christ. Loving without limits. Gladlly giving it all away without any thought, or worry, about what we'll get back. Or how our gift will be received. It doesn't matter how it will be received. We can't control people. And if you're "loving" someone in order to control them... that's not love. Love doesn't HAVE a motive, love IS the motive. Seeing a need and meeting it. Living out of our abundance. "If you have two coats, give one to someone who has none." Right? Pretty simple. And notice that I didn't say "easy." I said "simple." Because in the beginning, it can hard. Giving something away can be scary. Because if you look for something for a long time, and then finally find it... giving it away seems like the opposite of what you should do. But perfect love casts out fear. Because there is no fear in love. You can't be afraid OF love, and you can't be afraid TO love. Not if you want to truly live. Not if you want to experience Jesus' abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life as He lives it in you, and through you, and as you. Not if you want to experience love. Because love is experienced when you give it away. When you share it. When you serve, instead of trying to get people to serve you. When you humble yourself. When you esteem others higher than yourself. When you stop being self-centered and start being Christ-centered. People-centered. When you start to understand how much Jesus loves you... and then start to love others that same way. With the same love. The love of Christ!