Thursday, November 17, 2016

What's it going to take?

I was having a conversation with a very wise woman yesterday. We were discussing love.... and how most people love conditionally. Most people approach life this way: as long as you are on my side, I will love you. As long as we can agree, I will love you. As long as you treat me well, do what I prefer, spend the amount of time with me that I prefer, and hang out with my kind of people, I will love you.

That works, UNLESS you happen to be modeling your life after Jesus. Unless pleasing God is your number one priority. Because if we are striving to be like Him, then our love has to be unconditional.

Unconditional love is God's specialty. And we who carry the name Christian -- those of us who are bold enough to name ourselves after a man who loved this way all the time - Jesus Christ -- need to practice what He preached.

I know this sentence is going sound weird, but unfortunately I think we have gotten fairly good at this unconditional love thing. I say unfortunately because it has taken a lot of tears, a lot of hurt, a lot of anger and a lot of hard day to get here. Bart and I have had said the words "i love you" over and over again to children who have embarrassed us, stolen from us, lied to us, threatened to kill us, and told people we were beating them. We have had to learn forgiveness and unconditional love because the alternative is a life of anger and bitterness. And we couldn't let ourselves choose that.

In the book a wrote a while back, "A Glimpse of God's Heart: How Trying to Change My Kids Changed Me" that you can buy here I write about how parenting my children taught me about what it must be like to be God. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for him to continue to love him when we fail Him, neglect Him, ignore Him, and misrepresent Him on a daily basis?

I haven't blogged much this past week or so because I've been writing a novel (wrote the rough draft in 16 days -- BOOYAH). But the more I think about the current condition of our country, there is only one real answer. Unity that comes from unconditional love. We need to stand up and be the hands of feet of Jesus..... and his message was inclusion, unity, grace, forgiveness and love.

Hands that are open
Reaching out for broken hearts
‘Cause that’s the only way this world
Would ever know who You are

Love is the Evidence.

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