WHAT DOES GOD SAY ABOUT IT?
I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly.
Psalm 85:8.
Based on the Hebrew text, one could read the same verse in this way:
I will discern and pay attention to what Almighty God intends to declare, appoint or bring into being by His power (dabar), for He will restore prosperity, wholeness, wellness and peace (shalom) to His people and to His kind, holy and merciful ones, but never again should they trust in silliness or folly.
Have you ever made a resolution at the start of the New Year, only to forget about it within weeks or months? Even worse, sometimes I may not forget it, but I’ll let the importance of it slip away from me, and somehow my mind is lulled into thinking that since I’ve now failed to keep the promise, it’s OK to forget about the resolution for the rest of the year. Maybe I do this to convince myself that forgetting about the commitment will make me feel better about not following through on it.
Because of this cycle of bright starts followed by disappointing failure and weak self-justification, I stopped making New Year’s resolutions years ago. However, at the start of 2008, God spoke to me with a clear instruction:
Make a resolution this year -- to pray for more love.
I thought this resolution might slip away like the others, but I did it anyway. If you are a believer in God and have found out that He cares intimately about every circumstance in your life, then I’m sure you will understand that when our Heavenly Father said, “Make a resolution!” I said “Yes sir, Dad.”
A resolution is a private thing, really. What we share of it only brings an incidental benefit to the listener. The main beneficiary of a resolution is the person who makes it. For example, if my promise was that I would lose some weight, I would be the one who was most happy at the end of that process. If my promise was that I would be kind to stray animals, there would eventually be a lot of contented animals too, but the greater benefit would probably still be mine.
So when God said pray for more love, I knew right away this was mostly for my sake. I didn’t feel smug or selfish about it though, because I had no idea where this kind of prayer would take me. And I was thinking right then about some situations I surely did not want to be in. One of my friends, an intercessor, pointed out to me that this prayer would bring before me a lot of people who would demonstrate some very unlovely behavior. After all, how else can you learn to love but to be challenged with (or by) unlovable behavior? Now, I don’t think people are unlovely, but it is what they do that puts us off and makes us want to run as far away from them as possible, even to the other end of the planet. So first off, I was going to have to learn a very basic lesson: We must receive and view people based on how God sees people, and then separate God’s perspective on these people from the things they do which grieve our souls. I really thought I had already learned that lesson, but obviously I had not gotten far enough.
One of the special “skills” that I had unfortunately acquired over the years was the ability to remove myself completely from a relationship or interaction, and shut down emotionally. (You know, as in “Depart from me, I never knew you!”) Yes, I could walk away and keep on walking. Well, can I tell you? This will NEVER fly with God. It won’t work especially if you’re called to serve His people. Imagine having that attitude while carrying the responsibility of a shepherd who is supposed to care for defenseless sheep. If we do that, a sheep that acted badly in our fold might be tossed outside your gate and ignored, even if it was being mauled or killed within earshot. No, this will never work, and I am learning that God will keep pressing the issue with me until I get it. This really is my lesson. I must love every person in His creation, without reserve or condition.
He didn’t say show more love. He didn’t say get more love. He told me to pray for more love. I believe this is because the only capacity we have to love, especially in difficult situations, comes from God. This love is not the airy greeting we give each other when we meet or talk on the phone, “Love you!” “Love you too!” This love challenges me. It asks me what I will do when someone at work does something completely unfair, or even offensive. What will I do when my church organization, even the spiritual tribe to which I have been assigned, is not a safe haven? What will I do when my family member makes a choice that brings a world of pain to my loved ones? What will I do when my trust has been abused by the person I least expected to hurt me? Maybe you say love like that is not possible. Maybe you say only Jesus could love like that? You know, maybe we can too. Not on our own, but God can do things in us, and He can do things with us, that we cannot.
It’s now the summertime, almost six months since that resolution. I, along with whomever else God has called to make this commitment (because I know you’re out there), have been slammed by amazing incidents and displays of plain and sometimes ugly humanity. I haven’t done so well in the humanity department myself on several occasions. But where am I now? A few weeks ago I got the first progress report, as I was sitting in the middle of a very tense business meeting with another person. As this person spoke to me, I can’t tell you that I was praying or feeling particularly spiritual. What I was experiencing was just very uncomfortable and quite stressful. However, I had a flash of realization later that evening as I experienced an unexpected emotion – it was love. And out of this love I learned to pray for a life that God loves every much as He loves mine. And to put love out in front every time we meet.
An even bigger change was what I felt in my heart toward the spiritual leaders who I can credit with helping me understand the way of God for my life. There are many people whose paths cross with ours, some for a season, some for a specific purpose. I am thankful for all of them, every pastor, every prophet, teacher, every godly person who has enriched my life, and they are many. However, God brought me in particular to an apostle and his wife in the city of Philadelphia who saw and understood what God intended for my life, and they helped me to see it too. A veteran of prophetic ministry with a deep understanding of God’s interest in the marketplace, my apostle and I understood each other well in some of these spiritual things, but in our humanity we butted heads. Perhaps others of us have experienced this (surely I’m not the only one who has).
I, for my part, could not love enough to overcome, and therefore I refused to acknowledge the value this couple had added to my personal growth. I complained to God (and unfortunately also to others) about what I felt was quite unlovely. So I resolved that our relationship had to end, and I walked away. But silly me, I had almost missed the lesson. What could the lesson have been, you ask? God wanted to change something in me. It was I who could not answer God’s call to love enough, so the problem was mine. And God has pursued this issue with me – to this point.
People from many places and many lands visit this web page, so it is the most public and enduring way for me to acknowledge that in all my angst, I learned more from this apostle and his wife than from all my other pastors combined. There is not a conversation that I have about spiritual things in which I do not hearken back to something he said. God gives us the ability to love, if we want it, and He gives us the choice to accept it. And I say yes to both.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, where you feel you cannot possibly love – a family member, co-worker, spouse or even your pastor, my advice to you is the same. Ask, what is God trying to pull out of me? Will you choose to love? In the old days, our forebears used to apply poultices to sick areas of our bodies to pull out unhealthy toxins. We can think of the unlovely situations and interactions we sometimes experience with others as the poultices God uses to pull the poison out of our souls. As I shared earlier, the lesson in a conflict is always, always, always for us. It doesn’t really matter who is on the other side of the disagreement or the behavior we don't like. The challenge is to us, about how we will respond, and who we will become. That’s how God works growth in us. Look for God in the middle of the situation, and hear what He says about it. If we do, we can be delivered, and the bondage we feel in our souls will go away.
To the chief musician, a song for the sons of Korah.
Psalm 85:1
Deanna
June 7, 2008