The Most Important Thing for You to do Today — Rural Reset 21/21 [23]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this episode of Back to Rurality, TJ Freeman discusses the importance of love as outlined in scripture, emphasizing that love starts in the mind and often requires intentional, sacrificial actions. He shares practical tips for loving neighbors and handling difficult relationships. This episode also concludes our Rural Reset Series!

Key Points:

• Not Sure How to Love Your Neighbor? Maybe you have a family member who is really irritable and hard to love. Maybe it seems like that one neighbor is out to rile up your family. It is natural for us to struggle to love others. That's why the Bible says we have to bear with one another in love!
• Ever Tried Renewing Your Mind? When we really are struggling to love someone, we can take that cycle of angry thoughts against them and start replacing them with thankful, loving thoughts towards that person. We can commit to starting to love them in our minds. 
• What Is Love Anyway? Love is a commitment  or a decision to do what is best for the other person, actively, sacrificially, and unconditionally regardless of feelings to the glory of God.

Listener Takeaways:

• Meditate: Meditate on God's word. God's word will renew our minds and transform it. (Romans 12)
• Intentional: Intentionally love others by praying with them, writing them a note, or going out of your way to bless them. (Ephesians 4)
• Navigate: Navigate hard relationships with grace. It will often take dying to yourself, but that is exactly what we are meant to do! (Philippians 4)
• Depend: Depend on God's Strength. We are not able to love others out of our own strength. We are going to fail, but we want to keep trying to love others to honor the Lord and share his love with our neighbors. Remember that we love because he first loved us! (1 John 4)
  
  

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Transcript

What is the most important thing you can do this week? Think about your agenda. You got a lot on the list, don't you? Me too. I know exactly what that feels like, and sometimes it's hard to know. What's the most important thing for me to focus on? What are some of the things that you're juggling? Family, work, church responsibilities.

Probably doing a lot of good things. But what if, because of all the good things, you're missing out on the most important one? And maybe that's why you're feeling so tired, or frustrated, or down when you get to the end of your day. 

What if the thing that's missing is that you haven't truly learned how to love the way God calls you to? Well, hello, my name is TJ Freeman and I am a rural pastor. Just like you, I live in a place that we have to call the middle of nowhere. And I know how sometimes when you live in the middle of nowhere, doing things like loving others can be really tough.

There's a lot of reasons for it. On top of the things I mentioned in the intro, the fact that you're just very busy. But, God elevates love to a place in scripture that does take dominance, is that a thing? It's preeminent over a lot of the other things that we're meant to do. In other words, it's just really, really important.

I think because we're so busy. And because we've lived in a small community where we kind of just understand how things work and we don't really expect them to ever change, there are some things about our approach to love that might be more like neglect than being really intentional as a Christian to raise love to the level that the Lord would have us to.

You might remember in scripture that when Jesus was asked what the most important commandment is, kind of like I did at the beginning, what's the most important thing for you to focus on or do? What's the most important commandment? Jesus said that it was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind.

And then he said there's another commandment that's just like it. You're to love your neighbor as yourself. So, the Lord elevates love, love for God and love for neighbor as the most important or the essence of what we're to focus on as Christians. So, I know love can be really hard and I want to just point out As we begin this, that love begins in your mind. It's not just an outward action, because sometimes we're like, I don't really even know what loving would be in this situation.

I'm not sure how to love my neighbor. I just want to say it starts in your brain. And it's the way that you think about others. It's the way that you really think about yourself. It's the way you think about the Lord. That's going to dictate how you act in whatever situation you're in. And if you've learned to love God and love others, then the way you think about the Lord, and the way you think about others, is going to look different than if you were to just naturally, in your own flesh, think about them.

So here's a, for instance, let's say you have a neighbor who's just a real pain. 

He's always over there making noise. Like, you're trying to sleep, and their dogs are outside barking, and they're out there yelling for them. In the middle of the night, he decides that's a great time to run power tools. One of those neighbors that's tough to get along with, and he doesn't treat you very good.

He's short with ya, he doesn't like your kids, he's kinda grumpy. What if you lived next to a neighbor kinda like that? That person would be hard to love, and here's what you're gonna be tempted to do in your mind. You're gonna be tempted to think, That guy's just a real jerk. You know, your mind might go there.

You might think, Ugh, doesn't he care about anyone but himself? That guy's so selfish. If he wasn't so selfish, I wouldn't have to deal with all these problems. Or, you might be with your spouse, and you're talking about your neighbor, and you're letting out some frustration, and you go, You know, this is just a really, really hard person to be with.

If we just lived next to anywhere else, then our life would be perfect. You kind of go down roads like that in your mind. You kind of go down roads like that in your mind. And when you allow your thoughts to just run naturally, you're going to go where everyone else would go. It's a pain in the neck to have a bad neighbor.

Nobody wants a bad neighbor. But if you've landed next to one, you should understand that's an act of God's sovereignty. He could have directed you anywhere. He could have directed that person anywhere. He's stuck you and your neighbor right there next to each other. And the way that a Christian needs to learn to think about their neighbor is thinking about them lovingly.

So, rather than thinking, he's so annoying, I wish he weren't so loud, you need to just cultivate good thoughts about them. Man, he's got a lot of good projects he's working on over there. I'm gonna pray for him, that he's safe, that he's able to get these projects done. You know, there could be a time where you need to go over and deal with the noise in a loving way, in a way that's humble, and well thought out, and very prepared.

and willing to trust the Lord even if you don't get the desired outcome. By the way, quick little commercial. There's a book by Ken Sandy called The Peacemaker. If you have a neighbor or a relative or whatever that you're struggling with, you need to get that book and read through how you can have a biblical, loving approach to conflict with people in your life.

But anyway, since love begins in the mind, you should go to the passage in Romans, chapter 12, verses 1 Where Paul explains that we, as an act of reasonable service, are to be transformed through the renewal of our mind. So your outward behavior, the way you treat your neighbor, is going to be an overflow of what's going on in your heart or your mind about them.

So think really godly thoughts. Think, God made that person in his own image. God has given me this neighbor so that I can show him the love of Christ. Think of those kinds of thoughts. That'll help with being loving. Thank you. But you should probably ask the question, What are we even talking about here when we're talking about love?

Is there like a really good definition that would help me know? Well, I'm so glad you asked. Here's the definition that I think is useful for love. Love is a commitment or a decision to do what is best for the other person, actively, Sacrificially and unconditionally regardless of feelings to the glory of God.

Notice that love is not a feeling. It's not something that, you know, Disney holds out to us as love is this thing where you have to develop this strong emotional attachment to someone or something. It's not romantic love. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about a kind of love that is a choice.

Not a feeling. It's a kind of love that puts the other person first and doesn't even think about what you're getting out of it or how the other person makes you feel. It's active. It's something you do on purpose. It's sacrificial. It costs you something and it's unconditional. There's nothing the other person can do that would cause you to stop making this decision or commitment to treat them this way.

It's not based on your feelings and it's all done for the glory of God. It's rooted in the fact that God loves us. You know, why do we love? Because we've first been loved. We've been loved by God, who showed us how much He loved us by laying down His life. Remember, the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, and how did that happen?

Through His perfect life that resulted in His death on a cross, where the wrath of God was poured out on Him for us.

So that's where you have to begin. If you don't start there, you're gonna fail really quickly. You're gonna struggle either way. But if you remember, okay, I've been shown a kind of love that I didn't deserve, that I could never repay, That I've scorned at times, and Christ has just continued to pour it out on me.

So who am I to do anything less for my neighbor, especially when Jesus has explicitly told me to? The Bible also talks about the fact that at times it's going to be hard. In Ephesians 4, we're encouraged to bear with one another in love. What does that mean? Bear with someone. Man, have you ever heard that phrase, just grin and bear it?

It's the idea that you have to endure something or get through something that's uncomfortable. And that's exactly what's going on in the passage. We're supposed to bear with one another, strive alongside each other, put up with each other's nonsense, and overlook it with a loving heart. And Not relegate them to this category in our heads where that person's just annoying, and that person's just frustrating, and that person's just grumpy, and that person's always on my nerves.

That one's just weird. We don't, we shouldn't do that with people. We should bear with one another in love, knowing that sometimes we're weird. Sometimes we're irritable. Sometimes we're not fun to be around. And we want other people to bear with us. So Christians need to have a special way in which they bear with one another in love.

You should be really close to the other Christians in your town. And in a small town, there's probably not many of them, and you're not going to get along famously with all of them, but you share Christ in common, and this call to love one another in a way that stirs up the others to love and good works.

That's another passage that we can talk about. Stir one another up to love and good works. So, bearing with one another in love and focusing on love in our relationships as Christians is really important so that we are then more emboldened and encouraged as we go out from each other to go love our neighbors and show them the kind of love that Christ has for us.

You know, there's even an example in the book of Philippians, right there in Philippians chapter 4, that talks about Iodia and Syntyche. How about those for baby names? Next time you have a child on the way, make sure you put Syntyche. So in Jodea and Syntyche are not getting along. They're both believers, and we don't know what their beef with each other is, but they got it.

And they're encouraged by the Apostle Paul to be reminded to get along well. That's what Paul says of the church. Remind these ladies that they really need to get along, to be unified. Why? For the sake of the gospel. And so again, we see that the potential for conflict and division is there, and it's there even in the hearts of Christians.

So you're probably dealing with that to some degree, and we would just understand from that same passage, we're being encouraged, hey, get along, lay down your preferences, go back to that biblical definition of love. It's a commitment, it's a decision, you're going to do what's best for the other person, you're going to do this actively and sacrificially and unconditionally, regardless of feelings, to the glory of God.

I have actually been the recipient of this kind of love before. There was a time early in ministry where I didn't realize it, but I had some immaturity that led me to not be the most fun to be around for one of my dear friends and ministry partners in particular. He had invested in me, he had sacrificed for me, he loved me really well biblically.

And we had a little bit of a dispute. And I just didn't handle myself well in that dispute. And it didn't dawn on me for quite a while, until I was, for whatever reason, reflecting on it later. And I realized, oh man, I really did not carry myself in a loving way. And I reached out to this dear brother. You know what he told me?

Hey man, I've forgotten all about that. I forgave that a long time ago. And he continued to serve me and be an encouragement to me. And he knew that what I was doing was immature, and that I was wrong. And he allowed love to cover a multitude of sins, as the scriptures say. He overlooked the offense, and he wasn't carrying it around.

He didn't stuff it down deep somewhere, like some psychologists might tell you people do. He wasn't harboring resentment or bitterness. He didn't put me in a category of, oh, he's just the guy who has a lot of maturing to do. Even though that was true, he just loved me. And that really stuck out to me as a demonstration of the kind of love that Christ has for me through this other dear brother in Christ.

That's really thankful. And now you know what I want to do? I want to do the same thing for other people. I want to show them a kind of love that whether they know it or not, is sacrificial. It's active. I'm, I'm caring for them in a way that, that's a blessing to them that they might not even see.

Just like I didn't see it right away. So be that kind of a blessing and praise the Lord for every time you're on the receiving end of stuff like that. It probably happens more than you realize. So what do you say we get down to some practical tips? I like practical. I like practical jokes, too. I married a dear, sweet woman who doesn't love practical jokes, but in love, she has put up with my practical jokes.

I think it's funny to turn off all the lights, and hide, and jump out at just the right moment. She doesn't enjoy that nearly as much as I do, which is why I no longer do it. But back to practical application. Here's some tips for showing love. First, begin with Romans 12, 1 or 2, and renew your mind daily.

Secondly, make the decision to love. Just decide ahead of time, I'm going to love this person. I'm going to love whoever the Lord brings into my life. And that, you'll be surprised how much that changes the way that you think about them. And don't entertain thoughts that violate your choice to love them.

Learn how to bear with others, according to that Ephesians 4. 2 passage. Don't expect that relationship's gonna be rainbows and sunshine all the time. It's not. There's gonna be times where somebody's really hard to love. And that's okay. Bear with them. Christ has been bearing with you for a long time.

Reconcile. You know, if there's a difference between you and another one, another Christian, be reconciled to each other, like Iodia and Syntyche. And then, just be consistent, find ways to be active, start small, maybe buy somebody a candy bar, write them a note, call them up, send them a text, I mean there's so many ways that you can be a blessing.

Here's a good one, if your phone has the feature where you can leave a voice text, which I think is one of the greatest features ever. Open that up, pray for them, and send it, and let them hear you praying for them. That's an encouragement. It's a small way that you can show somebody else love. And, man, be praying for people.

You should have a prayer list of other Christians in your community who you're praying for really regularly, as well as lost neighbors. So to sum all that up, I want to give you a little bit of a mnemonic device, if I could. It's the word mind. Since I said that love begins in the mind, I thought this was a useful word for helping us remember how to love.

First would be to meditate on God's word. Let that be the thing that transforms you. It renews your mind. Be intentional. So the M is meditate. I is intentional. Intentionally love others. Ephesians 4 helps us with that. And, you ready for this one? Navigate. Navigate tough relationships with grace. I know that's not the most memorable little sentence, but if you can remember the word navigate, navigate tough relationships with grace, Philippians 4 informs us on that. And lastly, it's just depend on God's strength. Depend on the Lord. You can't do this on your own.

You're gonna fail. You're not clinging to your ability to love others as like you're standing before the Lord. He's the one that's got you, but you do want to honor Him. You do want to be pleasing to Him in the way that you carry yourself as you show His character to other people. So depend on God's strength.

Trust Him as you go through this. So what did we learn today? Well, we learned that God values love and it's the most important thing He's called us to do. So whatever you're doing, just drop what you're doing. And think to yourself, how loving have I been to my family, to my friends, to my associates, to my neighbors?

How loving have I been? And then just ask the Lord to help you. Maybe use that mnemonic, mind, and think about how you can be more loving. Well, this has been part of our Rural Reset series right here on Back to Rurality. In fact, this is the last episode. Can you believe it? We made it. 21 episodes. If you didn't join us for the beginning of the series, You can go back to Episode 3.

That's where this series starts. Episode 1 and 2 are kind of like, why God has you where He has you, and what He would have you to do there. They're a little bit more deep end ish. And then, starting in Episode 3, and going through this episode, Episode 21, it's just kind of the basics of our faith. Next week come back and we're going to start diving into some broader topics.

I'm really looking forward to doing that together with you. I'm going to be talking about anxiety and fear and worry and those things a little bit next week. Can't wait to see you there. If this has been a blessing to you, would you leave a rating and a review? And please, most importantly, would you share it with someone else that helps us get the word out?

We can't go to all the little rural towns, but together we can impact all the little rural towns. by helping this podcast get out to the people who live there and need some better resources. Thanks for tuning in. For now, let's get back to life. Back to rurality.