March 26--The Hard Work that Love Is, and the Payback You Get

Everyone wants to love and be loved, but not everyone knows how hard it is.  These passages help me understand what's involved, so I can step up and just do it:  Deuteronomy 5-6, Luke 7:1-35, Psalm 68:19-35, Proverbs 11:30-31.

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Eve reads her Bible journal aloud on this episode.

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Transcript

Deuteronomy 5-6

Luke 7:1-35

Psalm 68:19-35, Prayer, Proverbs 11:30-31

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March 26. The hard work that love is and the payback you get. I won't be reading the scripture references. For those, please check the written post. Our daughter, Josie Love, always asked if we'd get to see the wedding in whatever movie we were watching. In her eight year old mind there wasn't any point in sitting through something if we didn't get to watch them say I do by the end. She had better things to do. I've noticed most old school fairy tales end with the wedding day I do's, but not the I can'ts of married life. The hunt and chase are exciting, but the complexities of marriage must be too daunting a subject for screenwriters. And I get it, because if people knew what they were really signing up for in the infatuation stage of a relationship, they'd head for the hills rather than stick around for life after the feelings fade. Plenty get a whiff of this and do just that. And it's too bad because real love, the till death to you part kind, is something altogether different from riding a roller coaster of romantic feelings, and we so badly need the real thing. Wonderful as it can be, however, this kind of love isn't easy, and it's certainly not for sissies. Today's passages say more about how to dig in and do it. The Old Testament chapters are Deuteronomy five to six. The fairy tale we're spoon fed early with our oatmeal is that true love is easy when you find that one right person, but the reality tale is this loving another person is impossible without supernatural power. It's unnatural to put another person's needs on the same level as yours, let alone before yours, but that's what loving another person comes down to. And unless you love God first and most, you'll never be able to do it. You'll either blow up by worshiping the other person first and most, or you'll bounce around from one person to another, following fluctuating feelings rather than settling down to do the hard work it takes to truly love. The most important words in all the Bible, at least according to Jesus, are in this passage, quote, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, end quote. Another translation says it like this, love God with all that's in you and with all you've got. Some think that loving God like this means to have tender feelings towards God, that is to say, to have one's emotions involved. I find myself in this camp. Surely emotional feeling has something to do with loving him if the command is to love him with all your heart, soul, and strength. But I can't help noticing that these verses aren't spoken after a heart stirring, feel good retreat in the mountains, a setting that might engender a genuine emotional attachment to God, and they aren't written by someone who's been saved from the brink of ruin either, which would be another surefire way to feel emotional about your Savior. The context for Moses' words about loving God with all that you are was his state of the union with Israel, where he reviewed the Ten Commandments just before he spoke these words about loving God like crazy. He was reminding the people gathered on the plains of Moab of the words God first spoke to them when he boomed them from Mount Sinai with lightning and thunder, smoke and earthquake. Surprised? I am, because the Ten Commandments don't naturally link to love in my mind. At best they link to duty, at worst to drudgery. And if I'm keen on focusing on feeling as the important criterion for keeping the first commandment about loving God most and best, I see that the feeling folks had at Mount Sinai was fear only, so much so that they begged Moses to do God's talking for him going forward. There were zero tender feelings for the God who spoke to them that day. If they'd had any, they disappeared in the face of mortal fear of him, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because it's fear of God, the good kind of fear anyway, that fosters obedience. God instructed Moses to teach Israel his law so that they would quote, fear the Lord by keeping his commands, end quote. And as a result, their obedience to God's commands would be rewarded with long life and vital flourishing, so that they're filled up to overflowing with the abundance he gives. God's goodie bag is deep and wide and all of it simply for obeying what he says. Jesus would say much later, quote, if you love me, keep my commands, end quote. Obeying him is what loving him means, which makes sense when you think about it. If you love someone, you want to please them by doing and not doing certain things. When you love God, it's the same thing. So if having tender feelings towards God wasn't the motivation for keeping his law, what was? Just do it was, and I hate to say it because it sounds like a Nike commercial. Keeping the first commandment about having no other gods is key for keeping all the others. It has little to do with how you feel and everything to do with what you do. You just do it. You pick up your shovel and dig into the hard work of loving God and others with all that you've got. It's not a popular message in our culture. We're led to believe that the right person will come along and will magically know it. And true love will also just happen because of course it will be easy to love this predestined soulmate. And with that mindset for what love is, loving God is brought down to the same level, doing what feels right rather than doing what is right, which is how Moses and Jesus spoke about it. It's no accident that Moses' exhortation to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength comes right after his review of the Ten Commandments, his words to love God with everything you are as a summary of those commandments and a reminder of what the bottom line is for all of them to love God by doing what he says. The first four commandments tell how to love God, and the last six tell how to love others, because what love really is is serving someone else, whether God or other people. There's nothing here about self care or me time that I can find, and I shouldn't be surprised. Jesus said that it's by serving others that you find your best self, and Paul said that freedom grows through serving, whether serving a spouse or children, coworker or stranger, friend or enemy. Serving is so countercultural, so foreign to our famous American individualism, so against our popular you do you mantra. Who would sign up for love if we knew what loving others would really cost us? When we married, did any of us know what marriage really was? I certainly didn't. As long as we think that love will just happen, that feelings will magically arise and enable us, we want to acquire the skill set we need to do love, a skill set that is empowered by worshiping God alone and not worshiping anything else, including our spouse or other primary relationship. God said through Moses that obedience was the way to love him. Obedience is also the way to love others, but obedience doesn't have to land us in the salt mines. This is the wonderful thing about putting God first in your life, how he throws in everything else you want when you do it. And maybe it's because when you put him first, you want what he wants. Maybe this is what Jesus was getting at when he said to seek first his kingdom and quote, all these things will be given to you as well, end quote. If it's hard to hear that obeying what God says and worshiping him only matters most when it comes to loving him and other people, maybe it's because the image of worship in your head looks dull and boring, not heart thumping, not soul stirring, but worship isn't meant to be slaving away at something awful. Worshiping can be as easy and joyful as finding one thing you can sincerely praise God for and telling him about it, and then finding another, and continuing to toss your praises in a pile until they spark and ignite your heart. And when your heart is on fire, you want to obey him. God knows our need for good feelings, for joy, even for euphoria, and these are ours along with other paybacks he promises when we do what he says for love of him, because love is what you do and not what you feel. Quote, listen obediently, Israel. Do what you're told so that you'll have a good life, a life of abundance and bounty, just as God promised, end quote. Will we trust the one who thought of love in the first place to know how it works and how best to have it? Obedience to God is hard work, but Jesus enables us to do it, and the payback he gives is, quote, a life of abundance and bounty, end quote. The New Testament passage is Luke 7, 1 to 35. John the Baptist's followers came to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah. Rather than answer them, Jesus showed them who he was by healing the sick, casting out demons, giving sight to the blind. After a time he told them to report back to John about what they'd seen. Clearly what Jesus did that day spoke loudly for him. When they left, Jesus said to those still listening to beware of excuse makers, blame shifters, the snooty, like spoiled children who aren't happy no matter what their parents do for them, people make excuses for why they don't do what they oughta. These types would even accuse John the Baptist and Jesus for wrongdoing, but the proof of the pudding was in the eating Jesus said, meaning no one could deny the good he did right in front of their eyes. Beware the critical spirit that makes you too good for Jesus. Beware the I get it spirit that can puff you up rather than connect you with others. Beware the proud spirit that thinks you don't need a savior like everybody else does. The good news of Jesus caught on like wildfire in his day. Has the good news of Jesus caught you on fire too? Surrendering to Jesus is hard work, but the payback he gives is a life of humble, heartwarming obedience. From Psalm sixty eight, nineteen to thirty-five. God's magnificence makes enemy heads roll, but this same God is our God who carries us, he's for us, he's God who saves us as he marches victorious against the bad guys who are spoiling for a fight. God is sky rider who uses thunder as his calling card. His splendor rises, quote, huge as thunderheads, end quote. His power is unmatched, and so is his beauty that rivers from his fortress. David enjoins all nations to sing praise to this God of power and might. And while God's majesty is without equal, I'm struck by what David writes of his humility. This all powerful God, quote, gives power and strength to his people, end quote. If God is empowering us, and David says he does, there's nothing we can't do. Love the unlovely, the enemy, the aged, the whiny, the needy, the suck up, even the person sitting across your kitchen table. Loving the unlovely is humbling, hard work, but God enables us to do it and find our best life in the process of prayer. God, your call to love and obey is just plain hard. I'm thankful to read you give me the strength to do it. Light me up in worship so I'm on fire with you. Help me to love like you do. In Jesus' name, so be it. From Proverbs 11, 30 to 31. A good life can't help but bear fruit. A bad one can't help but destroy others. If the righteous barely make it, what will become of the wicked? Passages in Deuteronomy, Luke, Psalms, and Proverbs are selected for today in the yearly Bible. This is Eve, debartle Laban Robo.