What is Love?

During Holy Week, when the world stops to celebrate Jesus's sacrifice and what that means, I thought it would be appropriate to summarize John Piper's recent devotional on what love really is. Go get the rest of his holy week devotional for free: Love to the Uttermost by John Piper.

While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person -- though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die -- but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5: 6-8)

There are 4 ways we can know the depth of someone's love for us:

1.) We know the depth of someone's love for us by what it costs him.

If someone sacrifices their life for you, it assures you of deeper love than if he only sacrificed a few bruises. So we know the depth of Christ's love by the greatness of what it cost him.

2.) We know the depth of someone's love for us by how little we deserve it.

The more undeserving we are, the more amazing and deep is his love for us. So we will see the depth of Christ's love in relation to how undeserving are the objects of his love (Romans 5:5-8).

3.) We know the depth of someone's love for us by the greatness of the benefits we receive in being loved.

If we are helped to pass an exam, we will feel loved in one way. If we are helped to get a job, we will feel loved another way. If we are helped to get escape from an oppressive captivity and given freedom for the rest of our life, we will feel loved another way. And if we are rescued from eternal torment and given a place in the presence of God with fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, we will know a depth of love that surpasses all others (1 John 3:1-3). So we will see the depth of Christ's love by the greatness of the benefits we receive in being loved by him.

4.) We know the depth of someone's love for us by the freedom with which they love us.

If a person does good things for us because someone is making him, when he doesn't really want to, then we don't think the love is very deep. Love is deep in proportion to its liberty. If an insurance company pays you $40,000 because you lose your spouse, you don't usually marvel at how this company loves you. There were legal constraints. But if your sunday school class makes you all your meals for a month after your spouse dies, and someone calls you every day, and visits you every week, then you call it love, because they don't have to do this. So we will see the depth of Christ's love for us in his freedom: "No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18). 

If you know nothing else in this life, please know this: that Jesus really really loves us, because he really really wanted to save us. Feel loved today. 

You Have a Friend in Me

"So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us." (1 Thess. 2:8)

"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)

"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." (Proverbs 27:17)

Paul had Timothy & Luke. David had Nathan. Jesus had his disciples, not to mention the inner 3 with Peter, James, and John. Close friendships are on display all throughout the Bible and we see that great men had great friendships. The quality of our friendships gives us a glimpse into the quality of ourselves.

What a gift we have in close, deep, and loyal friendships. What a gift it is that God doesn't just save us into a personal relationship with him, but also a relationship with people who we can watch a ball game with, talk to about anything and everything, and fight through life with. What a joy it is to have good friends and good community. Oswald Sanders says in his popular book Spiritual Leadership that "Nothing takes the place of affection, not intellect or even biblical knowledge." As Christians, we have the affection of God on us in Jesus Christ and we also have the affection of deep friendships all around us. Thank God for you friends today and listen to John Piper's counsel on how to best serve your friends:

"The greatest ministry you can have to me is for you to enjoy Christ. And so I think when we turn that around and say, “Now how can I be the greatest blessing to the people around me?” The answer is: Get up in the morning. Go to the Word of God and, like George Mueller said, “Get your heart happy in God before you meet other people.”

Isaiah Says Think Differently

I don't know where I got these points from. It might have been J.I. Packer or it could have been someone in my life just speaking truth. All I know is that these 3 points didn't come from me.

(1) Your Thoughts of God are too human

"To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? Says the Holy One." (Isaiah 40:25)

(2) Your Thoughts of God are too negative (He has not disregarded you)

"Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, 'My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God'?" (Isaiah 40:26)

(3) Your Thoughts of God are too small

"Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength." (Isaiah 40:27-28)

If you do one thing this week think, pray, and dream bigger about who God is and what he has done and is doing in your life and in the lives of people around you. The world dwarfs us, but God dwarfs the world. Stand in awe and behold your great God.

"It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in." (Isaiah 40:22)

Humpty Dumpty & The Wholeness of the Gospel

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again."

Who would've thought Mother Goose would turn out to be a theologian? Humpty Dumpty is a classic poem that will be told to generation after generation as a nursery rhyme right before bed. It is endearing and takes us back to a simpler time, where apparently egg-like creatures sat on top of large brick walls, but that's not the only reason we love to hear the story of old Humpty's fall. We love Humpty Dumpty because he is us.

We have all built a "brick wall" that we love to sit atop of in our life. We all think too highly of ourselves and our capacities. He who dies with the most toys, or in this case the highest wall, wins right? So we build our wall high. I mean really high. Higher than everyone elses. Our bricks consist of our salary, our spouse, our kids' accomplishments, our gpa, our degree, our high school sports achievements, and even our hobbies. And higher and higher we go up on our brick wall. Just high enough so we can feel important and look down and see that everyone else isn't as "high" as us. You know what one of of our favorite bricks is in the Bible belt? Religious performance. Our Christianity. We build our walls with how many bible studies we lead, how many verses we memorize, how many hours we pray, and even how many of our good deeds out number our bad. Remember though, we are still like Humpty and no matter how high our brick wall is, we are all doomed to fall eventually (Romans 3:23).

There are no big or little falls from a high brick wall. Just a fall. So sin overcomes us and pushes us off our big brick wall and we are left utterly and hopelessly broken. Shattered into a million pieces on the ground below. We try to fix it but we can't seem to put ourselves back together. So we try the self-help section, counseling, and the constant advice of our friends and families, but like the story goes the King's men couldn't even put Humpty back together again. 

So we ignore our problem and act like we aren't really that broken, but foolishly there we are laying on the ground in a million different pieces. We can fool the world, but we can't fool the soul and we know that we are internally messed up. When left to ourselves and the King's men and the King's horses we are broken people that are doomed to stay broken the rest of our lives. Not a happy ending for Humpty and not a happy ending for us. It seems...

But wait...what about the King? The King's horses and the King's men couldn't make Humpty whole again, but the story doesn't tell about the King. Another story does though. Not just a king, but the "King of Kings" (Rev. 19:16), who comes into the world not as a king, but as a baby. Who grows up and doesn't get the fame and fortune that Kings do, but rather gets the brokenness and emptiness of this world thrown on him. A King who lives the perfect life that we think we live and begins to restore the world of its brokenness with one miracle and teaching at a time. Can it be? Do we have a chance of being whole again? King Jesus then set his face like flint toward brokenness in Jerusalem, where he was going to cure brokenness forever by being broken himself. On the cross, Jesus took our brokenness of sin on himself, and gave us the wholeness of life in Him for eternity, to be with the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 1:8)

All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But take heart, we have the Holy King, who can wholly put us back together again, by making us wholly His. He takes our broken selves splattered on the ground, and scoops us up into His love, mercy, and grace and begins to piece us back together, and he hasn't let us go since (Phil. 1:6, Hebrews 12:2).

Pray Eternally Folks

"George Mueller, a missionary, was asked if he really believed that two men would be converted, men for whom Mueller had prayer for over fifty years. Mueller replied: 'Do you think God would have kept me praying all these years if He did not intend to save them?' In fact, both men were converted, one shortly after Mueller's death.                                                                                                                  (Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership)

Prayer moves the arm

That moves the world

To bring deliverance down

Pray big today folks. In fact, pray eternally. It is not our prayer that moves people, but the God to whom we pray.

"Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit." (James 5:16-18)