Sunday, September 12, 2010

LOVE

The message at KFA (www.kenoshafirst.com) today was about LOVE. When I GOOGLED it on the internet, I found 1.4 billion references - I’m not kidding -- and I read them all ... No, no. When I put the word 'love' in a search on ‘Amazon.com,’ there were 300,000 books that somehow related.


LOVE. It’s the MAIN THING.


If you are a Christ-follower, you are born of God and you love the way God loves. And if that’s true, then the opposite is also true; the one who does not love is not born of God - does not know God - because God is love.


So it’s simple. If you love, there is great evidence God is at work in your life - and if you don’t, then maybe there should be some concern that perhaps God is not at work in your life.


The idea is that Christians - by their very names - should be marked by love. That should be normal. And I wouldn’t need to blog and preach about this over and over if all our expressions and interactions were marked by love. And the reason the Bible says it so much and the reason I say it so much is because Christians are not always known as the most loving people on the planet and that should bother us a very great deal.


Alexander the Great rode into his war camp one day and saw an officer yelling at a young foot soldier. The foot soldier had evidently shown some cowardice and had run away at the last battle ... and the officer told Alexander he was giving the kid a good tongue-lashing because those actions were unworthy of a soldier in that great army. Alexander came over to the foot soldier and asked, “What’s your name, soldier?”

And the foot soldier said, “My name is Alexander ... the same as yours, sir.”

And incensed at that, Alexander the Great said, “Soldier, either change your ways or change your name.”


In other words, ‘I don’t want you identifying yourself with me in any way if you’re going to have that kind of behavior - because it’s a reflection on me.’ And that is something we, as followers of Christ, need to hear if we’re going to be shaped by the compelling love of a God who, at His very heart, is a missionary God.


And be blessed.

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