All my life I have heard that we are to love God and love one another. Funny thing is, it never really clicked with me. It sounded more like a greeting in a Hallmark card then the motto I should live my whole life by. Love is such a tricky and touchy-feely word. I know what it is to love Krista or my parents or even my dog, but to love everyone, to love my friends and my teachers and the people in my school or wherever, that was weird to me. I mean was I supposed to wake up in the morning thinking about different people and how great they are and how I can't wait to see them because "I just love them so much?" Weird.
I also knew that I was to love God and that seemed easy enough to me, because He is God and He died for me. So, to not love Him made a lot less sense then to love Him. I can say most of my life I have felt like I had that one covered. You know, I felt love towards Him and so I loved Him. Done and done.
But over the past two years God has been teaching me a lot about love. I know, two years is a long time, but I guess I am a slow learner, or God is just a really patient teacher. Probably both. Whatever the case is, He has been teaching me about this love thing. And I think the thing that I have come to realize is love is a lot less about a certain level of emotion I feel towards somebody and a lot more about how I treat them. I think this is what Jesus was getting at when He said, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching." It is not just lip service but actually backing it up with how I live. For me this realization has been both good and bad. Good in the sense that I don't have to have a crush on every person I meet. I mean, it isn't all about this feeling I have for someone. So all of that weird, too touchy-feely problem I had with that command is gone. It isn't really about how I "feel" towards a certain person but how I treat them, and in treating them like I would want to be treated I am showing them love. So to me that is good. But it is also bad. It is bad because it isn't just about feelings anymore. (I know, it is complicated, that is why it has taken me two years to begin getting this.) But, when it is not just about feelings then I have to act, I have to do something. A big part of me would much rather just feel love towards someone or towards God than have to really love them by acting on it. Now when I say I love God I realize that means I should be obeying what He is teaching and if I am not then how can I really say I love Him? It would be words without action, it would be hypocritical, it would be shallow. Same goes for others, I need to treat them like I love them by serving, encouraging, looking out for them and doing things that show love. Being married to Krista has taught me a lot about that, because I certainly love her in the feelings kind of way, but I have come to realize that I can tell her I love her a million times in a day and it won't carry much weight if I refuse to clean the dishes for a week or never take out the trash, or if I never take her on a date or treat her special.
Love demands action. That is what God has been teaching me for almost two years now. I reckon He will keep teaching me about it too, seeing that it is the cornerstone of the two greatest commandments in scripture, to love God and to love others. So what about you? Have you ever felt this way? What does loving God and loving others look like to you, in your life?
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Jake is the Youth Pastor at Hill Country Bible Church Southwest. He is married to the beautiful Krista Box and is a graduate from Texas A&M University. He likes to think that his students care about what is going on in his life and so he created this blog. He highly encourages you to read it and make uplifting comments on it whenever you can.
What's the Youth Pastor Thinking?
A blog for two14 Student Minstries Southwest
Jake Box
Jake is the Youth Pastor at Hill Country Bible Church Southwest. He is married to the beautiful Krista Box and is a graduate from Texas A&M University. He likes to think that his students care about what is going on in his life and so he created this blog. He highly encourages you to read it and make uplifting comments on it whenever you can.
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5 comments:
Ah, love. That scary word. But, it is one of the things that defines us as Christians, or quite separately, as Christ followers. As I was reading what you said, the word 'faith' kept popping into my mind. Love, like faith, is a verb. An action. I can call my self a Christian, but if the way I live does not match up to that claim, what good is it? As Christians, real Christians, as one who follows Christ, we first say "I am going to put my faith in Christ, believing that he has paid the price my sins deserve, and that He has defeated sin and death so that I can have an eternal relationship with Him" and then we go out and follow Him with all our hearts. That is Faith in the fullest sense. And Love is the same. I first need to say "I am going to love ______ like Christ loved the Church" and then I have to go out and prove it with my actions. If I went out and beat that person up, or if I was disrespectful to them, or if I tried to hurt them in some way, what would you say? You would say, "Jake, you freakin' hypocrite, how can even you even live with yourself, moron?!?!" Why? Because I would be. The Love that Christ called us to is not the touchy-feely kind of love. It is a commitment kind of Love, a Love that you have to make yourself do, a love that more often than not, is going to have be acted upon without the 'love' feeling. I think that James 2:17-18 can be applied to love as well as faith: "Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, 'You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works'." substitute 'love' for 'faith' and you get: "Even so Love, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, 'You have Love and I have works; show me your Love without the works, and I will show you my Love by my works'." Pretty cool, huh?
There you go, I basicly just said everything you said in different words. I was just agreeing with you. What does this look like for me? This looks like being nice to my siblings when I do and don't want to. This looks like putting others first, with me bringing up the rear, and not complaining about it. Easy to say, and hard to put into practice, so I give you permision to slap me up side the head and rebuke me in public, when you see that I am being a hypocrite.
But uh, you can't hit me unless you see me being a hypocrite, or something else Biblicly wrong. Because then you would just hit me for no reason at all. And that's not fun. That's just abusive. Which isn't cool at all...Mr. Dictator you...
-Jake
Come on you guys, honestly, am I the only one that reads this blog? If I only wanted to talk to just Box about these things, I could just call him. It would be alot easier. It is the 'two14 student ministries' blog-site. Not just the jakes only blog. I feel really lonely...
i will post a comment so jake is not all by him self love in my life to others like jake said is being nice to my sibling and giving them more attention then just a quick hello or goodbye (i know what u r thinking they need more attention weird)but love is a scary thing and i think that is scares us so we dont want to try it or afraid that it will hurt but i agree with jake box God will keep teaching me how love works and how to more efficently love God and others over the years to come yes!!! and i also say that as a Christian we really do have to show more love towards others because tha is what God wanted us to do.well got to go and i think the time on this thing is busted so i will just tell u it is 10:22
Well, this is a heavy toppic. I have wondered, and am wondering, praying over, reading on in the Bible, and talking to others about what it means to put your faith into action every day. That is something that has been on my heart a lot, and sometimes it bugs me that I am homeschooled because I feel like that gives me a lot less of an opportunity to put my faith into action with people who aren't chirstians. But as I actually think about it, really, I am just being a whiner - it makes a lot of sense that God gives me tons of chances every day to love poeple with my actions anyway - whther I chose to take advantage of them or not. It IS much easier to say "I love you" or "I love people" or whatever, to say that you care about anyone because you know you should, than to actually do something about it. Many times I don't even make eye contact with people, I will sit in a waiting room or swim at the pool or whatever, and try to just ignore all the other people there. How is that having compassion for and caring about the people Jesus died for? I have also been convicted a lot by the Way of the Master study Sean is hosting, because I see all of the random people you see every day defferently - people that are "going to burn in the lake of fire" as the guys teaching it would say. That thought, that the guys teaching the study have been pounding into our heads, makes me stop to think about people and remember them as beings, not just traffic and lines and workers and checkout people and shoppers. But anyway, the point of this is, I can tell God is growing in me compassion for people; my family, friends, and people that I don't even know, and convicting me to look for ways to show it all the time. And when I look for it, it's not hard to find, I am never disappointed!
Ok, man this is deep. I hope you are satisfied, Jakes!!
Over these past few years, I as well have experienced a transformation in my ideas of love. I've had my silly little middles school flings not to mention other headaches more recently discovered in high school, I went through uncomfortable stages where I was afraid to hug my parents and any realisticly anybody who wasn't a cute girl, I even struggled in showing my friends-even the closest that I cared about them. In all of this, I have come a long way, in discovering, like yourself, that love isn't "Hey, Debbie likes you!" but, more "Hey, I care about you". And that's how I try and live my life.
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