Not the Lover I Ought to Be {Lent Reflection}

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To help me think more deeply on Jesus during this season of Lent, I reading Loving the Way Jesus Loves by Phil Ryken. I’ll be reflecting on that reading here…you are invited to join along. (The book is available on Kindle here, so it’s not too late to join in!)

Chapter One: “Nothing Without Love”

“If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” ~I Corinthians 13:3

Complacency is a swindler. She offers assurances that everything is okay. “You’re fine,  better than most.“

I realize today how dangerous it is to try to dine with complacency at the table of love. The fruit of love is spoiled by her company. Like a guest at the table who has discovered the meal was eaten with a noodle stuck dangling from the chin, I have discovered myself to be wont of love. I am not the lover I claim to be, the lover I want to be, or even the lover I ought to be. 

I do fine loving the people I want to love–the lovable ones. The ones who think just like me, who laugh, who say nice things. Ah, yes, it’s so easy to love the people who tell me how wonderful I am. With them I am a good lover.

Yet I am annoyed and frustrated and irritated and angry with the other people. The ones who don’t keep their word, or who don’t speak truthful words, or who withhold words of kindness. The grumpy teenager at the dinner table. The pushy neighbor. The needy. The self-absorbed. The ones who stand by and do nothing about injustice. The greedy. The fake. I can feel my blood begin to boil, but then I simmer back the feelings with a flick of the fingers, “Whatever.” To these, I offer apathy, indifference. These are all too risky to offer the value of my love.

When pride fuels our love, it finds very few who are worthy of it.

This becomes a very self-serving kind of love. “I love you because you have made me feel as good as I believe I deserve to be treated.“

It’s so contrary to the love of Jesus. “…but have not love {for even the ones I consider too hard to love}, I gain nothing“ (I Cor. 13:3.) Sobering, huh? Every drunk thinks they are the best dancer in the world. Just like so many of us “Christians” think we are the best lovers in the world, completely impervious to our swaying to a very hateful beat. Welcome to sobriety. Do we see how easily we can be deceived? Not convinced that’s you? Just watch how you respond the next time someone tells you ‘no,’ or disagrees, or ignores you.

One thing Phil said in the first chapter that really struck me was is in regard to how we read the I Corinthians 13 love chapter. We are inclined to read it as a “feel good” experience. To read it at weddings or on Valentine’s Day or when “love” is  feeling mushy and comfy. Yet he cautions against this. The chapter should confront us. It should feel combative to all the places where complacency has been allowed to occupy. It should rattle some doors and shake our sensibilities. Do we let the Word do this? You know, with the people in your life with whom you are having the hardest time getting along?

I confess, there are many, many places in my life where I don’t have love…certainly not the Jesus kind of love. I need a better understanding of Jesus’ love and the courage to walk in His ways. I need to repent of a loveless heart.

Phil asks these two questions:

1. What limits are you tempted to put on your love? I am tempted to limit love by what I will get in return. I don’t want people to reject, critique, or disvalue my love. I want loving others to make me feel good too. I want to limit how loving others will leave me feeling empty.

2. What can you do to remove some of those limits and truly love your neighbor as yourself?  I think Phil’s suggestion to see Jesus as a portrait of love helps me to settle love back into its truthful context. Jesus loved perfectly, yet people around him still disappointed him, betrayed, yep, even crucified him. It always strikes me as significant that Jesus washed Judas’ feet and fed him at that last supper. Removing the limits means setting down my expectations for what I might get out of loving someone else–truly loving others means treating them for their own good, even at the risk of personal harm. Okay, so loving a grumpy teenage son means I’m going to get my feelings hurt a lot.

How about you? Do you struggle with placing limits on your love?

Mark 10 tells the story of Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler, or as Phil calls him, “the man who thought he knew how to love.” Over the next couple of days, meditating on the Jesus found in that story could teach us much about the person in the mirror who thinks they know how to love. Hopefully, we can share some insights from that passage here together.

Lenten Reflection: Today I will need to put down unrealistic expectations, excuses, indifference, and resentment–they keep me from loving God and others rightly. 

What are your take-aways? Share them in the comments field or if you blog, feel free to link your blog with your reflections.

Lent: Making Space for God to Fill

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Today begins Lent–a 40-day season of reflection in preparation for Easter. It’s a time for Christians who practice it to self-evaluate, to fast, and to be more intentionally focused on the life of Christ and how well His life is emulated in their own.

I always kind of dread Lent. For one, I didn’t grow up practicing it. For another, I suck at that kind of discipline. 40 days is a long time. My creativity gets antsy.

Yet, over the years I have found taking 40 days to be intentional in the way Lent requires has been incredibly helpful primarily because it makes me slow down the “spiritual machinery.” You know, the running to church. Heard the sermon–check! Sprinting through daily readings. Quiet Time–check! Squeezing in community. Life Group–check! Scribble the check to drop in the offering plate. Selflessness and Stewardship–double check!  Begin again.

Lent says, “Stop. Slow down.” It asks, “Why are you doing all this stuff? If you are caught up in the movement of God, then why are you in such a hurry?” 

When we read the Scriptures, looking with eyes to see who is the God of Israel, we are forced to acknowledge that God’s movement does not hear the ticking of our tyrannical clocks. Love never does.

Instead what we find is a slow, intentional, precise, God. Never sloppy. Never in a hurry. Never rushed. No wonder the infamous passage on love begins with the virtue of patience (I Cor. 13:4). 

Lent is an opportunity to be drawn into the patient love of God. It’s a time to slow all the tyrants in our lives–hurry, greed, lust, discontent, ambition, rivalry. It’s a time to make some empty space in our hearts, calendars, yes, even our stomachs, so that in them God might enter the places we’ve made so full but He’s been patiently waiting to occupy.

That right there is it: Jesus entered this world “full of grace and truth” and we’ve been too full of other stuff to receive Him.  Lent is a time to push to the curb all that “other stuff” and let Jesus fill us more deeply. Tyrants do not have time for grace and truth. Lent more than anything reminds us that we cannot have it all. In surrendering some of the things we think we need for life, we discover more of what it means to really live in Christ…and for Him to really live in us. 

 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it…There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth…For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. ~John 1:4-16

Lent is the time we say, “Enough of all this stuff that only offers emptiness; for of His fullness we have all received.” 

For Lent this year I am embracing three practices as means to remember the fullness offered in Christ: I am reading Chris Seay’s A Place at the Table: 40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor. Because even Lent can sound like a clanging gong if I do not have love, I will be reading Phil Ryken’s Loving the Way Jesus Loves. Lastly, because I spend so much time Indy-racing the highways and byways of Los Angeles, I am committing to an hour-long walk everyday, just as a means of s-l-o-w-i-n-g d-o-w-n and praying and listening and remembering that Jesus came and dwelled among people. He took time to stop at wells, to tell stories on hilltops, and notice others to whom He could say, “Come and see!”

The call to “Come and See” is still being offered to us today. Lent asks us to put down whatever net or excuse may be in our hands and answer, “Let’s go see what this Jesus is all about.“

If you would like to join me in any of these practices, I would love to have you along to share the journey. Let me know if you decide to read either of the books–I’ll make some space here for us to talk about what we’re learning…or if you’re local, we can do that real time. Plus, I already told I suck at this, so I will probably need 1,2, or 100 of you to make sure I finish.