Advent 2022: Hope and Love

While her husband loaded presents into the trunk, the woman hugged her friend and pressed some folded bills into her hand.  “I know this is a hard time, but God is going to come through for you. He has always come through for us.”  The woman thanked them both and sighed, “I hope so.  I don’t know how much longer we can go on like this.” “Keep that hope alive, sweetheart,” the man said as he closed the stuffed trunk. “The Bible says hope will never disappoint you.”

That’s good to know because hope is as essential to the spirit as oxygen is to the lungs.  When life is hard, hope seems more of a desperate gesture than a sure belief. Our hope fades, our spirit is weakened, we become disheartened, and our thoughts forlorn. That’s why the Bible always presents hope as a confident conviction, not a desperate, wishful longing.

The verse the man quoted was from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts . . .” (5:5). You and I can have that kind of confident hope because we know God loves us. He proved His love at the manger. He proved it again on the cross. Then He sealed the deal at the empty tomb. Need more? John said the Father has lavished great love on us and called us His children (1 John 3:1). He said we can “know and rely on the love God has for us because He is love and His love is perfect (4:16, 18). His love is trustworthy and true. It is a firm foundation for hope.

Beloved, if hope is in short supply right now, I want to remind you that Christmas confirms the power of hope in the love of God. He will not – cannot – betray His love. It is His very essence. I also want to assure you that God does indeed always come through.  I was the woman hanging onto a thread of hope. And my hope was not disappointed.  God is faithful. God is love. Christmas is proof.

Love One Another

It is very compelling to me that in all the Gospels, there is only one time that Jesus declared a commandment: “This is my command: Love each other” (John 15:17). A command means it’s not up for debate. Ah, but we do debate it, don’t we? “Who are the ‘others’?” “Did Jesus just mean fellow Christians?” “Did He mean everyone everywhere?” “And what did He mean by ‘love’?” We are much like the lawyer who asked Jesus “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus told Him the story of the Good Samaritan. You know this parable from Luke 10: 25-37.

A man was beaten and robbed and left for dead on the side of the road where two very religious men passed him by on the way to do their religious duties. But a Samaritan, whom the Jews despised, stopped and helped the man, took him to an inn, and paid for his care.  When the lawyer asked the question, “Who is my neighbor?” he wanted to know whom he was “required” to love. Jesus turned his question around by defining the neighbor as the one who gave love, not the one who received it. The one giving love is living out the second great commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).

So love your neighbor. But God doesn’t allow us to pick and choose our neighbors. He commands us to love the person He places in front of us. Sometimes that’s a hard love because they are prickly and unpleasant and downright hateful. They take and never give. They growl and complain. Does that mean we are excused from the love command? I think they are the very ones Jesus had in mind.

Several years ago I read something in “Reader’s Digest” that has stuck with me ever since: “Don’t be afraid to be the one who loves the most.” I think sometimes we withhold love because are afraid we will be “cheated” – giving more love than we receive. But the very act of loving others fills the one who gives it all away. Here’s how John said it: “If we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us” (1 Jn 4:12).  Beloved, the more love you give away the more of God’s love you have to give. Love each other – all the others – the way Jesus loves you (John 15:12).

Got Love?

Got anybody in your life who is hard to love? Yeah, me too. I think every person who seeks to follow Christ will have the “blessing’ of hard-to-love people. It’s one of the tools God uses to shape and mold us into the image of His Son, which is the point of our lives (Romans 8:29). 

Hallmark makes love look so easy. It’s not.  Love is hard. It’s painful. It’s demanding. It’s often unfair. Love will take you to hard places and cost you more than you ever imagined. That’s why people give up on love so easily.

I’m struggling with some of those people so this morning I prayed: “Lord, help me to love as You love.” He sent me to 1 John. I learned some stuff I thought I’d share with you. By the way, I purposefully left off the actual verse so you would look these up for yourself.

First, I cannot love difficult people on my own.  I can only love them out of the love God has for me (4:16).

Love comes only from Him (4:7). (Not my human emotions).

God is love (4:16). He has lavished His great love on me (3:1).

Because God loves me, I can love them (4:19).

Because I know God – who is love – I can love them (4:8)

Because He lives in me through His Spirit, His love for others lives in me as well and completes and perfects my insufficient love so that  I can love them (1:12, 17, 18).

God loved me sacrificially (4:9-10). The love I show to others must follow suit (4:11).

God expects me to love them (4:20-21).

When I consider how unloveable I have been – and often still am – I marvel that God loves me. Yet He does. So how can I, as His child, in whom His Spirit dwells, withhold love from those who are unloveable to me?  I have read the Bible from cover to cover and I find no place where God said, “Stand up for your rights!”  But over and over I find two things I lean on hard: God calls me to love, and He promises to fight for me.

Beloved, I don’t know how much clearer it can be. We are called to love God and love others – even, especially, the ones who make it hard to love. They need it most of all.

A Real-life Lesson in “Loving My Enemy”

“But I tell you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” Luke 6:27

I had every reason to hate her. She attacked me with hate-filled words. She criticized me as a mother and as a Christian, attacked my faith, criticized my decisions and filled her tirade with contempt. Her words spilled over with venom and spite. She even brought her friends in to throw their barbs at me.   She clearly hated me. Wasn’t I justified in hating her?

To the world, yes. I had every justification to hate her and attack her back. To throw around a few barbs and verbal missiles of my own.  That’s what she was trying to do, to bate me into a verbal battle. That’s what she deserves right? I should call my friends and bash her just as badly as she bashed me.

But I don’t live by the code of the world. I live by the Word of God and the example of Jesus Christ.

So the next day, my heart still heavy with pain and grief, as I came to my early morning time with the Lord, I prayed about the situation. I asked God for wisdom. He had witnessed this conversation. He was aware of the hate this person has for me. Surely He would say my anger is justified. I sat down and opened my first devotional reading for the day. Colossians 3:13 – “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” The next devotional reading took me to Luke 6:27, our key verse. “But I tell you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” Wait God…what? Forgive? Love? Do good? Bless? Pray? Did you even pay attention to that whole mess at all God? I am the one who got bashed here! Why should I have to be the one to forgive and do good and bless? And love? You really can’t be serious!

I turned to the last devotional Scripture for the morning, Matthew 5:43-48. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons [and daughters] of your Father in Heaven” (v. 44-45).  And there it was. God was not telling me I was justified in my anger. He was telling me if I wanted to live the genuine Christian life, I couldn’t respond like the world responds. He was telling me that I had to live in a radically different way. He was telling me that if I want to be His daughter, I must love my enemy.

And the truth is, no person is truly my enemy. Paul says “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). No man or woman is our enemy. We have only one enemy, Satan. He is the one who is behind every act of hate and every attack for man against man. Retaliation only breeds more hatred and keeps the battle going, and this is what our real enemy is trying to accomplish. Whatever is done against me, by the hands or words of another person, Satan is the force behind it. He is my enemy. If I keep this truth in mind, I can respond to another person’s attacks with forgiveness, I can pray for them, and yes, I can even love them.

I must confess, the “love” part is not as easy to do as it sounds on paper. And as I read those Scriptures, I had to tell God, “I can’t do this on my own. The only way I can love this person is if you help me. You have to love her through me, because I can’t God – it’s not in me.” And that is the whole point. I can’t. Love –genuine love – has to come from God. That’s what the Apostle John says, “Let us love one another, for love comes from God” (1 John 4:7). Listen to this, “We know and rely on the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16). I can only love the one who hates and mistreats me because God loves me, and His love fills me up and spills out onto the one I cannot love on my own.

My heart was hurt. The attack was brutal. The pain was severe. But this person isn’t just someone I can write off and walk away from. I have been called by God to respond in a Christ-like manner. I have been called to forgive and bless and pray and love. But I desperately need help. Only God can overcome my human heart that wants withhold love and protect itself from abuse and hurt. Only God can help me to love. Because He is love.

Merciful, loving Father, please I pray, take my broken heart, my battered spirit and my mind that is full of turmoil and apply the healing balm of Your love and peace.  I cannot love in my own strength – the truth is, in my own nature, I don’t want to love. But this is what you have called me to do. Help me Abba, to soak up Your love so that I can love, even in the face of hate. Amen.

How Does He Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote this beautiful poem to her beloved Robert Browning.  Their romance captured the heart of the literary world.  People love a good love story.

How is it then, that the greatest love story often goes unnoticed and uncelebrated? The Biblical writers penned hundreds of beautiful “sonnets” about the love of God.

David, writer of many of the Psalms declared, “I trust in Your unfailing love” 13:5); “show the wonder of Your great love” (17:7); “Your love is ever before me” (26:2); “He is my loving God” (144:2).  The prophet Zephaniah wrote, “[The Lord] will quiet you with His love” (3:17).   The Apostle John said that God has “lavished His great love on us.” (1 John 3:1)  But the words of Paul in His letter to the Ephesians is one of my favorite verses about God’s love, and perhaps was Elizabeth’s inspiration for her own declaration of love.

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power,

together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep

is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge

– that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.  Ephesians 3:17-19

God’s love is truly immeasurable, and Paul is not trying to put parameters around His love, but rather to express the immenseness of it.  He is trying to define the indefinable in a way that his readers, as well as you and I, can grasp.  He is describing the love of God with dimensions that will hopefully help us better understand its vastness.

How high is the love of God?  Psalm 103:11 says, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him.”  Man may have climbed to great heights through space exploration, but we have yet to pierce the highest heavens.  God’s love exceeds heights man can never reach.

How long is the love of God? Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

God loved us before time began, and He will continue to love us throughout all eternity.  His love for you and me will never end.

How deep is the love of God? Psalm 86:13 says, “For great is Your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths of the grave.”  Our greatest enemy is death, an enemy we ourselves have no hope of defeating.  But “Jesus Christ, being in very nature God…made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness…humbled Himself…to death” (Philippians 2:6-8, sel.)  Jesus Christ stepped from the glory of heaven, and humbled Himself all the way to the depths of the grave for you and me.

How wide is the love of God?  John records the death of Jesus: “Carrying His own cross, He went to the place of the Skull.  Here they crucified Him” (John 19:17-18) Jesus willingly stretched His arms out to their full span, allowed His hands to be cruelly nailed to the cross and gave His life to save you and me.

Do you know that God loves you? Will you accept and believe in His love?  Unlike man’s love, God’s love is not an emotion.  It is His very essence.  You cannot be good enough to make God love you more.  You cannot be so bad that God will love you less.  God loves you because love is who God is.  God’s love is beyond our understanding, but is right within our grasp.  It is as near as the Cross.

God of Love, I cannot comprehend the greatness of your love, but I receive it and believe it.

Thank You for loving me.          Amen.