Where’s the Love?

Love is the Greatest

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

The Bible says of everything that will remain the greatest thing is love. It’s the top, the most important.  Now ask yourself this, “What is most lacking in churches everywhere?” Sadly it’s love. 

Churches have an abundance of prophecy.  They have an abundance of faith, maybe misplaced at times but still faith.  Churches excel at giving to the poor but the church as a whole, Christianity as a whole does poorly when it comes to love.   We are like clanging cymbals to the world.  Just a bunch of noise.  Not every church. And of course, I’m not speaking about yours, but the church in general.

Somehow we dismiss ourselves like we get a pass, we excuse our lack of love as if it’s justified and righteous,  but the Bible’s pretty clear. “Love is the GREATEST of all”.  Corinthians 13:13

There’s a Second Part?!

In Matthew 22:36-40, the disciples asked; ‘Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Jesus replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.”‘ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.

Everything we know is based on love.  But yet we have so little of it.  Seriously, I’m not trying to bash the church.  Let’s be honest. Let’s look at this as God wants to help us. the Bible says “Love God with ALL your heart”. That’s #1 to God, but yet we put a whole lot of things in front of this one.  It should be number one! 

I’d like to ask a priest how many people come into the confessional weekly and confess they didn’t love God enough that week.  Probably pretty low, if it’s even on the list.  Just shows what we think is important. I can hear confessions now… “I cussed, drank too much, was mean to my parents, I lied, had bad thoughts” and so on, but I don’t think they hear, “I just didn’t love God or my neighbor enough this week.”

Loving God with all our hearts just isn’t really acceptable in our society. Loving sports with all our hearts sure. Loving food of course we can post all we want about that, but loving God, that’s kind of weird to talk about we should keep that to ourselves.  This needs to be broken off of us.  It’s not weird to love God with all our hearts it should be the norm. But yet it’s such a rare thing to see.  

Look at most churches. Do you really see people loving God with all their hearts?  Or do you just see religious obligation; good people trying to live a good life.  When was the last time you actually saw someone loving God with all their hearts? If we do see this, we probably judge that person and think they are foolish and emotional.  We look down at them. We are so much more contained, can’t they be too?  I just don’t see a lot of “with all our hearts” in church.  Instead, we are saying, “God you know I love you right?  We are good?  You’re not gonna make me say it are you?”  We act like teenagers whose parents are dropping them off to school.  

As a whole, we do very little ‘God related’ things, with all our hearts.  But we can yell at each other with all our hearts. We are good at that.  We can write nasty letters to companies with all our hearts. We can gossip and talk about people behind their backs with all our hearts,  but love God with all our hearts? Yeah not so much. 

And forget about the second one. If we can’t get the first one right, there’s little chance we can pull off the second one, to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We tend to easily love ourselves but struggle in loving our neighbor.  We are great at loving ourselves. We would get a star for that.  But have we ever seriously loved our neighbor? Kind of, I guess, if they fit our criteria.  If they look the part.  The Bible says to love your neighbor.  But we hear, “Love the neighbor we agree with, the ones we like.”

Wait!! There’s Even More?!

And I don’t even want to bring up the next one.  God goes one step further in Matthew 5.  “But I say unto you, love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you.”  What!!  What kind of heathen Bible version are you using? That can’t be in there!  But see for yourself. The fact we even have to love our neighbor is bad enough, but our enemies too? I can hear you already… “Ugh! This is so hard! Why is Christianity so hard?  Why can’t we just love ourselves, God? It would be so much easier.”

Joking aside, it is difficult. But why? Well, because we lack love.  Just be honest with yourself. You know it’s true.  Look at Christians. Sure, you’ll hear stories of them helping the poor, but then you will see post after post, on social media, of Christians attacking and tearing down each other; Christians hurting others all in the name of religion. We are good at tearing down and being hateful. “Can’t that be number one God?”  We are fooling ourselves to think that we could possibly really love God who we can’t see, with all our hearts, when we can’t even love those around us, who we do see.  

Our hearts simply aren’t filled with love.  We aren’t good at love, we just aren’t, because we haven’t allowed our hearts to truly be transformed by love.  We try to be Christians the best we can while missing the key ingredient. We neglect LOVE.  

God loves us so much, even though we don’t deserve it. Shouldn’t we do likewise to others? Yes of course, but most of us don’t have the capacity to do so. We don’t have it in us. We can’t just go out and try to be kinder to people without really addressing our hearts.

What’s Coming Out of Your Mouth?

The Bible says out of the abundance of our hearts our mouth speaks. Just check what’s coming out of your mouth to see what’s abundantly in your heart.  Stop. Don’t make excuses. Start changing what you have an abundance of inside.  Out of the abundance of love in His heart, God sent His only Son to this world to save it.  Not because we deserve it, not because we earned it, but because He loved. Out of love, He gave us something even though we were enemies to Him.  

God‘s love is so vast and deep and amazing and wonderful. How sad it is for us as Christians, that we allow ourselves to experience so very little of it. We need to open our hearts up to God‘s love and let it come in. We must experience the vastness, the depth, the richness of His love.  The Bible says we love because he first loved us. We need to allow that love in.  

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