Note to self

“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.”

‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭16:13-14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“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.”

‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭13:2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

http://bible.com/111/1co.13.2.niv

A great devotion that speaks to me lately:

@YouVersion plan ‘Get Lost: Love Feast’.

He was wearing those funky shoes designed with individual toes. You know the kind? They were worn and dirty. Had walked a lot of places. In his hands he held a book titled Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hahn. Any other time, my mind would fly into action, internally debating what was wrong with that title. This time, however, my heart responded with more intensity than my brain.

What is that? I didn’t know. But some sort of emotion was welling up.

He opened a little black journal and began writing. I felt sure he was recording deep thoughts. Heavy determinations. My eyes traced the faded tattoos on his left arm. These were young arms, so why was the ink scarred, stretched, and aged? As if it had been blasted away.

I didn’t let my gaze go any higher. When you’re seated next to someone on a plane, making full-on eye contact means you’re ready to talk. I didn’t feel like talking. And this was an international flight. If I started now, I’d be engaged in conversation for a long time.

Thirty minutes later, I could sense by his open, floppy hands that he’d fallen asleep. So I looked over at his face.

And gasped.

He was beautiful. My heart was transfixed by smooth features, a gentle, barely-there mustache, and a soft scar that ran from his neck to the hole where his eye should have been.

I wept.

And I cannot tell you if it was because his eye was missing or because he was so beautiful to me. I’m not generally prone to tears. I knew God was speaking to me, and I needed to figure out what he was saying.

Why am I thinking of my own son right now? Is his mother’s heart broken by this disfigurement?

A while later, he woke up angry. Complained to me about the food service on the plane—chicken for first class and nothing for us—and ordered some Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Then some more.

Suddenly, he was chatty.

“What are you working on there?” He pointed to the pages of this manuscript on my tray table.

I told him about getting lost in God.

Using more than a few f-bombs to punctuate his convictions, he told me that Christians were hypocrites, the Bible was made of words voted on by fallible men, and no one has any idea what happens after we die. “Living people talking about an afterlife is like virgins talking about sex. What do they know?”

He had a point.

He reminded me again that Christians were hypocrites.

I told him that I agreed. “Many Christians live hypocritical lives.”

After a little more conversation about what was wrong with Christians, he gave me a lesson in curing marijuana. In case I’d ever need it. Told me that his travels would eventually take him to Nepal, where they age it so well that he thought he might smuggle some into the U.S. Then he told me how. In case I’d ever need to.

“What happened?” I asked, gesturing toward his face.

“Thanks for not ignoring it,” he said, softening instantly. “Most people just stare. Afghanistan. Buddy stepped on a land mine. Didn’t make it. I took some of it on my left side. Lost my best friend that day.” He went on to say his unit took more losses than any other in all of Afghanistan during his time there.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “And thank you.”

We were quiet.

“That must be really hard for your mom,” I said, fishing for an answer to my heart’s bleeding.

He straightened. “Don’t know. My parents aren’t involved in my life. Well, we do have an e-mail relationship. They’re missionaries, and I grew up with my dad telling me I can’t lose my salvation. Now he says that I have.”

“Oh,” I said. Before I responded with a theology lesson, I mentally checked in with God’s Spirit. Pausing. Listening in my heart. I felt that I wasn’t going to sort that one out for him on a flight to Panama. I changed the subject. “I couldn’t bear it if I weren’t in my son’s life. He’s twenty-two. How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

I wanted to take him home.

We continued talking even after the plane landed, hesitant to separate. We went through customs together. Waited at baggage claim together. He told me he was just beginning a two-year tour around the world. Didn’t know where his journeys might take him.

I was praying the road might lead back to his mom.

And to Jesus.

When his backpack finally arrived, he strapped it on and stood squarely in front of me.

I hugged him as I would my own Robby. Held him long and tight.

“I love you, buddy.”

And then he left.

In the book of Revelation, we find a familiar passage:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (3:20).

The illustrations we often see for that verse feature a blondish, blue-eyed Jesus standing outside a big oak door. Pretty fake. A better picture would show His dark Middle Eastern eyes looking directly into yours. He has no desire to enter some little picture-perfect building. His intention is to be invited to fill a human heart.

This verse is often used to invite lost people into a love relationship with Jesus, but that’s a gross misuse of these words. They actually weren’t addressed to unbelievers, but to the Church at Laodicea—to believers.

They are for you.

And for me.

Jesus is asking you and me to feast with Him. To eat of His presence and to be satisfied. And He is pointing to another, bigger feast, which brings us back to the beautiful picture that marriage presents of Christ and His beloved bride, the Church.

The book of Revelation is filled with wedding talk. One Bible scholar says the language of human love kicks off from the start:

The first word of the book suggests as much. The term apokalypsis, usually translated as “revelation,” literally means “unveiling.” In John’s time, Jews commonly used apokalypsis to describe part of their week-long wedding festivities. The apokalypsis was the lifting of the veil of a virgin bride, which took place immediately before the marriage was consummated in sexual union.

And that’s what John was getting at. So close is the unity of heaven and earth that it is like the fruitful and ecstatic union of a husband and wife in love.

The climax of the book of Revelation in chapter 19 finds us witnessing the wedding of Christ to His Church. And then the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”

Revelation 22:17, NIV

That’s you and me—in cooperation with and obedience to God’s Spirit—extending His proposal of spiritual marriage to those who’ve yet to accept it. If we truly love Jesus, our lives will be consumed with inviting others to love Him too.

So why didn’t I try to solve the theological confusion in my friend on the airplane? Well, I did. Let me explain.

No one has ever won someone to Christ by being right. We win people with love. So I just loved my new friend. Didn’t try to set things straight on the differences between Jesus and Buddha. Didn’t try to convince him that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. Didn’t try to tell him Christians are perfect. We’re so obviously not. On that he was right.

We can be such Pharisees.

It’s easy to become so consumed by rules about living out the faith that our hearts become hardened, cold. We grow so obsessed with being in the right that we lose sight of what’s most important to God. Just like the Pharisees of Jesus’s day.

One particular Sabbath a bunch of Pharisees overheard Jesus teaching. Over the preceding weeks, they’d been growing jealous of Him. How had this simple, unattractive man from Nazareth gained such attention from “their” followers?

They decided to test Him.

“Teacher.” The sarcasm oozed from their voices. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (Matthew 22:36)

Jesus knew they wanted Him to pick a commandment and stick it to the crowd. Surely there was one He could use to correct them. Put them in their places.

He didn’t do it.

Ignoring all of the Ten Commandments, bypassing the Levitical law, He said,

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.… Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37, 39).

Love God. Love others.

He told them to focus on love. It’s not that the other stuff doesn’t matter. Jesus knew that the book of Deuteronomy included all those rules for a reason. To help us see that we’re not enough in and of ourselves, and to keep us moving toward Him. But on their own, those laws are nothing. Our theology is nothing. Without love? Nothing. (See 1 Corinthians 13.)

The particular truths of our faith fall into place only when people extend and receive love. Jesus said, “On these two commands depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:40). In other words, the rules and great teachers have nothing to offer if they don’t come wrapped in love.

The Pharisees didn’t say much else that day. They were silenced because Jesus didn’t support their passionate fixation on the laws, nor did He negate them. Instead, He trumped them. His wisdom was too weighty for their foolish minds to grasp.

They actually thought they were inviting others to follow God with their rules.

They weren’t.

And neither can we.

People won’t know you love Jesus because you march in a prolife rally or picket against same-sex marriage. They won’t know you love Jesus because you refuse to smoke or drink with them. Living a nearly perfect life won’t count for much, and winning a theological conversation about the difference between Buddha and Jesus won’t help either. I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t do those things, but if you do them without love, you will never succeed in inviting someone into a relationship with Christ.

We can easily become like the Pharisees in sharing the gospel.

Unless we open the door of our heart when Jesus knocks.

If you have questions about how to do this, return to Love Feast Day 1, where I explain it more clearly. It is no mistake that we have come full circle. Hear me on this: When I was a twenty-something, I was fully saved and fully certain of it, but my life bore little fruit. I wanted desperately to be on the front lines of ministry, but every attempt failed. I was using my words to tell people about Jesus and nothing was happening!

Until.

I heard the knock of Jesus on my heart’s door. He wanted to fill me with His Spirit more deeply. I opened the door and invited Him to overtake all of me. And He did.

It was as if I’d experienced Him for the first time. I was changed, and the satisfaction in my life—the fullness—spoke more loudly than any words I could have used.

To be clear, I’m not saying that extending love to the lost never comes with a clear invitation—a proposal, if you will—to enter into a love relationship with Jesus. Sometimes you have to be direct, but such interactions must be saturated with love. After someone has tasted of your deep reservoir of agape, you can invite that person to the wedding feast.