How to be a Better Lover Series- Message # 3
As I begin today, I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to the writing of
Dr. Dan Allender on this subject. In
his book, Bold Love,
he presents the outline of the material that I want to bring to you this morning.
_________________________________________
Warrior Love, The Way of Change in a Loveless World
Matthew 5:43-45
“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 of
your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the
righteous and the unrighteous.
That command of the Lord is probably one of the most misunderstood and misapplied texts in the Gospels! Many Believers read His command to love their enemies as a directive to be really nice, with never a hard word, bad feeling, or opportunity for conflict found in them!
We wonder, does our calling to love really mean that we have to become wimps, doormats for the world, people who tolerate any situation and all kinds of people with a sickly sweet grin on our faces?
Truthfully, we get angry with people who do bad things, who hurt us or our family, who deal with us in ways that lack integrity! We all know the guilty feeling that comes over us when we finally admit to ourselves that no matter what we do simply don’t like some people or the things they do. We wonder - “How can I be a Christian and feel this way?” It is difficult to know how to respond towards sinners and sin.
Hear this, Believer: If we are full of Christ’s righteousness, injustice, violence, and evil foulness will repulse us and it should!
Anger is not always a bad emotion. Some wonderfully righteous things have been accomplished by people whose passion was stirred and who decided - “This must change!”
The questions that confuse us are about the negativity of anger and about producing change through forceful action while remaining loving.
Several years ago a Christian woman called me wracked with guilt about her reaction towards another person. Her family has been torn apart by an arrogant, evil young man who has seduced her daughter and led the teenager into a life of sexual promiscuity, drug addiction, and degradation. This woman had to face the fact that she was deeply angry at the man, and that she was not ready to forgive. Sadly, she thought in these feelings she was failing as a Christian.
Would Christian love require the woman to invite this evil snake into her home, to turn her eyes from his wicked and destructive ways?
Is that what genuine love demands?
It is absolutely true that when we become followers of Christ, we are called to a depth of love that we are incapable of expressing before our conversion. Love is the mark of the Believer. Yet, our actions may not always be perceived as loving. Indeed, as we learn the way of love, we may be awkward, sometimes ungraceful. As people who are committed to truth, our attempts at love will offend others and we will be accused of being judgmental and difficult.
But, to just commit ourselves to being sickly sweet, always nice, and avoiding conflict at all costs is not love. That is simply cowardice!
Which is an expression of Christ-like love?
∙ Ignoring the fact that your closest friends are making choices that lead them to death and pain or
confronting them with the fact that they are making sinful choices and need to change their ways while offering to go the distance with them?
∙ Overlooking your husband’s increasing dependence on alcohol or to challenging him to stop drinking and deal with the realities of life while giving him your love as he seeks sobriety?
∙ Dealing with your wife’s immaturity by pushing her away emotionally so that hard words are never spoken or by challenging her to work with a friend and/or counselor so she can grow and learn to give and take with others?
∙ Allowing your children to do whatever they wish to do without comment or to engage them so that they will be forced to consider the consequences of their choices?
The baseline fact is that genuine love is both
∙ tough yet tender,
∙ tolerant yet committed to absolute truth,
∙ compassionate yet confrontational!
∙
As Believers we are sent into the world to wage a spiritual war of love.
We are warriors for love!Seems like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it?
Let’s take a look at the qualities of a Christian warrior who is doing daily combat to extend the borders of Christ’s Kingdom of love. What kind of picture of love does the Bible paint for us?
# 1 - The warrior of love must have Courage to defend that which he loves!
An effective soldier stares death in face and goes out on patrol anyway. He may shake and tremble with fear, yet he overcomes his fear because he is convinced of the cause for which he fights.
I have read that one of the reasons for the Americans failure to prevail in the war in Vietnam was that the nation lacked the will to win. Many Americans were not convinced that the cause was worth the price we were paying in blood and treasure! This uncertainty robbed us of the courage to wage war in a way that would produce a victory.
Contrast the Vietnam experience with World War II.
When fascism threatened the world with domination. men and women left family for years, the nation embraced rationing and limits on freedoms, invested $Billions because Americans believed that there was a genuine threat to freedom and our way of life.
Left unchecked, we believed - rightly so history shows - that Hitler would dominate and destroy all that was good, moral, and right. No one wanted to die or suffer, but the cause demanded such sacrifice and fueled courage.
IF you and I want to wage the war of love effectively we must become convinced of heaven’s reality; firmly attaching hope to our eternal home.
Is heaven your TRUE HOME?
When you are afraid can you draw courage for the fight knowing that you are fighting for the values of your eternal home?
In the Bible we read Paul’s words.... Philippians 1:21-24
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.
I am convinced that many of us are not so much longing for the kingdom of heaven as we are for heaven on earth. If we do not love God, nor long for His Presence, nearly as much as we love our comfort and wish that He would make life easier, we will lack the passion to be warriors of love.
Our Christianity is often less about finding and knowing the Lord God and more about a religion that we can use to bring about order and predictability in a sinful and difficult world. Thus we lack courage to step over our personal comfort to commit to a life of radical love.
A warrior of love must have courage, a courage that comes from his realization that this world is not his home, that heaven is his destination. He draws courage from knowing that God loves him and is drawing him to his home. He becomes fearless in the face of persecution, difficulty, and rejection for his greatest love is in defeating evil and bringing others into a right relationship with Christ. He can fearlessly love the world that hates him.
In Hebrews we read that great chapter of that gives us a roster of the faithful. The entire chapter reminds us, with one example after another of the importance of fixing our eyes on eternity, on drawing strength for life now, by holding tightly to the promises of God.
All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. Hebrews 11:13
# 2 - A warrior must have a high sense of calling.
A calling is external. I am not speaking at this moment about your preferences, your natural affinities, or even the opportunities that have been presented to you. What has God commissioned YOU to accomplish in this world?
I am a Pastor, not because my father is a minister, not because the lifestyle of the ministry appealed to me, not because I like hanging out in church most of the time. I serve Christ in full-time Pastoral ministry because in my 16th year of life, God met me and issued a CALL to me. He demanded my surrender of dreams and autonomy, an unreserved commitment to Him. If ministry were a career choice, I’m quite certain I would have found another way to produce more income.
It is my call and because I clearly know that I am a man sent from God, I go on — in victory, in defeat, in fatigue, in rest, when attacked and when affirmed.
The Christian warrior, to be effective, must embrace as his calling the service of Christ.
It is our mission to live out the goodness of the Lord in a way that disrupts and disturbs the world around us.
In Luke, chapter 10, we are told about Jesus commission of the disciples. Take a look:
Luke 10: 1-4, 9 Pew Bible 1611
His calling to everyone of us will be similar!
We are to go and DISTURB THE PEACE! If you life does not cause non-Believers to grow uncomfortable in their sin, you are not living in your calling. The true Gospel offends and outrages the world. It demands justice, loves the weak, rejects the self-life, and condemns evil.
Jesus said, (Luke 6) Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets. . . .
Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.
Because of our high calling we willingly become slaves of Christ, surrendering our rights and privileges. We willingly set aside as of little value the things that others highly value, for we are men and women on a mission of love to transform human hearts. We do not give up on humanity, but because we know the transforming power of the Spirit of God, hope for sinners to become saints.
The calling allows the warrior to do for the world what no one else would do. His love for God outweighs all costs involved with service.
The Word challenges us to “to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” (Ephesians 4.1-2) Are you loving in a way that is worthy of your high calling as a child of the God who is love?
# 3 - The warrior must have conviction that creates passion.
Passion frightens us badly, because passion is so explosive, so unpredictable, so subject to misuse.
A mob whose passions have been inflamed will riot and burn down a city!
A teenager whose passion is set ablaze will wreck her life pursuing her lover.
A ignorant man who passion exceeds his wisdom may be a bigot, an abuse of others, even a tyrant!
Passionate conviction has a positive side, too.
Passion drove Martin Luther to risk the wrath of the Roman church, and even death, when he challenged the whole powerful extablishment church and kicked off the renewal of Christianity in the Reformation.
Passion for Christ drove missionaries by the thousands to leave America in the late 19th century to go to places where they would spend the rest of their lives sharing Christ. The missions movement quietly changed history!
From conviction the warrior of love draws his passion.
This is where careful thought is required. We cannot have conviction that expresses love unless we also hate! Love is but one hand clapping, an absurdity.
I once saw a fascinating sign in front of an ice cream store that proclaimed, “Sin now, Repent later.” It was a cute advertising phrase, but it cuts too close to our contemporary sensibilities for me. We are quite willing to sin, because we have no hatred of it. We will not muster the depth of passion required to hate what God hates.
Listen to the Word...
Proverbs 3:32 The LORD detests a perverse man but takes the upright into his confidence.
Proverbs 6:16-19 There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him:
17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19 a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.
Proverbs 8:13 To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance,
evil behavior and perverse speech.
As we grow close to the Father we learn to hate what He hates.... even in ourselves!
We treat sin that deadens our souls with more kindness than cancer that deadens our bodies! We excuse and coddle our sin. We deny it, hide it, even secretly love it. All the while, we may be hypocritically pointing out the same sin in others. OR more likely, remaining silent because we know our sin and fear being exposed.
Do we do the same with cancer?
No! If we discover cancer in our body, we give ourselves into the hands of the doctors. We allow them to cut us, to feed us poisons, to restrict our lives. We willingly endure great and terrible suffering in the hope that we may be cured. We hate cancer and make no excuse for it!
Sin is the cancer of the soul. God hates it because He knows that sin destroys life. We must come to hate it with equal passion, first in ourselves, then in others.
In Matthew 7:5 Jesus says, . . . take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
In our time we have re-interpreted his thought into an entirely different idea. “Everybody has something in his eye so learn to live with it. I’m OK, you’re OK.” Our misguided tolerance actually perpetuates suffering because it robs us of a prophetic witness to the truth that lovingly engages the sin and the sinner wrestling with them for repentance and change! We need conviction that gives us a passion to love others to wholeness, to care deeply enough to engage them EVEN if it means rejection.
# 4 - The warrior must have cunning.
Jesus sent his first disciples out to love their world with a commission. Part of what he said was:
Matthew 10:16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” Isn’t that a strange statement? He uses metaphors common in the Word. The snake commonly represents Satan. The dove represents the God of peace and blessing. In our war of love, Jesus said we need to be as clever as the Devil and yet as openly pure as the gentle Holy Spirit!
Many Christians fail in their missions of love because they are so predictable.
For ex. --
A woman who is seeking to lead her husband to Christ needs to be clever. If she always asks him to church in the same way, if she always denounces his friends with the same words.... after a while she becomes a joke. He can anticipate her actions and reduce her to frustrated and angry tears by mocking her predictable response. However, IF she will submit herself to the infinitely wise Holy Spirit, He will show her ways to compel her husband to consider his sinful ways.
One of the clever ways that we can confound those who resist our love is to continue to do them good.
That is a command of Jesus. In Luke 6, we read
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that.”
In our war of love, we cannot become predictable or simple-minded. Instead, we must be full of the wise ways of the Spirit, constantly studying those who are in need of love, seeking ways to overcome their defenses.
____________________
Here’s the challenge.
Are you ready to engage in a war of love to change your world for Christ?
The baseline requirement to be a warrior of love is to know the Lord of love, to accept His merciful love in your own life. Jesus Christ is the perfect example for all those who would be warriors. He courageously left Heaven to become a man, embracing the full experience of humanity’s suffering including death! He knew his calling was not to comfort, pleasure, or ease. He was called and commissioned to save the sinful regardless of cost. He was full of conviction and passionately hated evil and the pain it caused in people’s lives. And he was clever and cunning. The cross was an apparent failure that became the signature mark of God’s love for the world.
So, will you love your world with that kind of love? It isn’t a nice, pretty, romantic love. It is a gritty love that demands our lives as soldiers. We are warriors of love.
1. Set your sights on your eternal home and be inspired to courageous love.
2. Take up your calling as a child of God, under orders, and be committed to love.
3. Know the heart of your God so that you are full of passionate conviction that compels you to
this ongoing battle to love others to life.
4. Be full of the Spirit so that your expression of love is not simple and predictable, but clever and
cunning.
This battle is ongoing and will not be over until the Lord of Love comes to declare the victory of His kingdom. Until then, warrior - Love courageously and change your world!
Amen
Jerry D. Scott 2008