LEARNING LOVE

My brief stay in the hospital for a rather minor surgical repair of failing body parts and my current recuperation at home has forced me to consider in silence much of where I have come since I last visited a hospital on an extended retreat some 11 years ago.

I have learned that I am not my body and as a primarily spiritual being who will never stop existing I have realized that inner transformation is paramount. This can only happen in discipleship to Jesus.
Matthew 7:17, the good tree cannot bear bad fruit.
Proverbs 4:23 Watch over your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life.

I am redeemed in order to be continually transformed in the way of Christ. This transformation happens in the inner person where the Great Command of Luke 10:27 is realized (to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength and all of your mind and your neighbor as yourself). But, I am not to act as if I love God and my neighbor; I am to have a character totally saturated with His kind of love. If not, even loving God and by extension my neighbor will be an impossible burden leading to frustration and failure.

Trying to love without actually learning His kind of love produces angry, bitter and contemptuous Christians who find discipleship a hopelessly burdensome task.

However, being permeated with His kind of love will produce a life adequate for every occasion, a well of water spring up to eternal life that Jesus spoke of (John 4:14) and rivers of living water to those around us in desperate need. This is God’s conspiracy and one we are called to take part in as co-conspirators. This is why He is more interested in the character we are building than the doctrine we are amassing.

Knowledge of and intimacy with the doctrinal tenants of the church will not produce Christlike character. You can look around and see this for yourself. It is not that it is unimportant; it just will not create inner transformation.

The future He has planned for us will be based on the character being forged right now in the crucible of life by His grace. This happens in discipleship to Christ as we learn a life that will never become obsolete.