Have you seen them?

How do we show people the love of God when they don’t even know what love is? 

What a revelation this was last Sunday morning. There are people whose lives have never been filled with love. They have never experienced what it was like to have someone value them and love them for simply who they are. While this idea was brought to me from a young woman who had just returned from Haiti, based on her experiences with orphaned girls, I can sense that there are people here, in our community who may have never experienced real love.

Maybe these people are people are in your family, your circle of influence, your workplace, your gym, or your neighborhood. Have you looked around? Do you see them? You can’t see them if you are not looking. 

Kind of reminds me of the Matthew West song, My Own Little World. Take a minute and listen to it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvSwcMp9vU4

What if we are missing out? What if the there is a greater purpose?

So we look for them, and then we find them. We find these people who may not know love.

What then? How do we show them what love is? 

We teach them.

We teach them though example, we teach them with the evidence of our lives. We teach them through how we respond to them and how we respond to others. We let the Holy Spirit do His job and soften their hearts and speak to them about their own lives and their own values and their own purpose. We act. 

We can only do that though if we are confident in God’s love ourselves. Are you? 

How are you with God? Do you have doubts?

I do. I am just being real here. After all that I have experienced, after all that I have lived through and survived because of God’s providence. I still have my days where I wonder.  But even though I do have my moments of doubt, in my heart, deep down in my heart, I know that no matter where I am, He is faithful until the end. Even in my uncertainty. He is still faithful and I am grateful for this. It helps me to remember that I can still show love because I am filled with His love. It is possible for me to push right on through my doubt and fear and extend a hand or an ear to someone in need.  

As we have been learning over the past few weeks, the presence of the Holy Spirit is our proof that we are loved and that our fate is sealed and no one can steal that love away from us. His love for us is faithful and will endure forever. It is unconditional, it is not reserved, and it is not judgmental. 
  

When I doubt I can always get through it by showing love to someone. When I make it about them and not me I find the Holy Spirit at work in both them and me. This helps me find my confidence. It reminds me that there is a greater purpose and it is always easy to find. Our purpose is to love and be loved. 

James 1:6-8  NIV

6But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

 

It is an empty feeling to be double-minded and unstable, to be tossed by the wind, blown here and blown there. It doesn’t have to be like that. It all comes back to our relationship with God. Are we filled with His presence? We can only be filled with His presence if we practice His presence, if we experience His presence daily.

I get so busy with my life. I am a single father who works full time and is also taking 9 credit hours in college. I volunteer for a local organization by being a board member and I also make myself available to this church by writing this blog. I love what I do but it keeps me busy. So busy sometimes that I don’t spend time with God as I should. I get it. I know I am not alone with this but friends, we cannot afford to live to long without Jesus as the center. 

He is our life. Jesus says that “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” Think about that. Jesus is the life. John opens up his Gospel by saying that everything that was made was made through him (Jesus). Without him nothing was made that has been made. So Jesus is life. Every pulse of your heart, every contraction of your diaphragm, every sunrise or sunset, is Jesus. He is life and when we accept this truth, his spirit then moves into our soul and begins to make us one with him. 

We are like a love battery then, see ya later energizer bunny, we need Jesus to live. We need Jesus to LOVE. Each day we need to be charged. Remember the Lord’s Prayer? Give us today, our daily bread. Today.

So I find this truth at work in myself. When I don’t MAKE time to pray, to be in His word I am weak. I am doubtful. When I don’t take time PRACTICING being in his presence I can’t reproduce it when I really need it! When I don’t practice I can’t be good at it. This is a fundamental truth. It applies to everything we do doesn’t it?

The truth is that we need to be ready at a moment’s notice because life happens and it doesn’t give us any warning signs. The phone will ring and trouble will call. We need to be ready. We need to pray and read God’s word daily. We need to be charged and ready to share that charge.  

We need each other church. We do. This Sunday look around at the people who go to church with you. It starts here. It starts within these walls. We must engage each other and gain experience at loving one another.  We need practice. Going to church is not where we stop in our faith. Cool, you are Christian, you have accepted Jesus, that’s great but coming to church is not the final stop. It is not the goal. You’re not done friend. Going to church is not the end where we settle in but it is only the beginning where we dig in. We meet every Sunday and the reason we meet is not so we can hear Jared tell us about bible stories. It is not the one day where we shake someone’s hand and say hi.

The purpose of church is to do three things:

1. Attract people. Draw them into the faith through the truth of the Gospel.
2. Train people. Train them how to change their life and begin living in the truth of the Gospel.
3. Send them out. Take these people who have been trained and get them back into the world proclaiming the Gospel.

You’re in training. This is a boot camp. We are at war and we want you to be prepared for battle.

We can’t make you. We can only offer. It is up to you. We want to train you, to love you, to charge you, and to make you a soldier in God’s army but there is no draft. You have to enlist. You have to train. You have to practice.