Saturday, October 27, 2012

Loving your neigbor as yourself

From John Piper Love your Neighbor as yourself: Part 2: speaking about loving your neighbor as yourself, preaching on matthews account of Jesus answer to the scribe who asks him "what is the greatest commandment". 
He commands, "As you love yourself, so love your neighbor." Which means: As you long for food when you are hungry, so long to feed your neighbor when he is hungry. As you long for nice clothes for yourself, so long for nice clothes for your neighbor. As you work for a comfortable place to live, so desire a comfortable place to live for your neighbor. As you seek to be safe and secure from calamity and violence, so seek comfort and security for your neighbor. As you seek friends for yourself, so be a friend to your neighbor. As you want your life to count and be significant, so desire that same significance for your neighbor. As you work to make good grades yourself, so work to help your neighbor make good grades. As you like to be welcomed into strange company, so welcome your neighbor into strange company. As you would that men would do to you, do so to them.

In other words make your self-seekingthe measure of your self-giving. When Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself," the word "as" is very radical: "Love your neighborasyourself." That's a BIG word: "As!" It means: If you are energeticin pursing your own happiness, be energetic in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor. If you arecreative in pursuing your own happiness, be creative in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor. If you arepersevering in pursuing your own happiness, be persevering in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor. In other words, Jesus is not just saying: seek for your neighbor the same thingsyou seek for yourself, but also seek them in the same way—the same zeal and energy and creativity and perseverance. The same life and death commitment when you are in danger. Make your own self-seeking the measure of your self-giving. Measure your pursuit of the happiness of others, and what it should be, by the pursuit of your own. How do you pursue your own well-being? Pursue your neighbor's well-being that way too.
Now this is very threatening and almost overwhelming. Because we feel immediately that if we take Jesus seriously, we will not just have to love others "as we love ourselves," but we will have to love them "instead of loving ourselves." That's what it seems like. We fear that if we follow Jesus in this, and really devote ourselves to pursuing the happiness of others, then our own desire for happiness will always be preempted. The neighbor's claim on my time and energy and creativity will always take priority. So the command to love my neighbor as I love myself really feels like a threat to my own self-love. How is this even possible? If there is born in us a natural desire for our own happiness, and if this is not in itself evil, but good, how can we give it up and begin only to seek the happiness of others at the expense of our own?
"Love God with all your heart" means: Find in God a satisfaction so profound that it fills up all your heart. "Love God with all your soul" means: Find in God a meaning so rich and so deep that it fills up all the aching corners of your soul. "Love God with all your mind" means: Find in God the riches of knowledge and insight and wisdom that guide and satisfy all that the human mind was meant to be.
In other words take all your self-love—all your longing for joy and hope and love and security and fulfillment and significance—take all that, and focus it on God, until he satisfies your heart and soul and mind. What you will find is that this is not a canceling out of self-love. This is a fulfillment and transformation of self-love. Self-love is the desire for life and satisfaction rather than frustration and death. God says, Come to me, and I will give you fullness of joy. I will satisfy your heart and soul and mind with my glory. This is the first and great commandment.
And with that great discovery—that God is the never-ending fountain of our joy—the way we love others is forever changed. Now when Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself," we don't respond by saying, "Oh, this is threatening. This means my love for myself is made impossible by all the claims of my neighbor. I could never do this." Instead we say, "Oh, yes, I love myself. I have longings for joy and satisfaction and fulfillment and significance and security. But God has called me—indeed he has commanded me—to come to him first for all these things. He commands that my love for him be the form of my love for me. That all my longings for me I find in him. That is what my self-love is now. It is my love for God. They have become one. My quest for happiness is now nothing other than a quest for God. And he has been found in Jesus Christ."
So what, then, is Jesus commanding in the second commandment—that we love our neighbor as ourselves? He is commanding that our self- love, which has now discovered its fulfillment in God-love, be the measure and the content of our neighbor-love. Or, to put it another way, he is commanding that our inborn self-seeking, which has now been transposed into God-seeking, overflow and extend itself to our neighbor.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Blissfully unaware

This week, I was given a reminder how at any moment, your activities could be chronicled, and held up for the world to see. I was thumbing through a list of reflections put up by Justin Ruddy, clicked on a picture blog done by Scotland Huber, the photographer at TGCNE 2012, and all of a sudden, there I was. Keller, Piper, Um, Carson. The band, which was awesome...and me. Worshiping. Minding my own business, blissfully unaware that I was about to have my picture taken and put up for the world to see.

I got me thinking, once again, that we never know when our lives will be put on display. We never know when our lives will suddenly be thrown under a microscope. People are always watching. What will they see? Will they see a life devoted to Christ? Will they see a life celebrating the finished work of Christ? Will they see someone whose life is calibrated by the cross, built on a foundation of rock, and lived for the glory of the one who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light? Will they see someone who is, to use a phrase from D.A. Carson, “gossiping the Gospel”? Will they see someone in love with the Gospel? Proclaiming it, celebrating it, telling it, and then living faithfully before God? Will they see someone who remembers at all time, that they are living as emissaries of a king, and people who are part of a cosmic battle between the kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of God.

Or will they see something else? Someone who says with his mouth, I love Christ, but then, shows no compassion? Someone who flies off the handle instead of showing patience and mercy and self control? Someone who says, love your wife as Christ loved the church, and then speaks disdainfully to his wife? Someone who says, raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, but then prioritizes work and “ministry” over his children? Someone who says, I understand that Christian life involves cross bearing, but then grumbles about every slight? What will people see?

The world is watching. New England is watching. It’s watching me. And it’s watching you. What will they see on Facebook, on twitter? What will they see at work? What will they see at your kids Little League and Pop Warner games? And what will your kids see at home? Will they see a life lived in relationship to God, built on Christ, being remade by Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). This weekend, I was captured worshiping. But this week, people will see me at my best, and at my worst. What will they see? My prayer is that at my best and worst, my life will reflect the one into whose image I am being transformed. My prayer is that the same can be said of Christians throughout  New England.

 Photos by Scotland Huber

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

God at work

The mens small group bible study that i'm leading is studying the names of God this fall. Tonight, one of the names we are looking at is El-Elyon, God most high. Elyone means highest, the exalted one, emphasiing that God is the highest in every realm of life. As I was studying, I came across this poem, "Molding a Man" which captured my attention, because it speaks of how God is sovereignly remaking us for his purposes.


When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man, And skill a man,
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart.
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!
 
How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!
 
How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And with every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out—
God knows what He’s about!
Source unknown

Monday, October 1, 2012

Everything is Broken: Genius from Dylan

A friend sent me these lyrics from an old Dylan song with this question and comment, "Is this for a Calvinist post-lapserian (a fancy way of saying post fall) view of the world? His lyrics are just so on the money". I couln't help but agree, his lyrics are spot on. They reflect a sad reality, the world is utterly broken because of the fall. Nothing is untouched. Romans even says, creation groans. 

Ponder these words from an old and interesting sage.

Broken lines broken strings
Broken threads broken springs
Broken idols broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken.

Broken bottles broken plates
Broken switches broken gates
Broken dishes broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken.

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
Broken cutters broken saws
Broken buckles broken laws
Broken bodies broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath feel like you're chokin'
Everything is broken.

Everytime you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face
Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties broken vows
Broken pipes broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken