If you worship with our Community Alliance family, you'll recognize this picture as the graphic for my current message series. I chose the picture to communicate that part of God's plan for us is to form our hearts to receive and give love. It is no doubt an understatement to say that Jesus' preferred end result of his teaching is love. This could not be more clear.His goal, however, is not just to get us to do loving acts, but to actually transform us into loving people. Loving people are people who do loving acts genuinely for the good of others. They are people who do these loving acts, even when they know they will most likely not receive loving acts in return. This is the love of God and it's the kind of love God seeks to develop in us when he calls us to put our trust, our confidence, in him. Authentic trust in God will express itself in genuine acts of love. (see Galatians 5:6)
Unfortunately, we get into trouble when we try to love without letting God do the rest of his work in us. There is a certain amount of love I can fake, such as saying kind words or doing a good deed. Sometimes I do these acts for the good of another person, but sometimes, if I am honest enough to admit it, I do kind acts because of the benefit I will receive. It's possible to do acts that look loving and sacrificial, but are entirely self-serving. When we try to do loving things and at the same time resist the rest of God's work in us, we end up with an incomplete love and it will eventually catch up to us.
In the Harrisburg area recently, a pastor resigned after being charged with solicitation of prostitution. I used to get mad when I read stories like this one and I guess I still do a little bit. But my biggest emotion now when I read stories like this is sadness. A newspaper article indicated that this pastor had a counseling ministry that maintained the goal of helping people find wholeness. That means that somewhere along the line in this pastor's life, a disconnect developed. He tried to help others find wholeness while a major fracture was going untreated in his life. He attempted to give love without letting God do the rest of his work in him.
I think the saddest part of this story for me was the last sentence of the newspaper article. The reporter attempted to contact neighbors about the man, but neighbors said they only knew him to wave at him. How can that be? Maybe that should have been a warning flare. If a man who makes it his job to serve God and love others can be completely unknown by those who live closest to him, there is some kind of problem underneath the surface. Authentic faith and love will always grow together and will permeate every area of our lives. Our neighbors will know us by our love. We won't be perfect, but our heart will be evident.
