Beyond All Measure

"'Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends'" (John 15:13). In a culture full of love offered at a lower price, such sacrificial love isn't often asked for - and rarely given. Yet, no greater love exists.

In the Old Testament, God asks, speaking of Israel, "'What more was there to do for My vineyard, that I have not done in it?'" (Isaiah 5:4).  God gave Israel all she could need: fertile land, peace from neighbors (when Israel was faithful and obedient), priests and prophets, and a way to know the God of everything.  "'I have loved you with an everlasting love,'" God told His people. "'Yet you have not listened to Me...'" (Jeremiah 31:3; Jeremiah 25:7).

When Jesus came, He spent His life glorifying God by loving those He met. He taught them, healed them, served them - giving His time, energy, wisdom, patience... "Now...when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end" (John 13:1). He spent His life loving and when the time came, He showed the extent of His love by willingly giving His life.

Love songs abound as well as differing opinions on what love is. In 1 John, we find God's definition of love: "By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us... " (1 John 3:16). The entire Bible is written from a loving God to people who never deserve that love yet have always received it. "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!" (1 John 3:1). When we wake up every day, we should count the many blessings we have received from our loving God. The One who created the entire universe has lovingly given us opportunity to pursue a close relationship with Him. God has given us salvation, His Word, family, an education... On top of all that, He proves His love a thousand other ways a day that we often take for granted. The most often-quoted verse in the Bible speaks of God's great love for us, stating that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son" (John 3:16, emphasis added). As Stuart Townend wrote,

"How deep the Father's love for us,

How vast beyond all measure,

That He should give His only Son

To make a wretch His treasure."

A Friend for Megan

Hallie walked down the street to her house after taking a stroll around her neighborhood.

"Hi, Hallie!" she heard as she approached her house.

Hallie turned. "Hi, Megan," she said with a little disappointment. Megan was a little younger than Hallie and followed her around whenever possible. Hallie thought Megan was nice, but having her around constantly quickly became annoying.

"Can you play?" Megan asked excitedly.

Mentally, Hallie searched for a good excuse. Relieved, she thought of one. "I really need to go help my mom get lunch ready," she explained.

"Oh," said Megan, sadly.

"Maybe I can play later," Hallie offered, now that she felt a little sorry for Megan.

~~~

After lunch that day, Mrs. Stevens went into Hallie's room. "Hallie," she began. "Do you remember when we talked about Megan Howell's parents' mission trip?"

"Yeah," said Hallie as she remembered. "They're going to Russia for three weeks, right?"

"That's right," Mrs. Stevens answered. "Mr. and Mrs. Howell have given a lot of money and spent a lot of time and effort helping a church there get started. They want to spend a couple of weeks in Russia to meet the people and see how things are going."

"Sounds great," Hallie said.

"Well, the Howells need a place for Megan to stay while they're in Russia, and your dad and I talked it over and told them she could stay here."

"What?!" Hallie responded quickly. "For three weeks?! Three weeks with Megan here? Mom, she's going to follow me around everywhere and look through everything in my room and talk constantly..."

"I know, honey, I know, but your dad and I talked about it and this is a way we can bless the Howells. As Christians, they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus told His disciples, '"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another'" (John 13:35). Just like the believers in the early Church helped each other (see Acts 4:32), this is our opportunity to do the same for the Howells. I know it won't be easy, honey, but this is our opportunity to glorify God by loving His children."

"Okay, Mom," Hallie sighed, still disappointed. "I guess I'll see what I have that Megan would enjoy doing."

"Great idea," Mrs. Stevens smiled.

~~~

Hallie cleaned her room as she thought about what she and Megan could do for three weeks. We could play with my old dolls and watch that movie I LOVED when I was her age, she thought. After that, the ideas just kept coming. We could play that board game, uh, what was it? Oh! "Honey House!" Maybe she would like that bowling game that's been in our storage room for forever... Hallie remembered the verse her mom had talked about: "'By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another'" (John 13:35). Lord, please help me to be able to show Your love to Megan while she is here, she prayed.

~~~

One week later, Mrs. Stevens went upstairs to Hallie's room where Hallie and Megan were giggling uncontrollably. "What's so funny?" she asked.

"Megan thinks my baby pictures are hilarious," Hallie explained. "And come to mention it, I did look kinda funny," she smiled. Megan burst out laughing again.

"Well, I'm glad you girls are having fun!" Mrs. Stevens smiled. "Megan, I just got a call from your mom and she said that everything is going great. Only two more weeks and they'll be home!"

Hallie smiled at Megan and then looked at her mom. "It'll fly by," she said.

None Greater

"We love because He first loved us," the apostle John penned (1 John 4:19).  "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" Paul explained to the Roman church (Rom. 5:8).  We have countless examples of God's love toward us, but how do we show our love to Him?  A king, a preacher, and a zealot were all loved by God, and their lives and actions testify to their love for God in return.

"'The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart,'" the prophet Samuel told King Saul (1 Samuel 13:14).  Paul affirmed this title for David when he told the Christians in Antioch that God had said, "'"I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after My heart, who will do all My will"'" (Acts 13:22). Always a zealous follower of God, David is first mentioned in the Scriptures when he was anointed by Samuel the prophet while Saul was still king.  Instead of violently grabbing the kingdom with his own two hands, David patiently waited for God's timing - even when Saul unlawfully sought David's life.  Armed with a sling, some stones, and a strong faith in the God of his fathers, the teenaged David struck down the giant Goliath, who had held the entire Israelite army in fear by his sheer presence.  David claimed the victory for God.  Later in David's life, David wanted to build a Temple for God, as he told Nathan the prophet: "'See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent'" (2 Samuel 7:2).  However, God told David that it was not for him to build the Temple of God, '"for you are a man of war and have shed blood'" (1 Chron. 28:3).  While obedient to God's command to wait and let David's son Solomon build the Temple, David still drew up the plans for the Temple - wanting to have some part in the building of the house of his God.  David wrote most of the Book of Psalms in the Bible, many of them listing the great things God had done for him and David's love for God in return: "I love you, O LORD, my strength" (Psalm 18:1).  David put God first in what he did and sought the things of God before the things of man.

The apostle John called himself, "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 20:2).  That doesn't mean that John was the only disciple that Jesus loved, but it does mean that John and Jesus had a close bond.  When Jesus died, He put His mother into the care of John (John 19:26-27).  Drawing from his own time with Jesus, John wrote extensively on love.  In the book of 1 John alone (a mere five chapters!), the word "love" appears thirty-six times.  1 John includes a description of love: "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).  "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome...And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us" (1 John 5:3, 3:23).

Peter was the most headstrong and zealous of all Jesus' disciples, and often swung violently from one extreme to another.  When Jesus washed the disciples' feet, Peter objected, '"You shall never wash my feet.'" Jesus replied, '"If I do not wash you, you have no share with Me.'"  Peter emphatically declared, '"Lord, [wash] not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!'" (John 13:6-11).  He refused to believe that Jesus would one day be killed (Matt. 16:22-23).  When the mob came to take Jesus to the high priests, Peter heedlessly cut off the high priest's servant's ear (John 18:10; Luke 22:49-51). However, once the Spirit descended on him and he understood Jesus' purpose in coming to earth, Peter changed from his overly dramatic and zealous earlier days.  After Jesus' resurrection, He asked, '"Simon...do you love Me?"'  "'Yes, Lord, You know that I love You,"' Peter replied.  "'Feed My lambs,"' Jesus commanded Peter (see John 21:15-17).  If we love God, we will love and care for His children.  Six times in 1 and 2 Peter, the wise apostle entreated those receiving his letters to "love one another earnestly from a pure heart" (1 Peter 1:22) and "[l]ove the brotherhood" (1 Peter 2:17).  The man who once cut off a man's ear now entreated his friends to love each other.

Peter and John were probably present when a scribe wisely agreed with Jesus, '"And to love [God] with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices'" (Mark 12:33).  As King David showed us, to love God is to put Him before everything else.  We are not truly loving God when we are only performing the required minimum.  God wants us to love Him with all our heart, understanding, and strength - He wants to be first in our lives.  As the apostle John wrote, to love Him is to obey Him.  And as the zealot-turned-pastor Peter counseled, to love God is to love those He loves.  As the disciple whom Jesus loved said, "We love because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19).  Let us love the LORD our God with all our heart, our mind, and our heart, and love our neighbors like we love ourselves, for Jesus taught, '"There is no other commandment greater than these'" (see Mark 12:30-31).

Showing the World

Deep in the heart of South American jungle in the small, coastal country of Ecuador, lived one of the most savage tribes ever known - the Waorani.  As savage defenders against outsiders, the Waorani had never been reached by anyone outside their tribe. But that was about to change.

Also in Ecuador, but not so deep in the jungle, five men and their wives labored to bring the Gospel to those who had not yet heard. They all had different backgrounds and circumstances; one had been married for nearly eight years and had three children, another married only eighteen months with no children. One was a World War II paratrooper, another a deep thinker, and another a inventive pilot. But they were alike in their passion for Christ and their burden for those who did not know the truth. Like the Waorani.

Leading up to their first meeting with the brutal, unreached tribe, the five missionaries dropped gifts to the Waoranis, including meticulously-planned items and photos designed to prove their friendship to the natives. After much prayer, planning, and more prayer, they flew off to visit the Waorani tribe for the first time on January 3, 1956. Meanwhile, the wives waited anxiously for the periodic radio contact and reassurance that everything was going well. On January 8, one of the missionaries radioed his wife and assured her that things were going fine. He saw that Waoranis were approaching, so he promised his wife that he'd call again at 4:35. His wife waited. All was quiet.

It was love from God that motivated the five men to pursue what appeared to be a suicidal mission in order to further the good news of the Gospel. It was that same true, Biblical love that kept those five from using their weapons when the natives returned - with spears. It was that same love from God that empowered one of the five martyrs' wives and another's sister to return to the same natives and continue the mission of furthering the Gospel - ministering to the same ones who murdered their loved ones!

Elisabeth Elliot wrote of one of the missionaries, "[he had] a love for God and a sympathetic heart" (Through Gates of Splendor, p. 65). Before his death, another of the slain missionaries wrote in his diary, "I am longing now to reach the Aucas [Waorani], if God gives me the honor of proclaiming the Name among them. I would gladly give my life for that tribe, if only to see an assembly of [them] gathering around a table to honor the Son" (Through Gates of Splendor, p. 26). All five showed a love for God that motivated a love for the lost - a love strong enough to resist fighting back when those they loved turned on them. This love for God, passion for His glory, and love for those who had never known the Gospel motivated Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, and Roger Youderian to give their lives. They could agree with another missionary, John Stott, who challenged, "In view of the constraining memories of the cross of Christ and the love wherewith He hath loved us, let us rise and resolve, at whatever cost of self-denial, that live or die, we shall live or die for the evangelization of the world in our day.” They did it gladly. God's love is great! As five missionaries to Ecuador have shown the world, our love should be, too.

Naught Be All Else To Me

The other day my family and I were shopping in a major retail outlet. Imagine my surprise when, as I was browsing for deals, I found a miniature, desktop Buddha (for only one dollar). As an American, I have never seen what many in other countries see routinely: a Buddha statue intended to be worshiped. It struck me that right in front of me in the aisle of that major American shopping center was an object that in other countries is a symbol of idolatrous devotion and solemn religious rituals.

The first two of the Ten Commandments both dealt with idolatry: "'You shall have no other gods before Me'" and "'You shall not make for yourself an idol'" (Exodus 20:3-4). Repeatedly, Israel abandoned God's commands and pursued the gods - the idols - of the other nations. In fact, King Amaziah of Judah went so far as to worship the gods of the peoples he conquered. As a prophet of the Lord insightfully asked Amaziah, "'Why have you sought the gods of a people who did not deliver their own people from your hand?'" (2 Chronicles 25:14-16). Testifying to God's sovereignty over all false gods, the Bible records an account of when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant during battle with Israel. Triumphantly, the Philistines took the Ark and put it in front of their god, Dagon, in their temple. They awoke the next morning and "there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the LORD!" So they set him back up. But the next day, "there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the LORD! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained" (1 Samuel 5:1-4). Idolatry was not just an Old Testament problem. Paul debated Greeks whose city was full of idols. He also reminded the Corinthians, "'What agreement has the temple of God with idols?"' (2 Corinthians 6:16). The apostle John ended his first epistle with the plea, "Dear children, keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21).
Neither did idolatry end after the New Testament. I realize that those who buy the one-dollar-desktop-Buddha-statue aren't intending it for worship. It's merely a desktop decoration; something that just sits there. We all have our own desktop idols (our pet sins), don't we? Bob Hostetler wrote American Idols: The Worship of the American Dream, where he says,

"I've become convinced that often the cause [of a lukewarm spiritual life] is idolatry. Not so much the ancient, pagan-altar-on-a-hilltop variety, nor the light-a-candle, chant-a-mantra sort of thing, either. No, it's usually a more modern form of idolatry. More antiseptic. More American. We seldom realize it when it happens, but our lives can easily become infected with modern idolatries that look utterly harmless, sometimes even virtuous. But these 'user-friendly' idols distract us from a wholehearted, single-minded devotion to God, and become the enemies of our souls. They insert themselves between us and God. They hinder our prayers. They dull our spiritual sensitivity and impede our spiritual growth. And, like all idols, they substitute broken cisterns that hold no water for the springs of living water God wants to pour into our lives..."

In his book, Hostetler names fourteen - yes, fourteen! - idols that are socially acceptable and even common in our day, such as "The Microwave Mentality" (instant gratification), "The Modern Baal" (money), and "The Passion for Fashion" (appearance). As Ross King writes in his song, "Clear the Stage": "Anything I put before my God is an idol. Anything I want with all my heart is an idol. Anything I can't stop thinking of is an idol. Anything that I give all my love is an idol" (And All the Decorations, Too). How easy it is to give our heart and set our thoughts on something other than God - even in our modern day.

If we root our idols from our hearts, Hostetler's prayer is that we "may come to know the one true God to be an extent we've not yet experienced or even imagined." As Ross King's song advises: "We must not worship something that's not even worth it. Clear the stage and make some space for the one who deserves it." Let us tear down every idol from the throne of our heart, be it Baal or fashion, Buddha or self-gratification. That throne is for God and God alone. Anything that takes our mind and heart from the One who made us to worship Him will cause us to stumble in our walk with God. Another song prays a prayer against idolatry of the heart:

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.

Thou my best thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,

Thou mine inheritance, now and always:

Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,

High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

Thursday's Thought

"Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades.
The woman to be admired and praised
is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God." -Proverbs 31:30, The Message

"Charm and grace are deceptive, and beauty is vain [because it is not lasting], but a woman who reverently and worshipfully fears the Lord, she shall be praised!" -Prov. 31:30, Amplified

Eyes To See

As far as his eyes could see, all the man saw was soldiers. Foreign soldiers. He knew they weren't there for a friendly visit. “Master!” he called. “What are we to do?” The man’s master, Elisha - prophet of Israel - looked out where his servant had been watching. Elisha surveyed the situation, but his experienced and trusting eyes observed a very different situation.

We’ve all felt surrounded before. As the Church, our rights have been infringed in the name of 'tolerance'. A massive (and quickly rising) debt, realizations of socialism, environmental hysteria, and many other problems threaten our nation. Additionally, we each have our personal doubts, fears, or difficult circumstances. It’s so easy to feel surrounded – because we are.

"'In the world you will have tribulation'" (John 16:33). Not exactly comforting words. Jesus never offered a comfortable life; in fact, He offered the opposite: "'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you'" (John 15:20). Although we have never been assured that we will lead peaceful and materially satisfying lives, Jesus did give us a promise: "'But take heart; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). The apostle Paul, arguably one of Jesus' most devoted followers, constantly lived under the threat of imprisonment and punishment. "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed," he wrote to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 4:8-9). Afflicted - but not crushed! Persecuted - but not forsaken! Struck down - but not destroyed! It's a given: we will have trouble. But God will always get us through it.

When we're frightened or threatened, we are in a position where we can be easily intimidated or moved. We might respond to our troubles by becoming so protective of our rights that we become too aggressive – even mean. (Yes, we have rights, and we should defend them, but there is a difference between defending our rights like Jesus would and defending our rights like the world does.) Other times we might be intimidated into allying with mainstream society and doing what we know is wrong. Or we can be so wrapped up in our worries that we can't focus on anything but our fears. Because of our lack of focus, everything we do is less satisfactory as long as we are consumed by our concern. When we feel surrounded, we are all too often easily angered, manipulated, or taken off our focus.

Elisha knew a better way to respond to impossible situations. As he looked out on the malicious army, he counseled his servant, “‘Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them’” (2 Kings 6:16). Then he prayed, “‘O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see.’ So the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17). Elisha was surrounded by a foreign army, but the foreign army was surrounded by the army of God! Now Elisha’s servant understood: just because we can't always see God's hand at work doesn't mean He is idle. Elisha prayed again, and God made every enemy soldier blind. The once-terrifying horde was easily dissuaded from their quest – and fooled into defeat in a humorous, surprising conclusion (2 Kings 6:15-23). "'For nothing is impossible with God'" (Luke 1:37).

When we are confronted with what seems like a hopeless set of circumstances, we don’t need to worry, become angry, or blend in with the crowd. We should just pray for eyes to truly see. As someone has said, “You with God is always a majority.” Our all-knowing, all-powerful God is always doing more than we can understand - or see.