Michael Kelley's Blog, page 23

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. The Awkward Duty of Encouragement

This is a much needed article about how men are meant to relate to men, something we are not particularly good at.

2. Young People, Church Membership Isn’t Optional

Here’s one to share with your son or daughter if they are a Christian and going off to college.

3. Too Busy for Beauty

We all love productivity, but as the article says, too much productivity can starve the soul.

4. Oppenheimer

My goodness. What a trailer, and what a story to be told.

The Wonderful Harmony of Vivification and Mortification

A couple of definitions today might be helpful right off the bat since you probably haven’t used either of these words in casual conversation today. I know I have not.

Mortification is about death. Killing sin as violently and as often as necessary. It’s waging all out war against what is contrary to life in Christ. Now anyone who has been a Christian for more than five minutes knows the reality of mortification. It was the great Puritan John Owen who famously said, “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.”

To put it in specifically biblical terms, we see a passage like this:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:1-5).

In those verses we see first the reality – that we died when we came into Christ. And yet the remnants of that former self still cling doggedly to us, and that’s why we must also “put to death.” In other words, because we have died, we must daily die. That’s mortification, and it involves the daily battle against the self.

Vivification is more positive. Whereas mortification is about the removal of sin and its causes, vivification is about stirring up your affections for Jesus in a positive manner. It’s about reminding yourself of the beauties and excellencies found in Jesus alone.

The thing is that the two must work in harmony with each other. Think of it like this:

Let’s say that you resolve that you are going to drastically reduce the amount of time you spend looking at your phone. Now a big part of seeing that goal come to reality is the act of putting down your phone. It’s consciously choosing not to check Twitter or Instagram when you have a few free minutes. But that negative goal will only get you part of the way there.

To really press into the goal, you need to realize that you will suddenly have three or four extra hours to fill in the day if you really do put the phone down. So what will you do with it? The answer is to find something more constructive, more edifying, more useful, and more beautiful than what you are leaving behind. You need something better to fill the gap left by something worse.

And this is why we must, as Christians, be adept at both mortification and vivification.

Consider, for example, how embittered, dispassionate life would be if all we ever did as Christians was practice mortification. Like those walking around in sackcloth and ashes, we would be devoid of real joy and eternal happiness. Consider, then, for example, how unbridled life would be if all we ever practiced was vivification. Like those who treat sin as a game with no real consequences, we would see the world – and ourselves – through rose colored glasses.

They are two sides of the same coin.

We fight sin. We battle it. We kill it. But anyone who has waged this kind of war will tell you that the removal of any sinful habit, especially one we hold closely to our hearts, leaves an incredible void in its absence. We wonder if we can even go on, for we’ve come to look forward to that sin. We crave it. We think about it and nurture it.

What can fill the void left by mortification?

Vivification.

The void is not only filled, but we find ourselves overflowing. We kill and we fill. We fight and we feast. We remove and we indulge.

Loving People Isn’t the Most Important Thing in the Church

In 1954, the American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that human beings possess two sets of fundamental needs. He organized those needs into a pyramid, with the most base needs at the bottom. He then divided the pyramid into deficiency needs (the first four levels), and growth needs (the highest level).

At the bottom, the absolute base, are physiological needs – things like air, water, food, shelter, and the like. After that come safety needs. These are things like resources, employment, and personal security. The very next level are the needs of love and belonging. In other words, and according to Maslow’s hierarchy, as soon as a person has the basic necessities the very next thing they need is love. They need friendship. A sense of belonging. Family.

We know that is true, even if we have never studied the hierarchy. We know it’s true not only because of our own experience; we know it because of the place Jesus gave love in terms of the greatest commandments:

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:35-40).

Of all the commandments within His reach, Jesus grabbed two that centered on love. Love of God, and love of people. And so Maslow, was in a sense, also affirming what Jesus has known from the beginning – the vital importance of loving and being loved to a person’s well-being.

If you were to say, then, that the most important thing in the church is loving other people, you would probably get a lot of head nods in agreement. And though it is vitally important, it is not in fact the most important thing.

By way of another example, consider the conversation Jesus had on the beach with Peter. They had this talk after the cross, and after the resurrection, but also after Peter’s denial of Christ. These few words would set the stage for the remainder of Peter’s life, and this conversation, too, revolved around love:

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs” (John 21:15).

Peter would go on to be the preacher of Pentecost and one of the first leaders of the early church. He would write letters we have recorded for us in our Bibles. And here we see Jesus sending him out on that mission. It was a mission largely about these “lambs,” those that would come to believe in Christ in the future.

But notice that Jesus’ command was not to love the lambs. Three times He went back and forth with Peter but not once did He tell Peter to love the sheep. Now why might that be?

It is not because love for others is unimportant; it is because love for others is presented in the Bible as a byproduct of something else.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God, because God is love. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:7-11).

Do you see it? There is a definite chain of events that happen when it comes to love. The last link in the chain is that we love others. Back up on, and you get that we love God. And then back up to the beginning and you find that God loves us. Put it in reverse order and you find that God loves us. We love God. And we love others. Though they fit in concert with one another, the order matters, and it matters greatly.

Yes, love for others is important. Vitally so. And yet it is not the most important thing. To treat it as such is to get the cart before the horse, and will always end up in an exhausted supply. But when the chain is linked? When our love for others is flowing from the truth of God’s love for us and then our love for Him? That is a chain not easily broken.

3 Ways to Cultivate Sympathy

Several years ago, our family of five went to the movies together. At the time, our kids were around five, eight, and eleven, and the movie involved a robot that became the best friend of the lead character. You see where this is going already, right?

At the end of the movie, the robot sacrifices himself for his human friend, and our family was a wreck. The movie had spent the better part of two hours making us feel deeply for the machine, only to rip it out from under us at the end. We were all in tears… except the five-year-old. And his brother and sister were offended:

“Why aren’t you crying?” they asked.

“Didn’t you think it was sad?” they asked.

His response was straight to the point: “Guys, it’s just a robot.”

True enough. And also a good example of the fact that some of us are naturally more sympathetic than others. But real sympathy is more than just shedding a few tears; it’s really feeling along with someone else, and doing so deeply. This is one of the things we are supposed to do in the church – to feel with one another:

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn (Rom. 12:15).

This command comes in a series of short, rapid fire admonishments Paul gave to the church at Rome. Alongside practicing hospitality, hating what is evil, and showing zeal, we are told to feel with one another. And once again, some of us are more naturally disposed to following that command. But what about the rest of us? Surely there must be some way we can cultivate the kind of sympathy Romans 12 describes. Here are three suggestions to do just that, if you’re not feeling particularly sympathetic:

1. Slow.

One of the reasons we don’t feel with one another is because we are moving too quickly to do so. Our lives are a constant flow of information in from every direction, and because they are, we rarely take the time to actually stop, think, and then feel what is happening to another person.

Rather than listening or reading what they are saying and then considering the implications of it, we are very quickly off to the next text or post or conversation. In this sense, one of the things that most easily robs us of sympathy is our pace. We have to slow it down if we want to feel.

2. Engage.

Okay, so we slow down enough to actually hear what is happening to another person. If we still want to cultivate more sympathy, then we have to engage the person further. We have to actually talk to them.

There is something unique that happens when you speak to a person, especially face to face. It is a natural side effect to not only hear their words, but to see their body language. To take in their tone. To more fully embrace the level of pain or elation they are feeling. And the closer you are in proximity to someone, the harder it is to be unsympathetic toward them. Our lack of sympathy, then, is not only a symptom of our pace; it’s a symptom of our proximity to others.

3. Pray.

Then, of course, there is the most important way we can grow in sympathy, and that is by prayer. Now that prayer can take two forms, each of which will help us in this area.

Firstly, we can pray for the person. We can go to God on behalf of the person, either in thanksgiving or in supplication. We can praise the Lord for what’s happening to them or we can ask God to bring about some change in their circumstances. In either case, it is very, very difficult to remain emotionally unengaged with someone you are praying for.

Secondly, though, we can pray for our own hearts. We know we should be feeling with this person more deeply, and yet we know that our hearts are hard to that emotion. So we go to the one person we know has the power to change the human heart, because He has already done it in us when we became Christians. Now we come asking Him to soften the new heart he has given us in Christ so that we might feel more deeply for our brothers and sisters.

Just because we aren’t feeling sympathetic doesn’t mean we are released from the responsibility to be sympathetic. And it also doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t actively pursue it. As we do, we will find ourselves feeling more and more with those around us, even as Jesus is sympathetic with us in all our experiences.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Lessons About God from Job

It’s a hard book to read, but one that tells us a lot about God’s character. This is a helpful summary of some of those points.

2. Moses, the Mountain, and a Mass of Email

We don’t need to do God’s job. He can handle His business on His own. We just need to meet with Him.

3. When Life Feels Repetitive

Most of us try and spice things up a bit, but there are great benefits to repetition in life if we are aware enough to recognize them.

4. What a Way to Win a Game

Love the awareness of this.

3 Misunderstandings About Humility

One might argue that humility is the first step toward becoming a Christian. I’m not trying to disagree that we come to Christ by grace through faith; not at all. But one might say that even before you get to “by grace through faith” you might come to your knees in humility. That’s because coming to Christ means recognizing not only something about Him, but also recognizing something about yourself.

When you come to Christ in faith, you are recognizing that He loves you. That He died in your place. And that He has grace enough to forgive you of your sins and put you in right relationship with God.

At the same time, though, you are recognizing that you cannot do any of those things for yourself. You can’t make yourself right with God. Even your best works are tainted with sin. You have no means or power by which you can stand before God, and it’s only in Christ that you can be saved. This is the essence of humility.

But despite the fact that we must exercise humility in coming to Christ, it is nevertheless a characteristic we seem to be confused about. Here are three of those misunderstandings:

1. Humility means thinking less of yourself.

Humility is not self-loathing. To be humble does not mean to hate oneself. It certainly does not mean to punish oneself or to think oneself worthless. In fact, this kind of self-hatred is not only not humility; it’s also dishonoring to our Creator who made us in His own image:

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well (Psalm 139:13-14).

Self-loathing is a denial of these truths. It’s an inward defiance of the truth that God really did create us as individuals; that He really did form us intentionally; that He did not make mistakes in our physical and mental make up. Hating ourselves is not humility; it is instead a dishonor to the creative work of God.

2. Humility means not accepting compliments.

Similarly, denying that we are good at anything is not humility. When someone gives us a compliment, to look down at the floor and deny that we actually did do a good job, or really are smart, or creative, or whatever is not humility.

Sometimes we think accepting a compliment means robbing God of His glory and taking pride in ourselves, but this is not so. If someone compliments one of my children because of something they’ve done, it is not dishonoring to me as their father if they simply say, “Thank you.” It’s actually the opposite. I glory in my children for who they are and who they are becoming because who they are and who they are becoming is also a reflection of me. A compliment to them is a compliment to me. The inability to acknowledge that we have done a good job or are talented at something is not humility; it’s immaturity.

3. Humility is unattainable.

Humility is a tricky thing.

It’s tricky because those who are truly humble do not necessarily recognize themselves to be. In fact, the moment you start to recognize your own humility then you have started to drift into an insidious kind of pride – you are proud of being humble. That kind of humility is just a mask for pride.

Because of that dynamic, most of us have the misunderstanding that true humility is something that either you have, or you don’t. And any effort to actually pursue humility is a waste of time. Contrary to that, we find that humility is actually a command in Scripture:

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).

We are, as Christians, to pursue humility. We do that in any number of ways – by serving in such a way that we know we won’t be recognized, by reminding ourselves of our own sin and condemnation apart from Jesus, and simply by praying for it. We are, in other words, to take a very active stance when it comes to humility, and to go hard after it.

The Simplest Way to Impact Your Community Right Now

It was the great missionary William Carey who said in the late 18th century: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

That resonates with most Christians; we want to see God move mightily, and we want to play a part in it. We want to see our homes, communities, countries, and world reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But where do we begin? Where do we start? 

We might get so fixated on “attempting something great” that we miss the opportunity right in front of us – an opportunity that is readily available and also very simple. The best opportunity you might have to impact your community right now is through hospitality. What’s more, that’s not a new phenomenon.

Hospitality was vitally important to the spread of the gospel in the days when the church was just beginning to flourish because when traveling to a new area, people were at the mercy of the people who lived in that city. Christians took hospitality seriously, and because they did, the gospel was able to take root as it spread through displaced Christians who were welcomed into the homes and lives of others. It’s not wonder, then, that the biblical authors of the New Testament put such an emphasis on hospitality:

“Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality” (Romans 12:13).“Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2).“Be hospitable to one another without complaining” (1 Peter 4:9).

From a purely pragmatic perspective, the early church had to practice hospitality in order for the gospel to continue to move throughout the world and for the church to grow. But there’s also a deeper reason why hospitality is so vital – that’s because practicing hospitality is one of the simplest and most tangible ways we model the truth of the gospel.

But times have changed. Despite the fact that much of our lives is lived in a “public” way online, most people value privacy more than they did in the past. Though we might put forth a version of ourselves through social media, we still really like our personal space, personal thought, and personal time. The very nature of hospitality runs counter to this. Hospitality is sharing what we consider to be “personal” with each other in a sacrificial way.

While there are certain acts, like making the casserole or opening your home, that are indicative of hospitality, the characteristic itself has a deeper meaning and implication than these actions. The word hospitality comes from the combination of two words: “love” and “stranger.” Literally, then, hospitality is the love of strangers.

This is a powerful description of what the gospel is. When we were strangers and aliens, God took us in. When we were without a home and family, God brought us into His. When we were without hope in the world, God adopted us as His children. In the ultimate act of hospitality, God provided a way to welcome us through the death of Jesus Christ. God is ultimately hospitable, and therefore hospitality is a characteristic built into the spiritual DNA of all those who have experienced this divine hospitality.

Choosing the way of hospitality says something about the nature of the gospel to others. Specifically, here are three aspects of our faith we put on display when we welcome others into our lives:

1. We are speaking about our provision.

Exercising hospitality will cost us something. It will cost us time, energy, resources, privacy – all kinds of things. Any time there is a personal cost, the temptation for us is to focus on what we are giving up in order to welcome someone else in. When we make ourselves willing to be used by God in order to practice hospitality, we are testifying that we believe God to be our great provider. He will take care of our needs.

2. We are speaking about our contentment.

Hospitality requires us to share with others, and if we are going to share with others, it means that we will have to do with less ourselves. We will have less personal time, less personal space, less personal comfort. But when we choose this posture of hospitality, we are testifying about our personal contentment. Having less is fine, because we know that when we have Jesus, we truly already have more than enough.

3. We are speaking about our future.

God is not merely redeeming individuals; He is building a people for His own glory. This people will live together, with Him, for all eternity. Heaven will not be lived out in isolation, but in community. If we believe this to be true, then one way we testify to that belief is by pursuing a posture of hospitality right now. When we welcome others in, we are living out a small foretaste of what’s to come in the future.

True enough, you might be more naturally bent toward this sharing of life than someone else. But regardless of our natural personality traits, the practicing of hospitality is one of the simplest ways we can engage those around us with the truth of the gospel.

—

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Circumstantial Evidence: A Lesson from Gideon

Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help (Judges 6:1-6).

I’ve never known what it was like to live in fear. Not really.

I’m not familiar with the feeling of waking up on a daily basis and immediately looking over my shoulder or wondering what violence I’d have to run from. I’ve not experienced the anxiety that comes with raising children in a truly dangerous environment and worrying whether or not they will be safe playing outside. But those were the times for the children of Israel in Judges 6.

And what a terrible time it must have been. The Midianites were actually distant relatives of the Jews; they were the descendants of Abraham and his second wife. They had grown into a semi-nomadic people in western Arabia and became part of a confederation of desert peoples who periodically would cross over the Jordan to pillage and wreak havoc on the Israelites. Just when the freshly seeded crops were sprouting, they would invade and destroy. They were so fierce that the Israelites lived looking over their shoulders, knowing that they might look across the river and see the Midianites coming. They were so afraid that they actually hollowed out caves in the mountainside to hide in.

This was life for Israel for seven years. For seven years their crops and animals were destroyed. For seven years invading peoples oppressed them and caused them to run. And you can imagine the effect both economically and psychologically. Verse 6 expresses it best because the word there for “impoverished” is literally translated “made small.” The Midianites made the Israelites small in emotion, courage and prosperity, so much so that they finally cried out to the Lord for help. And the Lord answered them, albeit in a strange way. We meet the deliverer that God had chosen in verse 11:

The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”

The Lord is with you, mighty warrior? Now that is a shocking statement. It is shocking because Gideon was not a mighty warrior. He was threshing wheat, a common and necessary practice, but the usual practice of threshing wheat was to cut the stalks and then beat them with a rod. You would then discard the straw and then toss the mixture up into the air. The wind would catch the chaff and blow it away and the heavier grains would fall to the ground. But Gideon was so afraid of the Midianites that he was doing an “outside activity” while hiding in a sheltered vat that was used for pressing grapes. Mighty warrior indeed. The circumstances of Gideon’s life seem to radically contradict the fact that he is a mighty warrior, and he knew it:

“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian” (Judges 6:13).

Gideon looked around his country that was in ruins and he had a simple question: How can you possibly say that God is with any of us? Are you blind? It is perfectly obvious from our circumstances that the Lord is not with us – in fact, it is obvious he has abandoned us. The conclusion is obvious: 

The Lord is not with me nor my people, and I am certainly not a mighty warrior. I am the son of an idol worshiper who is too afraid to thresh my wheat in the open. 

The circumstances of Gideon’s life contradict the word of the Lord. But God is not ruled by circumstances; God defines circumstances.

God has a habit of interjecting his word into circumstances that seem to contradict it: 

He came to a murdering stutterer and called him a great deliverer. He came to an old man from Ur who was an idol worshiper and called him the father of many nations. He came to a shepherd boy last in line of importance and called him a king. He came to a disgruntled prophet with an unfaithful wife and called him a husband. He came to a coward in a winepress and called him a warrior. He came to an overzealous, hot-headed fisherman and called him a rock. He came to a persecutor and called him a prophet. He came to a man who had been for three days and called him the Living Lord of All. And he came to a sinner who had never given him a second thought and called him a son.

It’s still true today, isn’t it? We look at our lives, and the rest of the world, and God’s Word doesn’t seem to fit. And so here, again, we come to a choice about what will drive our definition of reality. Will it be our circumstances, or will it be the Word of God? 

May we be the kind of people who find the truth about the world, ourselves, and the future in something more stable than our circumstances which change so easily. May we find the truth in God’s Word.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Whose Pins Are You Juggling?

Here’s a great little parenting story, one that resonates with the time of life I find myself in as well.

2. Stop Calling Faithfulness a Sacrifice

It is not a sacrifice to do what Jesus calls us to do.

3. Find Your People… Offline

Online community is fine, but in person community is better. Much.

4. Summer Movie Calendar

There’s some good ones on here. Finally.

3 Unsustainable Reasons and 1 Good One to Love Others

I love my children. I love my wife. But then again, I also love hot dogs and a good steak. I love to go to the movies, and I love to read fiction when it’s raining. When you stop and think about it, it’s pretty astounding the number of contexts and amount of times we use the word “love.” Think about it yourself – how many times have you said that 4-letter word today alone?

I’m not arguing that we need to discontinue using the word. I am arguing, however, that the context in which we use it might show us what we really believe love is. And to go further, it’s likely, given our prolific use of the word, that we might have at best a misunderstanding and at worst a dilution of what “love” actually means.

By way of example, think again about the different ways we use that word. Now ask yourself: “What have I said that I ‘loved’ in the past, but wouldn’t do so now?” I once would have said that I love the Los Angeles Dodgers, but no more! And that’s just a surface-level example. There are others – some much more painful. And the fact that there are so many of these examples ought to tell us, among other things, that the reason we have for using the word “love” are, at best, unsustainable. Here, then, are three unsustainable reasons why we typically love others:

1. Because we are supposed to.

It’s true, we are supposed to. Indeed, love is the thing by which Christians should be known:

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

And that’s just one example. You can turn to many, many others in Scripture commanding us to love our neighbors, to love our enemies, to love our families, and to love those who persecute us. But you can’t just grit your teeth and force yourself to love others. You can will yourself to serve, to be polite, and to make small talk – but genuinely love? No, this is not purely an act of the will. It is unsustainable to think that we can love others because we are supposed to.

2. Because they are lovable.

You can probably remember the early days of a relationship in which the person you’re starting to date can do no wrong. You never get tired of one another and nothing that person does ever gets on your nerves. You find them endlessly fascinating and wonderful in every aspect. And yet this, too, is an unsustainable reason to love someone else.

Because eventually every relationship will have conflict. Eventually, if you get close enough to someone, you will find their quirks, their insecurities, and their little habits that are bound to get on your nerves. That initial fascination might last for a while – even a long while – but eventually, it too will fizzle.

3. Because of how they make us feel.

Though not expressed, this is in truth one of the main reasons we claim to love other people – it’s because we like how they make us feel. When we are with that person, we feel important, or popular, or attractive, or valued, and that is a wonderful thing… but it, too, is fading. That’s because this kind of love is really transactional – we have subconsciously made an agreement that we will love that person as long as they hold up their end of a bargain they didn’t even know they have made with us.

To make us feel better about ourselves.

No, if we want to love others it can’t ultimately be because we are supposed to or because they are lovable or because of the way they make us feel. The real motivation for love comes from something much deeper than that. We love others because we are absolutely convinced that we have been fully and completely loved by Jesus:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph. 5:1-2).

The good news, then, if you are struggling to love someone else is that the source of your love is not that person’s lovability; neither is it your personal resolve to do it. The source of your love for another is in the validated love of God in Christ. And unlike our feelings, this never changes.