Looking Back/Looking Forward

by Rocky Fleming

Day 4: The Foundation of Love

Pray that God’s love passes to you and through you untainted and undiluted to another person.  As surely as His love changes you, it will change another person.  But be careful to understand that giving His love is not to be a clever way of changing another person, or to manage that person.  Rather, when you allow God’s pure love to flow through you to another person, it allows you to see that person as God does, and it is in this process that Jesus is seen in you.

I woke with the thought above, as I am praying through, listening, and hoping to encourage a person with how to love a very unlovable person in his life.  I’ve been there with that dilemma, and I am sure you have as well.  Even though we want to be angry and feel justified to be so, we have at the same time a feeling of guilt with thinking as we do; thus, the dilemma.  Even though it seems hopeless, there is hope.  But our hope has to be built on another rock in our foundation that God forms below our life, which is His love.

It is interesting to understand the dynamic of God’s love, for without a doubt it is the most highly motivating factor we are given for wanting godly change in our own life.  To me, the more I feel God’s love, the more I want to please Him, and be like Him.  Jesus is the standard we all should place before us as the goal for our behavior, and realizing His love to us makes us want to love like Him, for it pleases Him.  Most of the time we use other people as our standard of comparison, and we will fail using this standard.  We either see some people as ideal, and we are disappointed when we find out that they struggle with many of the same issues that we do.  Or, we see the “ugly” people in our life as a lesser standard than our self, and this makes us feel better about our self.  

Can you see spiritual pride raising its ugly head with these comparisons?  How do you think Jesus sees this perspective in our life?  The fact is when we compare our self to Jesus we all fail, but He is the standard we want to strive toward, for any improvement in that direction is a success.  But, if there is one thing that is the most obvious and dynamic improvement that we can embrace, it is to love like Him.  Besides motivation, what else will it take to unleash His love through us?  Could it be a pure motive?

Motive:   In 1993, I made one of the biggest mistakes and course corrections of my life when I ignorantly misused my understanding of grace love and tried to use it to change a very difficult person in my life.  That is why I remember the date clearly, for I got God’s message to me that I was wrong.  I had mistakenly thought that I could actually change some difficult and slanderous people, and therefore manage them toward my way of thinking if I gave them gracious and kind words, and to love them like Jesus.  In other words, I had a motive to use my concept at the time of grace love to manipulate someone to my way of thinking, and it wasn’t pure.  Man, did that blow up in my face, as God taught me that giving grace as He did got Him crucified.  

Was I willing to go to the cross for this person?  No!  Was I willing to take blows from this person as He did and still pray, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  No!  Was I willing to stay the course and wait for this person to connect the dots?  No, for I needed immediate results!  After all, that was why I was giving that thing called “grace love,” right?  Was my interest in this person or myself?  Well, that is obvious.  It was about me, not the other person.  But then, little by little and challenge by challenge, God showed me the mistake in my presumption of how I was viewing His love as a tool for getting what I wanted.  Little by little I also saw a course correction, as God helped me see the hidden struggles going on in this person that were not about me.  Slander and creating division were a pattern that followed this person’s life.  But the problem that was causing the slanderous behavior was from previous hurts that needed to be understood and healed.  It was then that I understood better how God’s love changes a person.  It helped me, as I began to see this person through Jesus’ eyes and then saw the victim rather than the perpetrator.

Seeing through God’s eyes is our motive.   If we can establish a rock in our foundation that our motive and purpose with allowing God’s love to flow through us is so that it helps us understand better the struggle going on in a particular person’s life, then something good might happen.  For sure we will please Jesus when we begin to see those people as He does, and if that is only what we get out of it, isn’t that still great?