Living in and learning from the community of the body of Christ is an awesome thing. I have been blessed with a wonderful group of friends and family to remind me of this daily. Whether it is in one of my small groups, with some of the girls I work with or just my friends hanging out, 'spiritual' conversations are never hard to come by. Like I said, I am blessed to have the type of community I do.
One of my favorite books is Crazy Love by Francis Chan. (If you haven't read it I highly recommend it!) I have gone through it in different small groups before, read it on my own and now I chose it for my ladie's study at ABT. Each time I've gone through it it has challenged me. Francis Chan lays things out there pretty bluntly and makes you really think and go back to what scripture has to say. As I go through it right now with the girls, I love hearing about what God has been teaching us all each week. I also have a guy friend (Joe) who is reading through it right now and I love hearing what he has to say about it. Each time I see him recently we end up talking about the book and what we've been taught.
The other night as our friends gathered at my house for our typical get-together Joe and I started chatting about what we had read that week. As I went on about how I loved the chapter about 'serving left overs to God', Joe explained how he loved the chapter on 'the profile of a lukewarm Christian'. Then we both agreed how much we liked the next chapter. Chan talks about his grandmother-in-law spending hours praying by her bedside each day and tears being brought to her eyes just by the sight of her bed remembering the intimate time she spent with God. That brought us to talk about how in love with God she must be, how we want be that in love with Him.
We began to talk about Heaven and getting to see Jesus. Next came Joe's deep thought, Joe is famous for his deep thoughts, "What if Jesus were not in Heaven? Would we still want to go to Heaven?". I praise God for His immaculate plan and am so thankful that He sent Jesus to save us and that we one day I will get to spend eternity in Heaven with Jesus. The question sparked a good conversation though. Is our goal Heaven or is it Jesus? Are we in love with the treasures we one day will see or the streets of gold? Or are we in love with our Savior and desire to spend eternity with Him? I love these kind of questions. The ones to get you to reexamine where your heart is at. Joe's final thought for that night "I would rather go through hell with Jesus than Heaven without Him". My thought to go along with that.. "AMEN!"
When my love is Jesus I want to serve Him with every part of me. I want to do anything and everything He asks of me. Serving becomes second nature when done out of love for my King. When love is Heaven alone, it becomes self-seeking to serve. It's out of an obligation or an "I'm suppossed to" feeling. Serving will quickly become a chore and something just to try to get your 'treasures'. I don't see how that is at all how we are supposed to live. Going through motions that were taught to us that we never took to heart. God calls us to love. I could go on posting a ton of scripture that comes to mind when i think of how God calls us to love but I will leave you with just this one..
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves, has been born of God and knows God. 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." 1 John 4:7-9
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