WHAT IF? Love that changes things...

"Let love be genuine...outdo one another is showing honour."  (Rom 12:9a, 10b)

What if you did this?  

Imagine a community of people who all loved each other genuinely--without fakeness and pretense.
Imagine a community where each person was trying to be better then the next in the kind of love and honor that they were showing to another!
I don't know about you--but I would love to be a part of a community like that!

What if you decided to begin to do this?

As long as human beings are involved in a community on this earth it will never be perfect.  Even today I sat with a woman who shared the pain of words said by others who ought to love her that instead tore her down and judged her for past sins in her life.  Yes, this was within the church community.  It makes me sick.

But I have hope.  I have hope when I consider Jesus and how He loves us.  I have hope because we are told that the life (and therefore the love of Jesus) dwells in His followers.

And this is how Jesus loves:  He loved us before we ever loved Him--in fact He loved us even when we were still sinners and far from perfect.  He loves us still even when we mess up--when we are faithless He is always faithful!  He bears with us in our weakness, He strengthens us by His grace--He has sacrificed all for our good because of LOVE.

What if you let Jesus' love take over more and more everyday?  What if when you feel like judging you stop and ask Jesus' love to pour through you?  What if when you feel like looking down on another--you think of Jesus and instead serve the other with honor just as Jesus served you?

WHAT IF?  I desperately want to see Jesus' love overtake my own life more and more.  I want to be a part of a church community...that though we are not perfect...will let the love of Jesus control us and move us forward day by day.

What about you?  

CONCEALED --def. to keep from being seen, found or observed.

Have you ever been reading something in a public place and when someone walks up to you for some reason you feel the need to slyly hide the title of the book or the article you were reading?

For instance--it's not a big secret that I love the Anne of Green Gable books (go ahead and laugh, but it's true and I don't care!)  And yet, even as I post that here, I can remember times when I was reading that book at a coffee shop and I held it very strategically so that people around me would not be able to see that I was reading Anne of Green Gables.  I concealed my love for Anne!

While concealing my love for Anne of Green Gables is one thing--I've been contemplating a more disturbing concealment I find myself making at times--that is, my faith in Jesus.

Before you judge me---have you ever been there?

Perhaps there is an opportunity in a conversation to very plainly speak about your love for Jesus, and you stumble on your words and your faith comes out as one of the most awkward sounding things in the world?  What's up with that?

Or perhaps your reading your Bible or a Christian book of some sort and as someone walks up you calmly flip it over so as to conceal what you are reading--without making it so obvious that they will ask what your hiding of course!   Isn't that a little weird?

Or maybe, your a pastor and you'd rather people know your a barista than a pastor.  Ok, maybe this one is unique to me.

I used to (as in up until this day) excuse these types of "concealments" by saying things like:
   
 "I don't want my faith to make others feel uncomfortable."  (But maybe they are more uncomfortable with how awkwardly we try to speak about who Jesus is to us instead?!)
or
"I don't want people to think I'm some religious nut who brings my Bible everywhere!"  (But why not?  yeah I get we are sensitive over the whole "religion" thing these days--and I've been with the rest of you hip Christians who say--"I'm not religious and neither was Jesus!" --But maybe it's time we stop fighting against the word religious (which by the way can simply mean "having or showing belief in and reverence for God" according to The Free Dictionary---well that is not so bad of thing now is it?) and embrace the fact that to follow Jesus means we will be misunderstood and seen as strange by many in the world.
or
"I don't want to create barriers by having people immediately think of me as a pastor" ---ok, I still think there is some merit to this, BUT---again I need to be less concerned about that label and instead model what a pastor (and follower of Jesus) should really be.

I have far too often concealed Jesus.  And when I type it like that it makes me feel sick.  I have confessed, and preached of a Life Abundant and a love that cannot be matched by anything else--and yet so often I have concealed Jesus as if somehow people are better off just seeing "me".  How foolish!

Now you probably won't see me put a Jesus Fish on my car.  Nor will you see me wearing the latest Jesus t-shirt, nor am I going to buy a "ministers collar".  And you probably won't even see me on the corner pushing tracts and Bibles into every passer-by's hands.

BUT -- I will make it my aim and my goal that Jesus always be the most recognizable thing about me.  If nothing else when people see me, I hope they will see the love that I have for Jesus because I am one who is incomparably loved by Him!
 Those who know me--I invite you to hold me to this--and I invite you to join me in making Jesus the most obvious thing about our lives!