Overcoming Pride: Loving Other People part III
I want to send a link out for this post to the words that my friend Sara wrote about overcoming the dangers of pride. This is actually what I wanted to write about for the next post in this series, and Sara did it so beautifully! So click over and be encouraged by her meditations on learning to worship Jesus as King of the heart.
I’m excited also because Sara, her husband, and her daughter will be coming to stay with our family very soon on their Live Lightly Tour. More details to come later, and if you are in SC and want to come meet them while they are here, send me a note!
(photo courtesy James Black)
The Lesson: Loving Other People part II
If you would like to see all posts in this series, click through to the “loving other people” archive.
I’m not that old, but by God’s grace I have learned one big lesson in the last few years that I will never want to forget. The road to “The Lesson” was not easy because my pride got in the way too many times to count, and sometimes I wonder if I will be learning this lesson for the rest of my life. God is good to me, though, and I thank Him for The Lesson. In a few words, here it is:
You never know what is going on behind the doors of someone’s heart.
Doesn’t seem too profound, I know. If there is any huge thing I have learned recently, however, this would be it. God has been showing this to me over and over for the last three or four years, and I tend to see Him reminding it to me again every day as He holds up the glasses of parenthood in my home.
Meeting a Man
There was a man I met several years ago, and God used his life to teach me The Lesson for the first time — at least the first time I can remember. Of course there was my mother when I was younger. The pieces of her life and sacrifice for me in conjunction with her love for her “hard to love” mother started to fit together as I grew in maturity, but getting to know this man was like God screaming The Lesson at me loudly and clearly lest I miss it. For many months I got acquainted with him and his family, and at some point I remember telling my husband some critical opinions I had of him. He confused me, and I questioned his walk with God. Initially he seemed interested in the spiritual welfare of our family, but down the road he seemed aloof and cold to us. His wife seemed to draw away from us, too, and I didn’t know what to think for a long time. I wasn’t really hurt, but I guess a little angry and bitter. The bitterness that takes root — that’s part of The Lesson, too. So I mentally retreated from fellowship, and I was happy to settle accounts in my mind that this family was not meeting my expectations. I am sad to admit that I really did “cross them off” my “I love you” list.
Then, one day, we learned that he was silently suffering the tremendous turmoil of depression — the kind of depression that was physically debilitating and starving him of normal life. It was a complete shock to us. He was forced to stay inside his home for hours and hours on some days, and the medications were not helping. We were told that he was enduring a terrible battle of guilt, confusion, pain; his family needed our love and prayers. Everything changed inside me, and God spoke to me:
You never know what is going on behind the doors of someone’s heart.
Learning in Parables
True, the critic’s point that it is hard to love someone who never allows you to know they are hurting, but God doesn’t give us that option. Jesus covers all the bases when He commands to love even our enemies. How much more should we love sympathetically those who are quietly struggling, feeling lost or confused, or walking the lonely road of fear or isolation?
This carries over into how I treat my kids, and I’m learning it more and more all the time. Sometimes God will “WAMM!” me with The Lesson. I can’t think of an example right now, except maybe a stretch to recall the toothpaste tears from the past, but it happens so much that I’m beginning to think The Lesson is one of the greatest lessons one can learn on earth. It is about Christ-like identification with others (but that’s a whole new post to be written later for sure). A child’s tenderness and inability to communicate hurts or struggles at times are huge opportunities to love with this powerful love.
Loving Like Mother Theresa
Mostly everyone knows the legacy of Mother Theresa and her unwavering determination to love others. I park these words of hers in my mind, reminding me of The Lesson that opens the floodgates to loving others:
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
This kind of person needs to hear the words “I love you, I care about you.” This person may feel inferior and left alone in a dark silence. It is up to someone else to walk over, pick up the phone, ask the awkward questions. “I will take you to church, and you will sit with me.” “I want to be with you.” “I am listening, and I care.” I beg God to remind me that this is not the time for criticism but for action.
We never know what is behind that curtain, but we do know the certainties of the Creator. He has made every person in His image, and even enemies are to be loved. When I start to forget, I assume things. I expect things. I judge people, and I can even begin to harbor needless bitterness. The loss is all mine, for if theirs is a great poverty, my love can be a great treasure, which is freely wasted if I forget The Lesson. O, may I practice the presence of God and lay no roadblocks to prevent His love to radiate through me, and Father, help me to never forget that I cannot always see into someone’s sufferings.
The Beginning: Loving Other People part I
I want to try something that I have done only a handful of times (and not very successfully, might I add), which is write a series on a particular topic. I shared the idea last night with my friend Emily on the phone, and we had a neat conversation about how we love when God uses these kinds of things to grow us more as we write, digest, and read what others write, too.
Originally I wanted to write a series during the month of March, but I am too excited to wait that long to begin. I will start it today with hopes that I will write five to ten posts in the series over the following weeks. I have great plans for what God will be teaching me and the joy He will be unfolding in my heart as I write these posts. I really want these lessons to change me and stick with me. Hear my prayer, O Lord.
Longing to Love Others With Newness
I want to post a series about what God has put on my heart; I only do not know what to title it. Perhaps “Loving thy Neighbor,” or “Being Still Enough to Love,” or “Loving Those God Has Placed Around Us.” Anyway this series is about truly, truly loving the people around us, slowing down enough to see what that looks like, and seeing God’s radiance shine as we extend His grace and joy to the people we rub shoulders with every day. It’s about loving those without from what is within. I am not teaching or preaching about this. I am exploring it in the form of my journal because it is something I am longing for with intensity in my heart.
Practicing the Presence of God
I believe it begins with the practice of listening to God, and begging His Spirit to be in our minds, hearts, and actions — to permeate everything we are, think, and do. Yes, buddhist friend, it is emptying the mind… but not quite like you do. It is emptying the mind of “self” and making way for the filling up of God’s intentions, God’s thoughts, God’s love for Himself (Oh, yes! Himself!), and grace through His Son to others. Oh, to be a Christian is to know authentic excitement and joy.
Here is something I read earlier today about practicing the presence of God by Brother Lawrence. It is an imploring and profound correspondence he had with a friend:
You need not cry very loud. He is nearer to us than we are aware. We do not always have to be in church to be with God. We may make an oratory of our heart so we can, from time to time, retire to converse with Him in meekness, humility, and love. Every one is capable of such familiar conversation with God; some more, some less. He knows what we can do.
Let us begin then. Perhaps He expects but one generous resolution on our part. Have courage. We have but little time to live. You are nearly sixty-four, and I am almost eighty. Let us live and die with God. Sufferings will be sweet and pleasant while we are with Him. Without Him, the greatest pleasures will be a cruel punishment to us. May He be praised by all.
Gradually become accustomed to worship Him in this way; to beg His grace, to offer Him your heart from time to time; in the midst of your business, even every moment if you can. Do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules or particular forms of devotion. Instead, act in faith with love and humility.
I am anxious to learn what God has in store for me to learn and truly begin loving other people like I never have. I want to dig into His Word, find the lessons hidden in treasures from the saints of the past, and admire some contemporary hearts ablaze for Jesus Christ. It is truly a sweet thought that I can gaze into the eyes of God and then look into the eyes of other people with love. I hope you will read and share this road with me in coming weeks.
(photo courtesy Cicero Fonseca)
Prayer for bodies
Sickness seems to be going around our family and extended family for the last several days. We have been visiting our family for the weekend and some meetings Eric has had for work, and we are returning home now. Please pray a quick prayer for my sister-in-law Alyssa, myself, are parents, and all of the little kiddos in our families that God would quickly heal and no one else would get sick. We have played host to various forms of stomach bugs, pregnancy-related illnesses, and the flu. Stay away from us! haha – Anyway, thanks for stopping by and saying a prayer for complete and quick healing in the name of Jesus for us!
A series of unfortunate events
I have been humbled, my dear friends.
I got lost on the way to a new friend’s house today, and I was pulled over FOR SPEEDING. (Sorry, I won’t ever yell again on my blog.) Do you know how angry I was? I was pretty angry. I just nodded at the officer when he handed me my ticket — didn’t even say a word to him. If you know me, that’s not like me at all; I can’t even see the mailman without striking up a short conversation.
Lesson and morale of the story: you may recall how God convicted me several months ago about speeding and how I resolved to change this part of my life to glorify God. Well, I will be honest and say I have kept my commitment. I had not gone over the speed limit, and today I blew it. I was late after I had been on the phone twice with her giving me directions and didn’t want to be the idiot who got lost, so when I saw I had made a wrong turn, I turned around and rushed back to the intersection just in time to get stopped. Aaaagh! I wanted to cry out to the officer and ask him, “Can you go to this web address? www.goodlikeamedicine.com? You can read about how I never speed there.”
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Back to what I was trying to get at earlier: what did I learn from this? Well, not much of anything for several hours. It pretty much ruined my day.
As I have sat and thought about it tonight, though, I realize God is again humbling me and breaking down my self-righteousness. I haven’t blogged about speeding since I made that commitment because I kept thinking, “I need to do that and talk about all the good things I’ve learned, like it makes my life so stress-free to slow down, like I stopped caring what people think about me on the road, like I feel good about obeying the law, like the funny thing is people who pass me end up right beside me anyway at the next red light!!!” Well, God had other plans, and He would rather me blog about the pride of all of that coming before a fall.
“It’s just a silly ticket, Kristi,” you say. “Get over it.”
It’s not the couple hundred dollars that bothers me. It’s the points that make my insurance go up, signifying that I am a consistently “unsafe” or “reckless” driver. It’s the fact that I really have been obeying and going the speed limit, and the day I go faster, I get caught. It’s that I’m so bothered by getting caught. It’s that I thought I had “arrived,” and somehow I was above messing up and getting caught. Why does that bother me so much? Especially after I had just posted about God’s sufficient grace this very morning? There’s a lot of lessons to be learned it that.
Daily Pension
One of the quickest joy-suckers is worrying about tomorrow. Tomorrow has so many unanswered questions, but why fear them? Today is one day, and there is grace enough. No more, no less.
As I read this today I chuckled at the implications for me personally. “A thirst which we may suffer in the month of June does not need to be quenched in February.” In my smiling mind I pictured an extremely large pregnant me walking around in my hot Summer kitchen, thirsty and begging God to make the month fly by me! I smile, and I must not worry about that day now while it is still February. The grace will come, and it will be enough!
A daily portion is all that a man really wants. We do not need
tomorrow’s supplies; that day has not yet dawned, and its wants are as
yet unborn. The thirst which we may suffer in the month of June does
not need to be quenched in February, for we do not feel it yet; if we
have enough for each day as the days arrive we shall never know want.
Sufficient for the day is all that we can enjoy. We cannot eat or drink
or wear more than the day’s supply of food and raiment; the surplus
gives us the care of storing it, and the anxiety of watching against a
thief. One staff aids a traveller, but a bundle of staves is a heavy
burden. Enough is not only as good as a feast, but is all that the
greatest glutton can truly enjoy. This is all that we should expect; a
craving for more than this is ungrateful. When our Father does not give
us more, we should be content with his daily allowance.
– C.H. Spurgeon
Ah, yes, this is the secret to true, ultimate contentment. May God remind me today that I would not welcome the burden of knowing more than today. I will thank God for today and happily enjoy its graces from the Master’s hands!
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