Love, war, and Starbucks

What is love anyways?

This past week I spent time on the Gold Coast, specifically Surfers’ Paradise, getting to talk to people about God, who He is, who Jesus is, etc. I had some of the most amazing conversations I’ve had in a long time. The people I spoke with actually wanted to talk about beliefs, unlike so many times when evangelism tries to happen in the west. There were on average about 50 of us doing this. There are stories of people coming to believe in Jesus as the Son of God who died for their sins. There are countless stories of this just being discussed. It was one of the best weeks I’ve had in a long time, and definitely one of the best weeks I’ve had in evangelism ever.

Now what if I were to say that these people are from the Middle East….from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan….

I have recognized in my own country that there has been a lot of distrust expressed towards Muslims and Muslim nations due to many different things in the past. I have seen hatred towards these people, words spoken out against these people, and a whole lot of negativity spoken over these nations. I see on the news the effects of war. I saw what happened years ago from my desk in history what happened when Osama bin Laden saw the fulfillment of what he had been planning for who knows how long. I see these countries and the pain that occurs within the people as well as the pain that occurs within my own culture because of the conflicts happening that involve us as a nation and sometimes as individuals. I can see where bitterness and hatred can arise.

Yet…this week I was faced with a reality. Those that we so quickly judge and call our enemies are our brothers and sisters. They are the neighbors that we are called to love. It makes me sad actually to see the way that the media can portray the Middle East and the people over there. I will not doubt the reality of the things that we see on CNN, but at the same time the very people that we are so quick to cast judgment upon many times are some of the sweetest, most hospitable, most upstanding people I have met. I cannot tell you how many people from our group, as complete strangers, were invited out for coffee or invited back to the family’s condo to come eat and just talk with them. Many of the families that we talked with have already extended an open invitation to us to come to their homes and they will show us around their country and teach us about their customs and traditions at home.

I feel sometimes like I’m stuck in between two worlds. I also have a group of men in the military that I am praying for while they are in Iraq. I want both sides to experience the love of God. So my prayers for our military is that they would come to know Christ in a deep relationship, so much so that it is physically evident to those around them, and for safety, that they would all return home to their families and friends. For the Middle Eastern culture, I pray that they will see the love of God upon our troops and be drawn into the heart of God. I pray safety upon them as well. I think most of all, I want the Muslim people to come to an understanding of what freedom exists in the love of Christ….and also something I learned from God the other day.

For Muslims, keeping the law is pertinent because, if they sin, according to their religion, they will be punished for that sin and then it goes on a tally board that tips the scales after they die to determine if they go to heaven or to hell. No one in the Muslim faith knows where they will end up, and so they spend their life striving after doing good things, hoping it will be enough for them.

I was reading a book a few days ago, and God spoke to me about the law. In the Old Testament, there are a lot of laws that God laid out for the people to follow. The law defined unrighteousness and sin, and it says in the New Testament that the law was created for the sinful people. I didn’t really understand this. So, after thinking and processing with God, I came to understand something. When Adam and Eve were first created, they did not need a law because they walked in perfect relationship with God. As long as they walked in that relationship, enjoying God, learning from Him, spending time with him, and most of all loving Him, there was no need for a law. God created us for relationship. However, we decided to break that relationship by becoming selfish. In breaking relationship with God, we could no longer return to Him and reconcile that relationship out of our own strength. Letting go of relationship with God is ultimately death because God is the only source of life…that is why sin is death. It tears us away from our source of life.

So, God laid out the law, not because we were supposed to be able to earn our way back to God- that is impossible- but because it defines how we break relationship with God. The law shows us a picture of what it is to lack love for God. Since we are human beings, who innately are sinful, we have this innate desire to be independent of God, which shows a complete lack of love for Him. The law came so that we could understand what it looks like to not walk in relationship with God.

In comes Jesus, who is fully human but fully God at the same time and is able to fulfill the law. This did not mean that he legalistically kept every single commandment and law God had laid out in the Old Testament…. it meant that He walked in perfect relationship with His Father. Not once in Jesus’ life did He ever turn away from God and choose to be independent of Him. Never. Because of this, the Bible says that the law was fulfilled through Jesus. Jesus walked in perfect love with God. Wow.

So Jesus, who has been the only human ever to walk in perfect relationship and in perfect love with the Father, became the atoning sacrifice for all of us who have turned away from God at one point or another. Through His sacrifice, we now have a promise. The law does not give life, but the promise of God does. The law that was fulfilled in Jesus’ life is now our inheritance. As we choose to walk in relationship with God, the law is fulfilled in us as well, but only because of Jesus. Jesus has restored us to be able to have relationship with God once again.

Galatians 5:21 talks about the things that result from a sinful nature and from us choosing to walk apart from God. These are the things that the law has defined. But the next verse talks about the things that result from us walking with God…the fruit of the Spirit…and then it goes on to say that against such things there is no law. This is because these are the things that result from us walking with God. This is the way life was intended to be, and love,joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control will just happen on their own as we walk in relationship with God.

I think as Christians, we see it to be a lot easier as well sometimes to just strive for good works. The sad thing is is that when we strive to do something good, we are not doing it with God, and our very best efforts are still tacked to the law because, apart from relationship with God, we are stuck to the law. Relationship with God does take time. It takes effort. It takes investment. That relationship, however, will be the wellspring of life for people. It is the source of everything good that we can do because our doing results from our being. Our fruit results from our abiding in God. Anything we try to do apart from Him is worthless because, like Ecclesiastes talks about, it is a chasing after the wind.

This is my desire for the Muslim nations. This is my desire for Christian nations as well. Relationship with God is everything. It is the source of everything. It will be the only way this world is changed permanently for good. This is what I desire to see rooted deep into my life, into the lives of my students here, and into the lives of people who want to know Jesus, whether they are Christians already or not. Our identity comes not from our works, from the fruit of our labor, but rather from our Daddy in heaven who has placed His heart in us and His authority on us. I want to cease striving and just being a daughter of God. From there, everything else will form naturally. I will not be able to help it….love will just be who I am.

This is my prayer for you. Regardless of where you are at, regardless of if you know God or not. My hope is that you see that God wants to be in relationship with you. He has created you to be in relationship with Him. He loves you, and He wants to give you rest forever from striving so that you can see yourself grow up to be like Him, the way it was always meant to be. You are created in His image….allow Him to be the one to call that image out of you. It is His joy and delight to see Himself formed in you day by day.

Seriously. The God who created this universe loves you. How awesome is that.

This entry was posted on August 26, 2008 at 7:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.