Question: What is Love (part two)

So my last post was about answering the question, “What is love?” After talking about it a lot, I finally brought you to a list of what love is, along with one of what love is not.  This list came from breaking down the Apostle Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians 13.  If you haven’t read that post I suggest checking it out here.  

Today we’ll continue that subject and look at how a person can love.  Looking at all of those traits it seems like an extremely daunting task to obtain all of them.  In actuality, when I first made the list I didn’t think that I possessed any of those traits.  I fit in better with the Hate side than the Love side.  So how did I change myself?  Well, honestly I didn’t, God did.  I know cheesy answer but I’m going to take you through the practical things I found.  

First thing to do is to make sure that you know God.  Here’s what I mean.  To love like God loves, which is described in part in 1 Corinthians 13, we must know God because God is love.  I’m getting this from a letter the Apostle John wrote to several churches in the late 1^st century.  It states; 

“7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8

What this says is that love comes from God.  If we have been born of God, meaning we have a relationship with Him through the salvation of his son Jesus Christ, then we can love fully like God because God is in us.  Well, that was a mouthful.  Maybe it’s better said like this - Because God is love, and we are in him through his Son Jesus, you/I can learn to love like God.  

This is really the only way to love fully, is to be in him.  Yes, we can argue that those of you who don’t believe in God can love as well and a semblance of that might be true, however, I’m under the firm belief that it is through God that we can obtain a love that is immensely greater than our own.  

The second thing I had to do was transform my mind.  Paul writes in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  What this means is that for anything to change in my life, I must first change the way I think about it.  For me to view myself as a loving person, I had to change my mindset and in doing so, God transformed my heart.  

Now don’t get me wrong here, this is not easy and it is a process.  It took us nearly a year of me working at Starbucks dealing with all kinds of difficult, demanding people to come to the realization that the entire purpose of me being there had been fulfilled.  I’m not done either.  The process is continuing to this day and will continue on, but the transformation is one of the essential steps in learning to love.  

So, time for a self-assessment.  Are you loving like God is calling you to love? Are you being honest with yourself? 

Book Review: Living Close to God

I’ve said it before, but periodically I’ll write reviews on some books I get for free from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers.  I usually enjoy the books I get and God uses them to speak some great things into my life. Basically, I learn some good principles. The book I’m writing a review on here is no different. 

Living Close to God (When You’re Not Good At It) by Gene Edwards is a book about learning to fellowship with God throughout one’s busy day. It’s about having a spiritual life for spiritually handicapped or practical people. It’s about furthering one’s walk with Christ beyond merely reading the Bible and praying, but about genuinely walking day by day with the Lord.

Throughout the book, Edwards gives practical advice and steps, that he has personally taken, to learn how to fellowship consistently throughout one’s day. Some of these include finding God in the quiet places, putting up small reminders in places that one frequently goes, and finding cracks in the day where one can simply be with the Lord. 

While Edwards gives great practical steps for the “spiritually handicapped” to walk with the Lord, he’s not very consistent in his explanations.  At times the throughout there are redundancies upon redundancies to such explanations as ‘partaking’ of the Lord. Other times the content seemed to be shallow and simply a space filler. One such instance would be chapter 18 where he discusses pursuing Christ in a corporate setting. I would have loved for him to expand on these thoughts further, but they seem to be quick afterthoughts. 

There are other instances of inconsistent explanations in this book, however this is my only complaint about the work. For all practical purposes this is a great book and I would recommend it for those seeking a way to walk closer with Christ, even though you may not be good at it! 

Like I said earlier, I received this book for free to review from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers. If you would like your own copy I suggest Amazon. 

David

Book Review: How Good is Good Enough?

So my last blog was a book review on the topic of Hell.  This time I chose a book viewing life-after-death from the other side, Heaven.  So here is my review of Andy Stanley’s take on what it takes to get to heaven titled How Good is Good Enough?

In his book How Good is Good Enough, Andy Stanley discusses a popular view of what it takes for people to get into heaven, being good enough.  Throughout this small book he considers the pros and cons of the good enough theory. It is throughout his discussion that the reader learns of many of the holes in this extremely popular theory on what it takes to get to heaven. 

Here is a small taste of Stanley’s recap of problems that arise in the good people go to heaven theory: from page 61

• We don’t know exactly what good is. Even our religious leaders can’t agree on the subject. 
• We have no clear indication from God how the scoring system for good deeds works. 
• We can’t use the Bible as a gauge to measure how close we are to getting in.  The Bible doesn’t claim to offer a way to heaven through good works.  Besides, the catalog of good works listen in the Old Testament is culturally irrelevant and physically impossible to keep.

After logically and theologically debunking many of the good enough myth, Stanley offers a great discuss on the relevance of fairness vs. truth.  In this he describes that just because something is true does not make it fair.  Many people find this to be the case when discovering Christianity.  Yes, it is exclusive.  That may not seem to be fair to us, but that doesn’t make it untrue.  Stanley suggests that after reading this book, if one still has reservations, to continue to investigate Christianity.  

I would definitely recommend this book if you are unsure of what it takes to get to heaven or if you just want to explore a different route give it a shot.  

I received a free copy of Andy Stanley’s book How Good is Good Enough? from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers to review. If you would like a copy of this book I suggest buying it from Amazon.com here. 

Book Review: Hell, Rob Bell, and What Happens When People Die.

So, periodically I’ll post a review of a book that I’ve read.  I know it doesn’t normally fit the topics I talk about on my blog, or maybe it does because they’re so random, but I still like to do them.  It helps me understand and further think out what these books talk about and it helps me fully develop my own opinions.  I also hope that it helps you, my eight or nine readers think about things you might not have before. So here goes my review of Hell, Rob Bell, and What Happens When People Die. 

In the firestorm of controversy that the popular Love Wins by Rob Bell has created, Bobby Conway seeks to defend the traditional doctrine of Hell.  Even though this is a difficult topic to discuss in today’s culture of tolerance and acceptance, Conway strives to speak the truth in a loving and encouraging approach.  As Conway himself says, “This book is an attempt to clarify what happens when each of us dies… I am not attacking Rob Bell but rather defending orthodox Christianity” (14).  Much of this book is written with a meticulous amount of detail paid to the original text.  In a time where Scripture is continually twisted, revised, ignored and re-defined by many, Conway says, “We don’t have the right to redefine God’s Word to make it palatable” (18).  

While Conway’s defense of orthodox Christianity’s view on hell is enough reason to read this book, his careful breakdown of Bell’s theology on the subject can help readers discover how to identify false prophets/teachers in the Christian faith.  We find through Bell that even high profile leaders can have an incorrect theology.  This in itself should inspire Christians everywhere to learn to study Scripture correctly.

Conway finishes this book well by recognizing that not all who read this book would necessarily be a Christian.  He describes grace in an amazing way with a creative Gospel presentation that tells the reader exactly where he stands in faith.  

I received a free copy of Bobby Conway’s book Hell, Rob Bell, and What Happens When People Die from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers to review. If you would like a copy of this book I suggest purchasing it from Amazon.com.