What are the outcomes of Loving Freely?
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.” (I John 3:1)
Brennan Manning says it like this in Abba’s child, “Who am I?” asked Merton, and he responded, “I am one loved by Christ.”
In the movie, Ragafummin, made about the story of Rich Mullins, who struggled greatly with the unconditional love of God because of his experience as a young man with his early father, Brennan Manning’s voice in the very beginning is, “The question that God is going to ask us when we see him is, ‘Did you really believe that I loved you?”
Receiving the unconditional love of God as the Father, Christ as our brother, and the Holy Spirit as our comforter is one of the hardest things we as American Christians have a hard time understanding. We’ve been conditioned by our culture to work for everything we get, yet this is not the gospel of Jesus.
We simply receive as Paul says in Romans 5:11, “Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Reconciliation is not something we work for, it’s something we simply receive.
This is why I deeply appreciate the work of Serving with Dignity and the asset based community development concept among those who’ve been marginalized. We don’t “bring” anything to the marginalized, we simply receive what God is already doing among our friends and neighbors in marginalized places. We recognize that God is a reconciling God and that this is on his heart. This results in us;
We recognize that God is in the world reconciling all things back to himself and his people to each other, regardless of how hard it is.
We listen more than we talk.
We receive more than we give.
We learn to deal with root issues of poverty and our false selves rather than applying band-aid approaches.
We seek to live out a ministry of Christ’s reconciliation with our friends in marginalized places rather than seeking to be the hero.
We can only welcome the other when we welcome the other in us. The other in us is someone that makes us feel uncomfortable, is a stranger, is often times hard to face. But, upon welcoming the stranger inside of us, it opens us up to Gods healing grace in the deep interior parts of our lives, and then this allows us to love others freely.
We live all of this because of being in Christ, we can now seek the interests of others more than our own as Paul says in Philippians 2. If Christ seeks our interests and calls us the beloved, we can then love and serve others affirming them as the beloved.
Here are Seven Practical indicators of what this looks like;
An ability to pay attention internally as you love and serve others constantly examining your motives.
We must be willing to examine why we are doing what we are doing. A great resource for this is Pastor Sebastian Holley’s book, Motive Matters.
Are were serving out of an unhealed emotional wound from our past?
To give up power and control to those you are serving allowing their thoughts and opinions to guide the serving process.
This is the heart and thrust behind building a dignified interdependent relationship with those you serve from Dignity Serves.
Explore the concept behind “asset based community development.” It’s easy to rush and meet a need when it is seen. To love freely means to enter into a relationship long term with someone and give and receive with the person you want to serve.
To love others with no strings attached or agenda.
We are all guilty of loving others with ulterior motives. If we are rooted in Christ, we then need nothing from others, thus can love others freely.
When Christ fills all of our emotional needs for affirmation or approval, the need to be in control, safety or security, or to be our own god, we then give away freely.
To listen more than talk.
"It takes two to speak the truth, one to speak, and another to hear." Henry David Thoreau
This is particularly true when building health cross-culture, racial or class relationships. The tendency is to talk more than listen to people’s experiences of what reality in this world is like.
To release the change to God.
“People are more important than change.” Dignity Serves
Paul says in Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you, will complete it.”
To seek to be changed by God’s Spirit more than try and change others and circumstances around us.
In a loving interdependent relationships built on “giving and receiving” from Philippians 4:15, we are constantly paying attention to how Christ is coming to us through others.
“Every single person you will ever meet knows something that you do not.” Philip Bray, Safehouse Outreach.
To truly enter into the pain of others because you’ve entered into your own.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be un-lived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” (Maya Angelou) This is true about facing the sin of our past, both in our own lives and in our country.
When we truly enter into the pain of our own lives, this allows us to enter deeply into the pain of this world.
All of this leads us loving others freely, unconditionally, and patiently. The goal of Loving Freely is to love others so well that we need nothing in return. This is what Jesus is getting in Luke 6 when he calls us to love this who don’t love us back. To do do good to those who don’t do good to us. To lend to those who can’t repay us.
The opposite is to give with an agenda that’s controlling, manipulative, and codependent or narcissistic. All the things that are true of us when we are operating out of the false self.
Henri Nouwen says it like this in, The Return of the Prodigal Son; “Can I give without wanting anything in return, love without putting any conditions on my love? Considering my immense need for human recognition and affection, I realize that it will be a lifelong struggle. But I am also convinced that every time I step over this need and act free of my concern for return, I can trust that my life can truly bear the fruits of God’s Spirit.”
But……when w are so rooted in God’s love as his beloved child, we can give and love freely, needing nothing in return. It’s exactly what Jesus says at the end of this sermon on loving our enemies, “Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Our reward is great because we are receiving everything from the Father that we don’t receive from others.