Sacrifice--4: Sacrificial Love

Sacrificial love is love that is unselfish, given freely, without strings attached--without conditions. It means loving the unlovable and the difficult. The Bible says we should love others as we love ourselves. It does not say we should love people who love us, or people who are charming and nice to us, or people who are of the same nationality or belief system. It simply says we should love others--that means all others. Such loving requires the best of us.

I have found a couple of blogs that talk about sacrificial love. Here is, in part, what they say.

RLC of “Eternal Joy” (fightingforeternaljoy.blogspot.com) says the only truly rewarding kind of love is that which is based on giving of ourselves:

I think most people lack love in their lives because they give so little. The woman who neglects her children and her marriage will find very little fulfillment in either. She will spend her time looking for love when all the while it could be found in her home. When we invest in the lives of others, especially those who God has placed in our homes, we will find satisfaction. The world teaches us it is better to receive than to give, but our Savior said just the opposite. Throughout the Scripture we see that when we meet the needs of others God will meet our needs (see Isaiah 58).

I have seen countless young mothers refuse to discipline their child "because they just want to show them love." What they don't understand is that love often comes in the form of discipline. The Scripture teaches that if God does not discipline us then we know that we are not truly His children. Our culture is in direct opposition to a Biblical worldview. The world tells us to satiate our children's desires rather than train them. We must come to grips with the fact that we have been given a trust from God. Our children are given to us not so that we can give them what they believe is their hearts desire. Rather, we are the adults who have much more experience and wisdom. As believers in Jesus Christ, we have the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit. We are called to do what is for their benefit whether it pleases them or not. I once heard a mother say "we are not called to make them happy, but to make them holy." A superficial happiness that comes with always having things their way is not what will make our children truly happy or holy. Of course, we cuddle them and laugh and play with them, but if we refuse to cross their will to teach them self-control and self-denial then we are not truly loving them. If we love them we will prepare them for a life of obedience and service to the Almighty Creator of the universe. And if we serve the Lord with joy, by God's grace, so will they.

Steve of "Harvest Boston" (http://www.harvestboston.net) says that he and some people he works with are tossing around the idea of setting up a neighborhood housing program.

I can see that this idea is based on the concept of sacrificial love: They’re called “Friendship Houses,” and the idea is that Christians live in a house in a depressed area, offering physical and spiritual help to their neighbors on a daily basis, befriending people — that sorta thing. The project may even get some government grants because of its emphasis on community regeneration and social justice. I am thrilled by the idea of “Friendship Houses.” Thrilled because they really have the potential to change the spiritual and physical landscape of our city. Christians refusing to say “come to us” for help and ministry, but literally landing in the middle of people’s neighborhoods and lives. The house is going to be a “safe place” for neighbors to hang out, talk, eat meals, or seek guidance. Amazing concept.

“Friendship Houses” also sadden me a little bit as well. Not the concept, per se, but the fact that the concept is considered “radical” or “out of the box” compared to the traditional ministry forms in Abilene and in many places. Shouldn’t every Christian home be a “Friendship House? Shouldn’t the concept of being “salt and light” in our neighborhoods be embedded in each believer from “new birth”? Shouldn’t service to the needy around us be a natural part of the Christ-life? Isn’t “radical hospitality” (the radical openness of ourselves and our homes to those around us) a virtue that all Christians should espouse?

Yes. Amen.

~~~

And...........Help! I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make this blog accept links to other sites. I have read the help notes over and over, and when I try to publish it with links, it always says it doesn't have the right "tags" or something like that. I don't understand! Can anybody help me?

Sacrifice--4: Sacrificial Love

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2006/01/sacrifice-4-sacrificial-love.html

The Homeless--Any Prospects?

Every night, nearly 200,000 homeless veterans sleep on the streets. “A disgrace,” says former Secretary of Veteran Affairs, Jesse Brown, “that we have men and women who served in American uniform who are out on the streets with no place to go and few prospects for a better life.”

The little bit of information above came from the web site, linked here, of Dignity Memorial, a homeless veterans’ burial program that provides free, appropriate funeral services for qualified homeless veterans. That’s a generous gesture.

But what about their lives? Are they to be left alone under a bridge or on a park bench until death, and then washed, dressed, and buried in a decent way? I believe I see some irony here.

A Google search shows this linked web site of National Homeless.org. After much beating around of the proverbial bush about studies and assumptions, the author says

the total number of homeless people in the United States is “approximately

3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children,” according to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. That is a disgrace.

The United States has the reputation of being one of the most advanced, wealthiest, least hungry nations in the world; many generous Christians live in this country, and the church is not persecuted. Why would so many people be destitute? Is our love too small?

Mark Labberton is the author of a Christianity Today article entitled “The Lima Bean Gospel.” He posits that the church today does not give much evidence of obeying the gospel call; maybe it isn’t politically correct to be zealous, and we worry about that. Labberton says:

Jesus Christ, the Lord of Creation, Redemption, and Fulfillment, calls the church the salt and light of the world. Jesus seems to have had in mind a community engaged in vigorous, self-sacrificing mission that goes to great lengths to enact costly love, that inconveniences itself regularly to seek justice for the oppressed, that creatively serves the forgotten, all to portray that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Depending on where we look in the world, however, that church seems to have gone missing.

We should take a close look at ourselves. When Jesus said we should love God with our whole beings and love our neighbors as ourselves, he meant it; he said those two commandments embody all the ten commandments.

If we truly loved our neighbors as ourselves, we would be loving sacrificially. It's pretty clear that we are usually quite willing to go to great lengths to ensure satisfaction of our own needs. So, logically, if we loved others as ourselves, we'd be more than willing to help people who suffer dire need.

The fact that we, the whole body of Christ, are not willing to act in sacrificial ways shows that our concept of God's love is indeed too small.

As Labberton points out, our God is the creator of the universe, including “300 kinds of hummingbirds” and great diversity among human beings. He says Christianity has been accused of being too bland and weak to offer any answers to the huge diversity of overlapping cultures today. We act as if our love—our gospel—is small.

The only answers, he argues, that will show Christ to the world “will require us to consider again that very thing Jesus says is central to God's kingdom, the most life-enlarging and non-homogenizing reality: love.”

The Bible says we should show our love in actions, not just talk about it:

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. 1 John 3:17-19

Love is the most powerful force in the universe. If the Christian church worldwide wanted to, it would act out this love, the sacrificial love of Christ. And then 200,000 homeless veterans would not have to wait around until they die to get help. Over 3.5 million other homeless people, including children, would not have "few prospects."

*I borrowed this picture from the "Oldtimer Speaks Out" blog; Oldtimer said the picture came from Flickr .

The Homeless--Any Prospects?

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/01/every-night-nearly-200000-homeless.html

Forgiveness and Love

Gattina wrote a comment on my entry "Love Others..." a few days ago. She said,

I really admire these people having such a faith in god. But I think even people without any believe also could do that. In my opinion you don't have to be a christian and believe in god to be a good and selfishless human. It depends on your character. I think nobody would know himself enough to know the way he would react in such a situation.

Gattina—I think you are right, in some ways.

I think it is entirely possible for people who don’t necessarily believe in God to be good, generous, compassionate, and forgiving. And it is true that no one knows how he would react in a situation like this. But I believe the circumstances here are unusual—the Amish families' forgiveness and the older girl’s self-sacrifice, both. In both, I see great acts of love, beyond what the usual person could give.

I believe average people, believers or not, would have a very difficult time forgiving a man who murdered their children. Believers and nonbelievers both struggle with the need to forgive.

We have a fairly easy time forgiving people when they cheat us in games, when they cut in front of us in traffic, if they talk behind our backs, and maybe even if they are unfaithful in marriage. But the death of a child is one of the very hardest things to deal with—we are supposed to die before our children do. We are not supposed to have to outlive them, especially because of murder. When they forgave Charles Carl Roberts, they sacrificed their self-serving desire to lash out at his family, to hate him. That's what most people would have done.

And the thirteen-year-old girl who offered herself, in hopes that the younger girls might be saved—I believe such acts of selfless sacrifice come from the heart of God. It reminds me of the self-sacrifice of the character Sydney Carton in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, in exchange for the life of Charles Darnay, for the love of his family. It reminds me of God’s sacrifice of Jesus, in exchange for our deserved punishment, for love of us.

First John 3:20 says, “For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” And verse 23 says, “this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us." Chapter 4, verse 10 says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And verse 12 says, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

Unconditional, sacrificial love is powerful. To be able to love like that takes great faith in God and comprehension of his love. We are called to love the way God does—to love people regardless of the return, regardless of how we are treated.

Forgiveness and Love

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/forgiveness-and-love.html

Love Others . . .

Sacrificial love has for some years been a concern of mine. Exactly what does it mean? What does it require of us?

I wrote a series of posts about sacrificial love back in January, in case you wish to read them. I will write about it again, I am sure! I am deeply touched by the Amish people's reaction to the murder of some of their little girls a little over a week ago.

On the “Beta” version of Blogger, we can’t do “blog this” yet; maybe we will soon be able to do it. So in the meantime, I want you to read this excellent piece written by Andrew Thompson, who writes the blog “Gen-X Rising.”

Greater Love Has No One Than This . . .
posted Monday, Oct. 9, by Andrew Thompson

It was one week ago today that a milk truck driver named Charles Carl Roberts walked into an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania and shot 10 Amish schoolgirls between the ages of 6 and 13. He killed 5 of them and himself. The horrifying and senseless nature of the crime has been placed in bold relief by the reaction of the Amish community, which has both forgiven Roberts and reached out to his widow and children.

Those terrible few minutes in the schoolhouse were also witness to an incredibly powerful act of Christian self-giving. A recent CNN story reports that Marian Fisher, one of the murdered schoolgirls, asked Roberts that she be shot first because she thought it might serve to save some of the younger girls. Her younger sister Barbie, who was seriously wounded but survived, has related the story to adults.

Think about that for a second. Could you make such a sacrifice? Could I?

That 13-year old girl could, and she did. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

This is love as Jesus taught it. It wastes no energy on sentimentality or ephemeral "feelings." It is grounded in a disposition of self-giving and expressed in acts of self-sacrifice. It is the love that all Christians are called to receive and express, however imperfectly.

Faced with monstrous evil, Marian Fisher responded in the most sublime way possible for a Christian - she offered her life for the lives of her sisters.

Love Others . . .

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/love-others.html

Sacrifice--3

This "Sacrifice" series is about sacrificial love: what does that kind of love mean for my life?

Jesus said that the whole law of Moses, handed down by God, could be summed up in two commandments: love God with everything in your power, and love others as much as you love yourself.

If we point our whole force of love outward toward God and other people, we won’t have much room for self-centered thinking. And our thinking determines our behavior. So if we are completely occupied with loving as the main focus of our lives, our actions are bound to be the loving kind. That means we could do things for other people, without demanding any kind of repayment. It means we would put other people’s needs before our own and be deliberate about fairness and justice. We would be merciful and forgiving. We would feel a responsibility to take care of the children, the needy and the oppressed.

We would try to be like Jesus Christ. Loving others above ourselves, I believe, is the way to live sacrificially. It all fits together, and the key to it all is love.

Sacrifice--3

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2006/01/sacrifice-3.html

Sacrifice--2

This continues my thoughts about sacrifice. What does the ancient idea of sacrifice have to do with our lives today? I'm working on figuring that out.

Why sacrifice an animal? The concept of blood sacrifice is far from the understanding of us modern-minded folk. Sin was and is serious, leading to separation from God—blood was required. The Bible says life is in the blood, so blood had to be shed--the giving of a life, from a perfect animal—setting up understanding for the time centuries later when God would sacrifice his son, the perfect lamb, the lamb of God.

Throughout the Old Testament, God repeatedly told his people that animal sacrifices were good, but he would really rather see them heed his word (1 Samuel 15:22). He wanted them instead to be merciful and to acknowledge him as God (Hosea 6:6). He wanted them to first have a spirit that was not self-righteous but "broken," alive and open to him, grieving over their sins (Psalm 51:17). He wanted them to be faithful and fulfill their vows to him (Psalm 50:14). And sacrifices were fine as pledges or cleansing--as long as their hearts were right, as long as their need for his forgiveness was sincere.

But Old Testament people were much like us: sinful, inconsistent, unfaithful creatures, self-centered and too self-reliant. Their hearts were often wrong, like ours. And, fiercely independent like us, they tried hard to solve all their own problems and fulfill their own needs.

So when the time was right, God sent the ultimate sacrifice, the perfect unblemished lamb, Jesus Christ. He died at three o’clock in the afternoon, and when the shofar sounded that day, many understood the implications of the death of Jesus, the lamb of God. Through Jesus' blood, the tables were turned. God did a sort of divine switch on man, making the sacrifice himself out of his immense love for us, and everything changed.

This sacrificial lamb rose again, conquering death and giving hope and life to humanity. According to the new covenant, the covenant of grace, people did not need to make any more animal sacrifices, which they could not often get right, anyway. The punishment they deserved because of their sins was cancelled; they were forgiven and the huge burden of guilt laid on them by the requirement of periodic animal sacrifices was lifted. All they had to do was accept his love, his awesome, intense love. "Awe" in Hebrew means "heavy." And his love for us is, in both that language and today's slang, "heavy."

Sacrifice--2

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2006/01/sacrifice-2.html

Peace is possible

Late this afternoon, I went to the grocery store, intending to whip in and out in a hurry. The check-out line slowed me down. As I stood there impatiently waiting my turn, I noticed a father and son, also waiting. They were snarling at each other.

The boy, about nine or ten years old, was hanging back at the end of the nearest aisle, his arms crossed defiantly, while the angry father was almost to the check-out counter. The boy muttered, “I hate …(something inaudible), and I always will!”

The man glared and pointed at him and said, a little too loudly, “Shut up. You. Now.”
Then he took hold of the boy’s arm and jerked him closer. Both angrily frowning, they cast mean looks at each other without saying anything more. As they left the store, the boy walked some distance behind the man, his arms still crossed. The man, of course, was much larger than the boy and could have ripped him to pieces; maybe he did, later. They got into a car with a woman who appeared oblivious and drove away.

I thought about Martin Luther King, whose life and dream we celebrated yesterday. King knew that the heart cannot be won by force, anger, and violence. Those who are weak may find that they have to cooperate with an overbearing, stronger force in order to survive—but only because they have been overpowered. Their hearts will smolder and eventually burst into flame.

And I thought about the example of Jesus Christ, who through love and sacrificial living gives hope and a promise of peace, even in the middle of the turmoil of living. Through Christ, that little boy in the grocery store could grow up to be whole, able to love and be loved. But without Him, the boy may never get beyond anger.

Peace is possible

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2006/01/peace-is-possible.html

Sacrifice

Several years ago, I read this passage by Martin Luther King to my adult Sunday School class: "What the world of today needs is a return to the sacrificial spirit of the New Testament . . . ." We all nodded wisely in serious agreement.

Then Matt, an intelligent young man who often has questions, asked, "What exactly does that mean?"

Umm, well . . . , we all offered interpretations, none of which seemed very satisfactory. Ever since then, that question will not leave me alone.

Now, I am not a Bible scholar, having been a decidedly lukewarm Christian until 1994 when God scooped me up and gave me the most incredible sense of his love. I have been trying to understand sacrifice so that I will know what Martin Luther King meant--and more important, so that I will know what Jesus meant. It seemed then, and it seems now, to be the key to everything.

At first, I tried limiting my study to the New Testament--but, of course, I found that I needed to be able to grasp the concept in the Old Testament. I saw Abraham taking his son Isaac, who was precious to him, up into the mountains because God told him to go to a place he would show Abraham, build a fire, and sacrifice this boy to him. I asked myself—and God—how in the world did Abraham feel about this? Did he know all along that God would provide a lamb, rather than requiring the death of the boy?

He must have had that kind of faith in God, or he would have refused to do such a thing, or at least hesitated. Abraham’s calm confidence in God must have been communicated to Isaac, or he would have had hysterics, or at least questioned his father. God loved Abraham too much to require the sacrifice of his son. And besides, Isaac was a big part of God's covenant with Abraham.

He is a God of life, not of death and sorrow. I believe God was showing his people—Abraham and those to come—that the ancient practice of child sacrifice was never to be performed again, for one thing. They were to use a perfect animal for the sacrifice. Every day at three o’clock someone blew the shofar at the temple to announce that the lamb had died, and the atonement was complete.

Sacrifice

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2006/01/sacrifice.html