"Anyway" Love

I received the below in an e-mail and wanted to share it with all of you. Did you know that God wants us to love "anyway", not "because"? Enjoy...

On Valentine's Day, Meg went all out, giving her husband, Peter, his favorite candy and tickets to a hockey game. Later that night, she wrapped herself in a special outfit purchased just for the occasion.

Peter got her a card.

At the grocery store.

That he purchased on the way home from work.

He didn't add anything to it, either. He just signed it, "Peter."

A couple of days later, Meg tried to explain that she felt a little taken for granted. Apparently, Peter misunderstood her intent because two months later, when they celebrated their anniversary, Peter didn't get Meg anything.

"How could you not get me anything for our anniversary?" she asked Peter the next day. "Especially after our conversation about Valentine's Day."

"Well, I thought about getting you something, but it didn't work out," he replied. "And then I knew not to get you a card because you said you didn't like that last time."

"It's not that I didn't like the card. It's that the card alone seemed a little sparse. But even that is better than nothing ..."

Several months later, Meg had a birthday. This time, Peter got her a present – a kitchen tool set. Several weeks before, Meg had asked to borrow Peter's tape measure and screwdriver. Peter figured that Meg should have her own small set of kitchen tools so she didn't have to borrow his.

Meg recounted all this and then explained how she had tried to get her husband to read several how-to books on loving your spouse. He would read the first few pages, lose interest and never pick the book up again.

"I've realized this is never going to change," she confessed. "But I love him anyway."

Because ...

That last statement of Meg's, "but I love him anyway," is one of the most profound theological statements on marriage I've ever heard. Most of us base love on because, not on anyway. I love you because you're good to me. I love you because you're kind, because you're considerate, because you keep the romance alive.

But in Luke 6:32-36, Jesus says we shouldn't love because. We should love anyway. If we love someone because that person is good to us, or gives back to us, or is kind to us, we're acting no better than anyone else. In essence, Jesus is saying you don't need the Holy Spirit to love a man who remembers every anniversary – not just the anniversary of your marriage, but the anniversary of your first date and your first kiss. Any woman could love a man like that. Or if you love a wife who lavishes you with sports gifts, who goes out of her way to make you comfortable when you get home from work and who wants sex anytime you do – well, you're doing what any man would do. There's no special credit in that!

But if you love a spouse who disappoints you, who can be a little self-absorbed – now you're loving anyway. In doing that, you're following the model of the heavenly Father, who loves the ungrateful and the wicked.

... Or Anyway

Will you love only because? Or are you willing to love anyway? Will you love a man or woman who doesn't appreciate your sacrifice? Will you love a husband or wife who takes you for granted? Will you love a spouse who isn't nearly as kind to you as you are to him or her?

Just about every faithless marriage is based on because love. Christians are called toanyway love. That's what makes us different. That's what gives glory to God. That's what helps us appreciate God's love for us, because God loves us anyway. He gives and gives and gives – and we take Him for granted. He is eager to meet with us, and we get too busy to notice Him. He is good to us, and we accuse Him mercilessly when something doesn't go just the way we planned it.

But God loves us anyway. To love anyway is to love like God – and to learn about God's love for us.

That's love, the way God intended it.

Relationships

Ahhh relationships...where to start. I remember when my husband and I first started dating. He was all that mattered. I would do whatever he wanted to do if it made him happy. I loved to see him smile. I loved the sound of his voice, the smell of his cologne, the way he walked...Ok, enough daydreaming...on to the blogging...

If I can give you one piece of advice it's this. Relationships aren't going to stay good just because you're compatible. Times change us. All of us. None of us can escape it. Face it ladies, we all have hormonal "issues". Some have them worse and more frequently than others. And while the men out there may not like this, yes, you guys have them too. Stress changes how we react to things. Things that normally may not bother us, can drive us crazy. I once got mad at my husband for being too nice and offering to buy us things that we wanted at the mall. It's true. I know you're all thinking "What?? Jodi's not perfect?" Sorry, but it's true. We'll get through it together...

Let me share a secret with you. My husband still loves me even though I act a little weird every so often. Crazy, huh? After more than 13 years of marriage, we still love each other. Without a doubt, I love him more now than I did back when we were dating. We know that there will be times of stress, and trust me, there have been quite a few of those thanks to the economy, but we also know that we will be there for each other no matter what.

Dating is great because both involved are so infatuated that issues are mostly non-existant. However, that does eventually wear off. The "newness" of the relationship dulls. And you're only left with each other. Imperfect as we all are, the flaws start to creep up.

When a relationship is based on physical attraction, it is left wide open for issues in the future. Being physically attracted to someone doesn't provide a fix for a loved one's death. How do you comfort your boyfriend or girlfriend when their brother passes away if you don't know them in an emotional way? There has to be an emotional bond outside of physical attraction. That physical attraction will die without an emotional bond. Guaranteed.

When you find someone that you think you could spend the rest of your life with, you have to make the decision to stick with it. It's kind of like choosing to believe your friend over someone else if they say they didn't do something. You don't know for sure, but you still choose. I like to compare it to my faith in God. God may not always do things the way I want Him to, but I still believe in Him. If you think about it, all we have is faith. Faith in God, faith in our families, faith in our friends, faith in our work, and hopefully faith in ourselves. Without faith, what do we have?

One last thing. When you're in a relationship with someone don't let yourself wander outside of the boundary that only you can set for yourself. Be careful that you don't unintentionally find yourself suddenly having feelings for someone else. Don't take a chance that it will be "greener on the other side". Most of the time it's not true. No relationship is perfect. They all take work. Not "most" or "some"...all.

In closing, I can honestly say that I still love to do what makes my husband happy, I love his smile, the sound of his voice, the smell of his cologne, the way he walks...he's everything I will ever need in a husband. Nothing will ever change that. I've made my choice and I choose daily to nurture what I have with everything in me.

God's Will

I can't believe it has been 8 months since I last visited this site. I guess I had a mental block, or perhaps life just got in the way for a while. No matter what the reason, hopefully it won't so long between this post and the next.

This morning I woke up thinking quite a bit about life and love. Sorry ladies, but I have the best husband in the world. No arguments on this subject will be accepted. I know that he will always be there for me...I can make him so mad sometimes, but he'll still hold me in the middle of it if he thinks it will make it better.

As hard as it is for me to comprehend, the overwhelming love that my husband and I share pale in comparison to the love that God has for each one of us.

We all have our moments when we question God. After all, we are only human. Is He really there? Can He really love me even after all that I've done wrong...after all the times that I've gotten so angry at Him telling me simply to "wait"? These difficult questions, as hard as it is to believe and comprehend, have a simple answer. "Yes." God's will is for us to be happy, to have what our hearts desire, to live a full life.

I read a book a few years back that was titled "Blink" by Ted Dekker. While it was a fictional story, it forever changed the way that I view the choices that we make. In the first few chapters we meet the main characters. A man and a woman...of course...who were meant to be together. These 2 people who are from total different ways of life meet and God shows the man in just a "Blink" the consequences of the actions he will take. For example they were trapped in the back of a building and he sees what will happen and the consequences he will face if he chooses to go left and out the back compared to if he goes right and out the side.

I know that God sees from beginning to end. He is the Alpha and Omega. I don't question that at all. It is, after all, in the Bible. But think about this. God gave us free will. The freedom to choose. So many people out there believe that no matter what happens, it was God's will. It was God's will for children to be hit by a train and killed. It was God's will for such and such to die of lung cancer. After all God knew it would happen so He could have prevented it, right? And if He didn't, then He planned for it to happen to make us stronger.

We each have a choice to choose which way we will go. I believe that God sees from the beginning and to the end of EVERY choice we could ever make. If I choose to walk a path of crime, my ending will be different from the life I could have had if I had chosen to follow God. If I choose to stay home from church one Sunday, and I miss a life changing message where God reveals something to me, that wasn't God's will, it was me making a bad choice. We can choose to walk where God wants us to walk and live a life where we are changed from glory to glory...or we can choose to walk down a different path and live a life of sickness and despair. But whatever we choose, God knows the outcome.

The children who were hit by the train not far from my home recently. Some have told me that they believe it was God's will. That doesn't make sense to me. The mother was on the phone. She pulled onto the train tracks when she shouldn't have. She wasn't paying attention...to anything apparently other than her phone call...would she have heard God if He had tried to get her to stop? Maybe He tried to stop her at a red light and she ran it in a rush to get home or to get to dinner. Maybe He tried to delay her at work or at the daycare and she ignored that too.

It is not God's will for us to suffer. We go through things as a result of our choices in the past. We reap what we sow whether it's blessing or destruction. God has a perfect will for our lives, but we are human. The line doesn't move, we do. Sometimes we sway out of line, sometimes we fall out of line, sometimes we jump as hard as we can away from the line. I'm so glad that we are always welcomed back.

He Saw You

Today during my devotions I read from Hebrews 12.  The Inspirational Study Bible that I use has a Life Lesson for almost every chapter.  This one caught my attention like the story I posted a couple weeks back about the little girl and her mother.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did...

"He looked around the carpentry shop.  He stood for a moment in the refuge of the little room that housed so many sweet memories.  He balanced the hammer in his hand.  He ran his fingers across the sharp teeth of the saw.  He stroked the smoothly worn wood of the sawhorse.  He had come to say good-bye.

It was time for him to leave.  He had heard something that made him know it was time to go.  So he came one last time to smell the sawdust and lumber.  

Life was peaceful here.  Life was so...safe....

I wonder if he wanted to stay...I wonder because I know he had already read the last chapter.  He knew that the feet that would step out of the safe shadow of the carpentry shop would not rest until they'd been  pierced and placed on a Roman cross.

...If there was any hesitation on the part of his humanity, it was overcome by the compassion of his divinity.  His divinity heard the voices....

And his divinity saw the faces.... From the face of Adam to the face of the infant born somewhere in the world as you read these words, he saw them all.

And you can be sure of one thing.  Among the voices that found their way into that carpentry shop in Nazareth was your voice....

And not only did he hear you, he saw you.  He saw your face aglow the hour you first knew him.  He saw your face in shame the hour you first fell.  The same face that looked back at you from this morning's mirror, looked at him.  And it was enough to kill him.

He left because of you.

He laid his security down with his hammer.  He hung tranquility on the peg with his nail apron.  He closed the window shutters on the sunshine of his youth and locked the door on the comfort and ease of anonymity.

Since he could bear your sins more easily that he could bear the thought of your hopelessness, he chose to leave.  

It wasn't easy.  Leaving the carpentry shop never has been."

(From God Came Near by Max Lucado)

Most of us never leave the carpentry shop. The place where we are happy and comfortable.  Where life is simple...easy....   We never step out and do what we know God wants us to do.  When will you answer the cries for help?  God has a place for each of us in His ministry.  It's not always where we think it will be.  Listen for his voice and step out of the shop.

Choices, choices...

"You never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so.  You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided."  Phillips Brooks

Last year was a hard year.  I think it was hard for most of us in some way or another.  I look back on it with a deep sigh of relief that it's over.  I often have wondered why God allows us to go through the hard times.  Why do we sometimes "walk through the valley of the shadow of death"?  Why did this family member lose their job, or that friend have to go through a divorce? Why?  

I read a book once that was about different paths that people take.  It was a fictional book, but it made things seem so much clearer for me.  There was a woman who was trying to escape from a foreign country where she was being prepared to marry a man she had never met.  She didn't want to be forced to marry someone she didn't know so she ran away.  The family of the man she was to marry put the word out that she was to be brought back, dead or alive.  She had shamed their family honor.  

During this time, the book tells about a man who is having visions of this woman.  He felt that he was supposed to save her somehow.  Shortly after he started having visions of her, he met her as she was fleeing her country.  He saw different scenarios of what would happen if he took one path vs. another.  He was shown what would happen based on what choices he made.  

That was such an interesting thought to me.  I never understood how God could allow us to go through certain things like working at a job where the people are hateful or where you do your best, but you still get fired.

We all like that God gave us free will, right?  Free will allows us to stop and smell the roses if we want to, or go to the beach if we need a break or just want to spend some unscheduled time with our family.  We can drive fast in our convertible to take our minds off of our troubles, or choose to eat one meal over another...chocolate instead of vanilla.  Free will offers us so many options.  But what about when we make the wrong choice?  When we take a job based on what we think we need rather than the more fulfilling job that God has waiting for us?  What if this family member lost their job because they "chose" the job based on the wrong reasons.  What if that friend had to go through a divorce because they "chose" the wrong man or woman?  We love free will until it bites us in the tush and then we just love to blame God for it.

If you're going through what has been the greatest trial of your life, let me encourage you to hang in there.  Don't blame God.  Our everyday choices, not matter how big or small they may seem, direct where we will go in the future and ultimately direct our trials.  Will there be trials that come about when there is no reason?  When we didn't make a wrong choice?  Yes.  As much as I would like to say no, the answer is yes.  We live under the curse.  But God will be there to bring us through to another tomorrow where we can make yet another choice.  And always remember that God is never suprised by what we do.  He's never suprised when we make a wrong choice.  He's seen from the beginning to the end of every choice we will ever make or ever could make.  Ahhh choices... I need to go to the beach...

Alicia

Today I felt led to share an excerpt from "In the Eye of the Storm" by Max Lucado.

Theresa Briones is a tender, loving mother.  She also has a stout left hook that she used to punch a lady in a coin laundry.  Why'd she do it?

Some kids were making fun of Theresa's daughter, Alicia.

Alicia is bald.  Her knees are arthritic.  Her nose is pinched.  Her hips are creaky.  Her hearing is bad.  She has the stamina of a seventy-year-old.  And she is only ten.

"Mom," the kids taunted, "come and look at the monster!"

Alicia weighs only twenty-two pounds and is shorter than most preschoolers.  She suffers from progeria - a genetic aging disease that strikes one child in eight million.  The life expectancy of progeria vctims is twenty years.  There are only fifteen known cases of this disease in the world.

"She is not an alien.  She is not a monster," Theresa defended.  "She is just like you and me."

Mentally, Alicia is a bubbly, fun-loving third grader.  She has a long list of friends.  She watches television in a toddler-sized rocking chair.  She plays with Barbie dolls and teases her younger brother.

Theresa has grown accustomed to the glances and questions.  She is patient with the constant curiosity.  Genuine inquiries she accepts.  Insensitive slanders she does not.

The mother of the pointing children came to investigate.  "I see it," she told the kids.

"My child is not an 'it,'" Theresa stated.  Then she decked the woman.

Who could blame her?  Such is the nature of parental love.  Mothers and fathers have a God-given ability to love their children regardless of imperfections.  Not because the parents are blind.  Just the opposite.  They see vividly.

Theresa sees Alicia's inablility as clearly as anyone.  But she also sees Alicia's value.

...What did Jesus know that enabled him to do what he did?

Here's part of the answer.  He knew the value of people.  He knew that each human being is a treasure.  And because he did, people were not a source of stress, but a source of joy.

God offers salvation to everyone.  If you find yourself judging others, remember that God values them.  Think of what you can do to show God's love to the unlovely.

--- 

Isn't it great to know that God loves us no matter what?  It doesn't matter what we've done, what we've said, who we know, who we don't know... He has seen everything we've done, heard everything we've said...He even knows who we do and don't know.  And still,  just like a loving, bragging parent, God loves us.

Thursday, April 23

Welcome to Grace Exposed! This is my first official try at a blog. Hopefully it goes well, if not...well, at least I tried it!!

Throughout my life, there have been many, many ups and downs. The "ups" definitely outweigh the "downs", but the "downs" seemed so terrible while I was going through them. Financial difficulties, miscarriage, friend issues, school troubles, work changes, death of a loved one...life is full of change. Change is the only constant.

In all this change, in all this stress and through all these hardships, how do we find the strength to hold our head high during financial difficulties, to grow closer to our spouse during a miscarriage, to make it through all these trials? The only way I have found that actually works, is through peace. Our strength is in having peace. I know what you're thinking. That's stupid. Peace? Really? Yes, really. No, don't roll your eyes at me. I'm serious. Peace. Peace brings a calm to any storm. Remember when Jesus was on the boat? You know the one I'm talking about, a huge storm was raging, big waves, boat being thrown all over everywhere, grown men screamin'... Peace? Where?! There was NO peace anywhere even near that boat, right?
Sure there was.

At the stern of that ship as it was being tossed around like a toothpick, there was a man sleeping. A man who grew up like we all did for the most part. Physically birthed from a woman, grew up around family. Had friends, lost friends. Probably had more trials than most of us have had if we're honest... As hard as He worked to be what He was sent to earth to be, He was constantly rejected and told He was performing wonders through the work of Satan (Matt. 12:25-45). How many of us have quit doing what we know we're called to do because of rejection? That's a WHOLE nother blog!

So there He was, this man Jesus, sleeping away during this terrible storm...which was bad enough to be called a hurricane...after a long emotional exhausting day of teaching, and His disciples wake Him up. Jesus, we're going to die!! Don't you care? (Mark 4:38) Jesus gets up and calms the storm using 2 Greek words that translate to "Hush, be still". Now you and I both know that we'd have been like "What just happened?" Jesus knew He had nothing to fear from the storm. We should know that as well.

No matter what the storm is that you're facing, Jesus is there with you, always offering you the peace that only He can give. You can't find peace anywhere else. I've often wondered how marriages last without Jesus. I know that whatever occurs, that Jesus will provide the peace. But I have to have the faith that Jesus is there with me no matter what before I can have that peace. The great thing about peace, is that it gets easier to have peace with every trial you go through. Each trial is a stepping stone. Will your stepping stones take you up? Or down? I choose to go up...through Jesus.