Tag: Gucci

Benevolent Love

Love.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes to the church of Corinth after receiving word of misunderstandings in the church and of people acting in ways opposing what Paul taught of God’s Word. Paul is my all-time favorite bible story, for so many reasons. He has a gift for writing that convicts, yet loves. Paul is a great example of who God is and how we are to approach each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Chapter 13 is titled “Love is the Greatest” in my bible… I would have to agree. Love tramples fear and casts out doubt upon strengthening the hurt and lost. The greatest commandments are based around love.

But first, let us look at how society tells us to love and what love is.

It is nearly impossible to scroll through social media and not see a post about how to love or who is lovable. Today, on Snapchat, a drawn girl tells herself she needs to be more loving to others but while walking behind someone who is moving at a slower-than-desired pace, suddenly the words, “I will destroy you and everything you love” escape her. Twitter is constantly filled with promotions for loving yourself and not caring about people who may have “done you wrong” even once. If anyone ever feels betrayed by someone in anyway, or even acted in a way you wish they hadn’t, you have a right to treat them as poorly as you wish, according to the world.

God, and His standards, are not of the world. He is love. He is unconditional, never-ending love.

“Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself.The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-39

This verse is not entirely too difficult to understand on the surface level. It’s a ‘easier said than done’ command. After experiencing the world without Christ, but also experiencing God’s grace and mercy, I strive to love my God everyday.

In any relationship where you truly love someone, you trust them, you obey them, you do not hide from them, and you don’t doubt them. This is how we are called to love the Lord. To trust Him, to obey Him, to not hide from Him, and to not doubt Him. I guarantee that in this life all of us have done the opposite of those four. What we do is dishonoring to God, therefore it cannot be love. 1 Corinthians 13 defines love clearly in verses 4-7, and it plainly states love cannot dishonor others.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is hard for my generation as it goes against the grain of the media. Constantly, I am being told that only I matter, no one else should be a worry to me. When we get hurt, we feel the pain and, depending on the person/the amount of pain, we take care of it. We hear and feel the monster inside the empty dungeon, that we call our stomachs, roar and, more times than not, we feed it to silence it. When the world starts to turn shades of blue and black, we pause for some time and drink water. We love ourselves. I know I trust my body when it tells me something isn’t right. I certainly obey myself, and I don’t doubt myself. This is exactly how we are to love others. They come first, always. No matter who “they” are, “they” are loved just as much by the Lord and should be loved by you and me, unconditionally. 1 Corinthians 13: 5 states love “does not demand its own way”. It is not self-centered!! Even if caring for someone else consumes your day, do it, love them.

Selfless love is what we are called to show.

“Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law.” Romans 13:10

Paul, again, writes a simple, convicting, loving letter to Christians, but this time to Rome. This one sentence has been underlined several times in my bible. It is very easy today to disregard anyone except yourself and those who support your behavior.

PSL told me other day that I will randomly be outgoing when I say “hi” to everyone I see. She isn’t wrong. When I feel the Lord working in my life, it suddenly becomes easier to just smile at someone or say hello while walking past them. It may be a small scale of love, but love has no boundaries. After a hard day, when I feel beaten down, a smile from a random person can immediately turn my mood. Love is kind. We should desire, with a fire burning inside of us, to always show the kindness of love, our God, to those surrounding us.

Selfless love. One of my biggest personal battles. About a year ago I embarked a “how dare someone like you do something like that to someone like me” attitude. Once I started into that mindset, I was the center of my world. If what you did was going to contradict my thoughts, plans, or behavior, you might as well forget. You weren’t a thought in my mind anymore.

When God opened my eyes to how wrong that is, everything changed. You cannot claim God and love others in a selfish way. That is not what God stands for. In a previous post I mentioned that Christ is my song. If I claim Him as just that, the song stuck in my head, then I need to represent who He is and what He stands for. God is love and love is not self-centered; others will always come first where love is present. By loving others, as defined in 1 Corinthians 13, we support Jesus, we promote God, we are true advertisements of who they are.

Now hold onto your seat, your hat, whatever you want to hold, hold it tight. This is going to contradict everything the world has to offer.

“Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for He is kind  to those who are unthankful and wicked. Luke 6:35

Hold the phone. Hold the front door. God wants us to do what?????? Love our enemies.

Do you need a second to catch your breath? It’s hard to soak in sometimes. The Lord calls us to love those who are wicked, because that is what He does. Again, if we claim Jesus we have to claim everything He stands for too, and He stands for unconditional love. Jesus is calling us to give without any strings attached to those who have personally hurt us.

My selfish love tells me to do the exact opposite. They hurt me, therefore they should feel my pain or even worse pain than what they caused me. But my Lord tells me otherwise. He sits me down and says, “Bobbie, I know they have hurt you, but I will repair your hurt and I still love them.” At first, that is like your friend hanging out with your ex. Woah, what are you doing? They hurt me and you’re my friend, therefore you need to be mad at them too. WRONG. God will always love all His children, and we need to be His lights, beaming His love everywhere we go. It may be challenging to learn how to selflessly love your enemies, God didn’t say it was going to easy, but it will bring a new light into your life.

“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows of God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much He loved us by sending His one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him. This is real love – not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and His love is brought to full expression in us.” 1 John 4:7-12

1 John 4:7-12 is an excellent recap of what I am trying to exclaim to each of you. I could not pick a smaller section of John 4 because love is so so so important, and what is stated here is so so so important to remember throughout every day.

“Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” Verse 10 hits hard. We do not love God as we say we do. If we loved God, we would never stray away from His desires for us. We would never doubt Him, nor would we hide from Him. Knowing our inability to love Him consistently, He sent His only Son to die for each and every person on earth so that they have an opportunity to spend eternity surrounded by only His love. That is love.

Verses 11-12 encase my most desired point for everyone to realize.

“Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and His love is brought to full expression in us.”

How can we not love each other when our God, whom we turn against daily, loves us to such an extreme? The Creator of the universe desires your heart and your attention. He wants the very best for you, regardless of your past, for when we are in Him we are created new. With a God like that, we are fools to not love each other to such a magnitude. To strive to love others as God loves you is to bring Christ back into the world.

The world is full of selfish love; I have my days, my moments, where I am only full of selfish love. There are days when the dining hall on campus serves an Oreo-cheesecake-cookie thing and it is beautiful. Pepper and I walked past it and knew immediately we wanted some after we ate our dinner. When I got up to get our cheesecake, I picked up a larger piece and a smaller piece. I’m sure you can imagine which piece I gave her.. the smaller piece. I was being selfish and only thinking about how much I wanted it, disregarding what Pepper wanted.

On a larger scale, Pepper was very sick the past week and needed medical attention. Our friend Altruistic, formerly known as Gucci, selflessly cared for her all day. I am not quite sure what he had planned for that day, but he rid all of his plans to make certain she was cared for and well. Taking her to the hospital for a few hours was maybe necessary in his head, and I don’t doubt that for a second. To the outsider, it was a perfect showing of selfless love; he pushed everything he was concerned about to care for someone else. He brought God back into the world that day.

“Three things will last forever – faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love.” 1 Cor 13:13

The greatest thing you can do is love everyone selflessly, as God commands. The greatest thing is to bring Christ into every day. Forget the selfish love the world promotes, pick up your cross, and follow Him. He will indubitably teach you how to love as He does, so open your heart.

My prayer is that you, and I the same, learn to love unconditionally.  That when people look at us they see the Lord’s love flowing out of us. Open yourself to Him, allow Him to fill you with His love to the point that you cannot help to love everyone you cross paths with.

Until next post, Look Up and Keep Going.

#JesusIsTheCoolest

~solacingresilience~

Walking Words

I am one of those people who loves to encourage others(hence the blog). As much I love to encourage, I yearn to be encouraged. Often, I find this encouragement digging deeper into the people around me, learning their stories. I put this desire into practice over the past few days; I asked close friends and family for 1-3 words describing their walk with Christ. I got back a multitude of answers from different views. It was refreshing to receive such enthralling, authentic, and personal answers to a complex yet simple question.

Now, it is time for introduce the new, beautiful people God has placed into my life that contributed to this post(and probably will be mentioned in many more because that is just how great they are).

  • Pepper – a cherished friend who I assume will be in my fondest memories
  • Amicus – a treasure in my life that has stood by my side through some of the hardest challenges I’ve been through
  • Illustrious – a friend who has challenged me, held my hand, laughed with me, and showed me the joy in life again
  • Gucci(I promise, this was upon request) – an admirable friend by which I’ve been blessed with the privilege of crossing paths with
  • PSL – a beloved friend who I await many mesmeric journeys with
  • Bambi – a dear friend who is open about promoting Jesus in every situation

“Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you. Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in obedience to Him and revering Him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land–a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.” -Deuteronomy 8:5-9 NIV

Before we go any further, please, wherever you are, praise Jesus for pomegranates. He truly is a good, GOOD father.

Thank you.

When researching what the bible says about walking with Christ, these verses stuck out to me like a peacock in the middle of a cow pasture. Read that passage again. How amazing is our Creator? He calls us to walk with Him and revere Him, and if we do just that He will bless us beyond what we can imagine.(Pomegranates, people, who could ask for much more???) My original plan was to single out Deut. 8:6.

“Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in obedience to Him and revering Him.”

But how could we miss what follows it:

“For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land–a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.” -Deuteronomy 8:7-9 

That is truly astonishing.

We all have our own paradise where we like to escape to mentally throughout strenuous days, or even physically when we are offered the chance. For some, paradise is a week at the beach, for some it is a backpacking trip, while others imagine paradise as their family in one home laughing and telling stories. Regardless of what your paradise is, you have one and probably see it as close to perfect. What Moses is describing in Deut. 8:7-9 is what the people of Israel would imagine as their paradise. The picture these words portray is a beautiful one. When you read it, I hope you imagined what it looks like! If not, go back and read it with your imagination cap on!!!!! In this land, the resources are going to be bountiful and THERE WILL BE POMEGRANATES!!!! How could the Israelites resist? They are promised to feast at every meal with an awesome view. It sounds like a trip I would like to take… anyone else want to tag along?

God did in fact promise this land to the people of Israel, but they did not get it acting a fool. He required actions from them that are stated clearly before the glorious pomegranates were mentioned. Three things are required for Israel to receive their promised land.

  1. Observe the commands of the LORD
  2. Walk in obedience
  3. Revere God

Our walks with Christ will include views just as inviting as verses 7-9 describes above IF AND ONLY IF we model our walk with Christ as the above three elements. Observe the commands of the LORD. Moses is referencing the ten commandments along with what the people of Israel have heard from the LORD personally. We are to listen to and study what the LORD is telling us through our personal interactions with Him, along with what he commands us to do through the bible.

Once we listen to and study what the LORD is telling each one of us, we are then called to walk in obedience. The hardest part of being a Christian, to me, is moving when God tells me to move and resting when He tells me to rest. I’m stubborn and often believe I know best, although that has been proven wrong a time, or two, or every single time(It’s like Jesus knows what is best for me or something…). Walking with Christ is fun, joyful, and terrifying at times. He uses our fears to bring Him glory, so when He tells us to move, we better hit the ground running. After reading those three verses, I am hopeful in thinking that we all are eager for Christ to tell us what to do next in order to get to our views.

Revering God. Standing in awe of the Creator of the universe and everything that is within it. Knowing and respecting that God is almighty, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient will do you and me a whole lot of good, including getting us to the beautiful view He has planned for us.

All in all, these verses teach us that if we walk with Christ, He will provide, and not only with what we need, but with what he desires for us. He is our Holy Father and he yearns to spoil us with riches, but like any effective parent, He will not reward disobedience. Our walk with Him can be hard and painful but He will turn the hurt into dancing!

When I asked for words that would describe personal walks with Christ, I am not sure what I expected but I am captivated with the responses.

  • Real, Best Friend
  • Intimate, Unbreakable
  • Purifying, Healing, Extraordinary
  • Hills, Meadows, Bridges
  • Essential, Sustaining, Humbling
  • Only getting better
  • Blind Faith, Empowering
  • On going, Up-lifting
  • Journey
  • Challenging, Worthy, Rewarding

For the most part, these are words I have heard since I can remember, words that the church uses quite often. But while reading the list wondering why I had asked this question and what I would do with these words, I realized I had not ever looked up the book definition of any of these words. If you have not either, I suggest you do. It will blow you away that people would use such words to describe the most rigorous journey of their life.

Whether literal or figurative, everyone was positive about their walk with our Creator, but I guarantee if you ask anyone of them, they will tell you it has not been an easy trek. When was the last time you did something that was scary, where you could not predict the outcome? When did you last go through a mess in your life that may still hurt to look back on? What were you thinking in the midst of that? I am almost 100% certain you were not thinking about how much you enjoyed it and cannot wait to do it again. We often fall to bitter thoughts and anger, often times toward God. I bet we did not feel strong in the midst of it either. While struggling with fear, uncertainty, and pain we feel small and powerless. However, the people above claimed words with positive, powerful meanings.

I cannot help but wonder if these positive words describe their walks with Christ because they have all seen a glimpse of that beautiful promised land on the other side of our struggles. They have experienced the fulfilling meals of the Spirit while taking in the extravagant view.

What are your words? Have you seen what the LORD can do for you and with you? He will make you beautiful and do beautiful things with you.

I pray you see what the LORD has planned for you; that you get to see your paradise. Wherever you are in life, I pray the LORD reaches you soon through all the pain and suffering you may be feeling to bring good into the world.

If you are comfortable sharing or just want to encourage other followers of Christ, comment your words or a blurb below.

Until next post, Look Up and Keep Going!

#JesusIsTheCoolest

~solacingresilience~