Most of my weekdays start around 5am and usually end after
midnight. I start my days making sure
that my kids are prepped and ready for the day, have had some type of
meaningful communication and fellowship with God and then ensuring that they
are delivered safely to their respective “drop zones”, so that the “cheddar buses”
can transport them to school. The rest
of my day is filled with the usual tasks like work, splitting (dinner, kid
transportation, kid activities...etc.) responsibilities
with my wife and completing the countless other tasks that a couple with an
active teenage daughter and teenage son are required to handle. I look for opportunities to help others along
the way, coach youth football, serve in my local church and minister to both
family and friends along the way.
By human standards, I’m a “good dude”…good husband…good
father…good child of God, so why do I find myself at times feeling empty and taken for
granted after doing so many “good things”?
I Corinthians 13:1-3 MSG) reads:
“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic
ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If
I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making
everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,”
and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to
the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love,
I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do,
I’m bankrupt without love.”
No matter what “good” I do, if I don’t do what
I do out of a heart of love or from a compulsion, a deep urging, to release
love, then not only are my actions empty, energy consuming and meaningless but I’m literally “nothing”. I’m nothing without love. What a sobering statement! I can be doing what appears on the surface to
be significant and influential tasks for the Kingdom of God, within my
community and even in my house, but those things are shallow at best if love
isn’t the primary driver. Only what I do
for God and to serve others as provoked by love will last.
It is definitely time for a perspective and a
procedural shift!
No longer can I just do “good” things with
love, in the back of my mind or as an afterthought. I have to cover my thoughts and actions in
love. Love must saturate my being so
much that “self” will have no room to set up camp. I must choose to love before I actually engage
in the loving deed. Love must precede me
before I take action, cover me while I’m acting and be the sweet residue that
remains after my task is complete.
Love adds meaning to life. To love is to live!
Are you tired of “loving” in vain? Are you
tired of feeling empty after you have “served” or “loved“ others? Why not begin to make your daily tasks more
purposeful and pleasing to God by transforming them into acts of worship and
honor to Him by saturating them in love.
Plan to love! Do all that you do
because of love and watch your life take on new meaning and your interactions
become more meaningful. You will only begin
to live when you begin to practice a lifestyle of love! Are you ready for love?
Be Blessed,
B
