Can we overcome mountainous obstacles to love completely? Photo-wofwom.com
Love Completely!
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Today we look at loving completely. What a wonderful thought to love completely. So if you would, just write the words love completely on your bulletin, or in a notebook, or on you hand in indelible ink and live that way. Then all of our relationships will be wonderful and our lives complete.
That takes care of that!
If it were only that easy. Despite the command to us to love one another, it is often a struggle and it seems like we never quite get to loving completely.
Why?
Because there are mountains between us and loving completely. Three of them I will mention this morning: the mountain of misunderstanding, the mountain of me first, and the mountain of mistakes.
Mt. Misunderstanding—We often times go for months or years in some of our relationships without a hitch. Then comes some sort of misunderstanding—often over something that was never stated. Each person assumed something was one way when it may have not been perceived that way by both. We are made differently, see the world differently, solve problems differently, communicate differently, and value different things differently. Misunderstandings surface in marriages, in business and employment relationships, and even in church congregations. We are all human so we can count on experiencing some degree of misunderstanding.
Mt. Me First—If a bunch of guys are going to go with someone to somewhere at almost anytime, as they approach the vehicle someone will likely call, SHOTGUN! The passenger seat in the front is preferable to those in the back and that’s just the rule and our human nature says, “I want that for me.”
That is our nature. We see the world naturally from our perspective and our human nature says me first.
Mt. Mistakes—For all of our best efforts, we will make mistakes, many of these will hurt someone else. If you still have a heart beat at this moment, I can assure you that you are a person who has hurt and been hurt by a mistake of someone you care for. Mistakes are part of life. Whether we are discussing friendships, marriages, or business relationships, none are immune from mistakes.
Tragically, many relationships are abandoned on the mountain of mistakes. Even worse, is the fact that many of us build fortresses of bitterness on this mountaintop proclaiming that we will never be hurt again.
Relationships are tough. They are not for wimps. They require us to do something that we cannot do. They require us to go against our human nature which is to retreat to our position in a misunderstanding, to see the world from our perspective above all others, and to protect ourselves against being hurt by others mistakes or by refusing to take any risks for fear of being hurt or of hurting someone else again. Relationships are not natural.
That’s because they are supposed to be supernatural. We need supernatural help to overcome these mountainous obstacles to loving completely. It was God who said that it was not good for man to be alone, so why would we think that something like a marriage would work without him?
To overcome these obstacles we will stick with the metaphor of the mountain and scale it. We need rope, traction, and tethering.
The rope that we need is the rope of acceptance.
Acceptance means that we stop trying to change the other person and choose to cherish them for who they are. In what is now the 15th chapter of the letter that Paul wrote to the church in Rome, he challenged them to: Accept one another, then just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
In Genesis 2:25, we are told that Adam and his wife were naked and felt no shame.
It doesn’t go on to say, because Adam came ripped with six pack abs or Eve was Sports Illustrated swimsuit material. It just says they were naked and felt no shame. They accepted each other just as they were. No worldly influence had yet taken them off that course of acceptance.
Next we need traction. A rope doesn’t help much without traction. We all had some experience losing traction in the recent winter storms. Now imagine trying to make vertical progress without traction. Instead of gloves, and spikes, and ice cleats, this morning we look at the traction of loving actions. And those loving actions are consideration, cooperation, and commitment.
Consideration means to look out for others first. Philippians 2:5 tells us look out for another’s interest and not just our own.
Unfortunately, what we most often find in relationships instead of consideration is conditional love. If you do this for me, then I will do this for you. This may be offensive to some, but conditional love is not love at all. It is a business relationship. Jesus told us that even the pagans give tit for tat. They love the folks that do nice things for them.
In legal terms, consideration is that thing given in return for a good or service. It is an essential element of any contract.
The consideration that we seek in loving completely means to regard others more highly than ourselves.
Consideration is about unconditional love. That is there is nothing you could do that would make me love you more or love you less. Consideration is about unconditional love.
Next we look at Cooperation.
This is the team dynamic of relationships. It is not about me or about you. It is about us. This is the win-win of loving completely. Whether in our friendships, marriages, church groups, or employment relationships, we are thinking what would be the best for all of us.
That doesn’t mean thinking of what would be best for me, and then carefully wording my sentence to say, “I think we would all agree that this way would be best for all of us.” That not cooperation. The term is manipulation.
Cooperation is not about competition. If we want to love completely, we need to do poorly in math.
In math, 1+1=2.
In creative cooperation, 1+1=3 The sum is greater than the parts. Working for each other’s good, we can do so much more.
And in marriages and in teams, 1+1=1 That’s unity. A house divided cannot stand. The two are one.
The third loving action that we need to gain traction is Commitment.
Love is not love without the traction of commitment, of making that life-long commitment to each other. To do that, I share with you a story about legendary basketball coach John Wooden. If he lives to mid-October, he will be 100 years old, but regardless of how much more time he has on this earth, he has left a legacy of love and I’d like to share with you a letter written by one of his closest friends.
There has never been a finer person in American sports than John Wooden or a finer coach. He won ten NCAA basketball championships at UCLA, the last in 1975. Nobody has ever come even within six of them. He won 88 straight games; nobody has come within 42 since. There has never been another coach like Wooden. Loyal to one woman, one school, one way, walking around campus in sensible shoes and Jimmy Stewart morals. Discipline yourself and others won’t need to, coach would say. Never lie, never cheat, never steal and earn the right to be proud and confident. If you played for him, you played by his rules. Never score without acknowledging your teammate. One word of profanity and you’re done for the day. Treat your opponent with respect. He believed in hopelessly out of date stuff but never did anything but win championships. No long hair, no facial hair -- it would take too long to dry and you will catch cold leaving the gym, he would say. That one drove his players bonkers. One day, all American center Bill Walton showed up with a full beard. It’s my right, he insisted. Wooden asked if he believed that strongly, and Walton said he did. That’s good, Bill, I admire people who have strong beliefs and stick by them. I really do. We’re going to miss you. Walton shaved it right then and there. Now Walton calls coach once a week to tell him how much he loves him. Wooden is almost 90 now, but on the 21st of the month, the best man I know will do what he always does on the 21st of the month. He’ll sit down and he’ll pen a love letter to his best girl. He’ll say how much he misses her and loves her and can’t wait to see her again. Then he’ll fold it once, slide it into a little envelope and walk into his bedroom. He’ll go to the stack of love letters sitting there on her pillow, untie the yellow ribbon, place the new one on top and tie the ribbon again. The stack will be 180 letters high then because the 21st will be 15 years to the day since Nelly, his beloved wife of 53 years, died. In her memory, he sleeps only on his half of the bed, only on his pillow, only on top of the sheets, never between; with just the old bedspread they shared to keep him warm. You see, that kind of commitment is the key to lasting love.
Finally, in scaling these mountains together, we need tethering. If you have even seen mountain climbers, they have pitons and carabineers hanging off of their bodies, even when they go to Wal-Mart or go swimming. They have these devices for hooking each other together or to an anchor point so that no one falls to their death.
We are going to have misunderstandings. We are going to contend with the Me First attitude in ourselves and those whom we care about, and we are going to make mistakes. And we cannot scale any of those mountains without forgiveness.
We need the tethering of forgiveness so that no one falls too far. We cannot love completely without readily giving forgiveness.
Chris Shook, the coauthor of the book relates a story about marriages, and marriages but the thoughts can cross over to other relationships.
She says that too often we look at our marriages as new cars. They have that new car smell, that new car feel, and that new car shine. Everybody likes a new car. Over time, you get a few dings in the doors, the engine doesn’t perform like it used to, and that new car smell is replaced by the smell of chicken nuggets or stale French fries.
You can take your car to the car wash. You can clean and vacuum and even buy a scent called new car smell, but about a hour down the road, the dust is back on the windshield and that chicken nugget smell is back.
Eventually, people just get another car. That may be fine for meeting transportation needs, but too many people treat their relationships that way.
A better model for relationships, especially marriage, is that of having two boxes of broken pieces and putting them together over time. That’s what we are—broken pieces. We misunderstand, think of ourselves first, and make mistakes.
The broken pieces do not fit together naturally. They must be glued together supernaturally. Each person in the relationship must value the other person more, and be willing to give more, and not be worried about one thing that seems to snag all of us at some point. What’s that?
Have you seen the movie, Field of Dreams? If you haven’t, you better put it on your bucket list.
In the movie, Kevin Costner does everything that the mysterious voice and the scoreboard messages tell him to do, including building a baseball field in the middle of his corn crop. But there comes a point, where he asks, “What’s in it for me?”
Isn’t that our nature? What’s in it for me?
Isn’t that what keeps us from loving completely? What’s in it for me?
We can’t defy what is natural without the supernatural. Jesus, tell his followers:
Love each other.
I will die for you.
He washes the feet of his disciples.
He defies his human nature and tells us that in Him, we too can love completely.
So why don’t we?
Because before we even get out those doors and into the world, the world has gotten into our minds and told us, you are crazy to live that way. Put back something for yourself. Take care of yourself and if you have something left, then give other a few scraps. The world says that we would be fools to live loving others more than ourselves.
What did Paul tell us in the scripture I read in the beginning? He said it’s good to be called a fool.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Don’t let the world talk you out of abundant life because it sounds so contrary to the wisdom of the world. It is supposed to—the wisdom of God tells us to regard others, love others, and take care of them as least as much as we love and care for ourselves. In our special relationships, we should try to out love our partners.
If our days were so few that a single calendar page would hold them, could we then love completely, without conditions, and without reservation, without having to know, “what’s in it for me?”
My prayer is that we will try to do just that.
That with Christ we will attempt what is impossible without him—to love completely.
What do you call a guy with degrees in Political Science and Biblical Studies? What do you call someone that served as a Marine Officer for over 20 years and now pastors a church? What do you call someone with this unique perspective of the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of God?
Most folks just call me Tom.
Poems, prayers, promises, and Camel Spiders.
Take a look on the political side, try A Good Read.
Check out a leadership mix of Pastor, Parent, Marine, and American in Forward Deployed.
Comments