Love The Lord
So good men are the few who have learned to lean, learned to lead and they will also love the Lord. Now, we see that in I Corinthians 13:1-3 –
If I speak with the tongues of men and angels and do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have a faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all my possessions to feed the poor and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits mean nothing.
You see, the motive matters. Why I do what I do is important to the Father. It’s not enough to do something out of habit, although good habits are helpful. I must have the right motive. Why do I serve or lead? Why do I lean on Him? Because I love the Father. And that is the greatest commandment. All of us are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. I Corinthians 16 tells us:
If anyone does not love the Lord, He is to be accursed.
That’s a hard statement. But loving the Lord above life itself is what He calls us to do. Men have got to learn to love the Lord and learn to love their families.
Leading Is Loving
This was part of the discussion about learning to lead. You will remember God instructed the husband to love his wife, as Christ loved the church. There’s the test. It’s where the rubber meets the road. And it’s demanding.
You see, loving as Christ loves is more than an emotional satisfaction or physical attraction. Loving that way means seeking the welfare and the godly interests of the person we love. Once again, love is a verb. I’m doing those things for her and my family that will cause them to grow in godliness. That’s the job. And it’s a big job. We lead others for godly purposes, not for recognition.
Let me let me help you ladies out again. This is getting pretty challenging. So let me add a light hearted moment here. We love our wives for lots of reasons. We’re supposed to love them for all the right reasons. And we try to do that. However, on a lighthearted note, let me tell you a funny story.
A man was talking to his wife. She had done something he didn’t think was necessarily appropriate nor a good thing for her to do. He said to her, ‘I just don’t get it. How can you be so beautiful and so stupid at the same time?’ She replied softly with Godly wisdom, ‘God made me beautiful so you would love me. If He made me stupid it’s so I’d love you!’
Love Your Wife And Family
Loving others is being the person who verbs the word of God for the benefit of others. That’s also leadership. And it is such a big job, we can’t do it by ourselves, can we? We don’t lean on our own understanding in all the things we’ve already talked about. We have to lean on Him.
But not only does a good man love the Father and love his family, he loves the fellowship. Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for it. According to Ephesians 5:1, we are to imitate Christ:
Be imitators of Him as dear children.
The implications of that verse are staggering. One thing it means is we must love the fellowship. Now, that doesn’t mean everybody in the fellowship is lovable. I’ve been in ministry a long time. There’s some in the flock who are a lot easier to love than others. And in all honesty, I am so thankful we don’t have any of those issues in this fellowship. But in short, we love the fellowship. We love what God wanted to provide for us in it.
God does not call you to Lone Ranger service. I’ve told you that before God calls us individually. You respond on your own. I can’t be saved for you, and you can’t be saved for the person beside you. But once we come to Him, God puts you in this little garden patch called His Church. You exist there, work there and you grow there. And you’re effective there, because that’s God’s design, just like He has a man and a woman, a husband and a wife. That’s His design. And being part of the fellowship is His design. So we’ve got to love that way.
Love, Faith, Fellowship
Christians at church.
Good men love the Lord and the fellowship. To the church of Philadelphia, in Revelation 3, the Lord said,
Behold, I will cause those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews, and are not but lie, I will make them come and bow down at your feet and make them know that I have loved you.
Is God good? There is so much injustice in the world and so much persecution. And it’s only going to get worse. But the Lord takes notice. He sees and He knows. And in this instance, if I may paraphrase just a bit, He said to His Church:
I will make them know… They were so sure of themselves. The unbelievers thought you were morons. You were thought to be idiots and they said so. They treated you badly because of your conviction and your love for Me.
He’s taken note and He’s going to balance the books (so to speak). They’ve will come to know that I have loved you. That thought is captured in Isaiah 43. Isaiah wrote:
Since you are precious in My sight, since you are honored and I love you, I will give other men in your place and other people’s in exchange for your life
In regards to loving the fellowship, I Thessalonians 4 says:
Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.
Love The Lord And Others
On the night before Jesus was crucified, He said:
I give you a new commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.
Ouch. We need to love like that, don’t we? And once again, I am thankful for the few good men I know who love that way. The problem is, there are a few. But in regard to the total needed to transform life and society, there are too few.
So we need to be those people who are doing these things. We do them not only because we need to, but because it sets an example for others to follow. And it doesn’t matter if they’re in our families, our communities, or whether they’re just people we do business with on a day-to-day basis. And you do that.
We are those men who are learning to lean, learning to lead and learning to love. Amen!
Soli Deo Gloria!
