Thoughts on Love

Hey.

Guess what.  Gueeesss whaaaaat.

I lost my list of topics.  I remember one of them.  That's it.  Just one.

Maybe I'll remember the rest later.

Back before Evelyn was here, back when she was just J, I decided to pray for some specific personality traits for her.  My main prayer for her was that she would have a heart for other people.  That she would show mercy and compassion and love to those who need it.

 

I prayed that it might be such a strength in her, that she would teach Jered and me how to love others better.  That she would teach us about loving like Jesus.

[That face!]

When I think about that prayer now, it looks like I was trying to take the easy way out.  Apparently God thought so too.  What did I think?  That I could just wait a few years until Evelyn shows me how to love better?  That I could just go on living the same until then?  That God has ever been content with delayed obedience?

A few weeks ago at church I heard this, "We must become immediately obedient in saying yes to the direction of the Holy Spirit, rather than offering excuses."

It still took a few weeks for this whole concept to come together in my mind.

Just another example of Aimee being extremely thick from time to time.

 

So much of my reading lately seems to have been screaming at me about the importance of loving others that I feel maybe God is telling me I'm not off the hook with this concept.  It is my/our job, after all, to train up our child in the way she should go.

In his book You and Me Forever, Francis Chan says:

"There's an old expression: most of what your kids learn from you will be caught, not taught.  While it's not in the Bible, we all know there is a lot of truth in that statement.  We can all think of habits, expressions, and attitudes that we picked up from our parents- for better or worse.  They didn't sit us down and lecture us on these things, but we ended up copying them (many times even when we tried hard not to!)."

 

He also says that they will notice the gap between our supposed beliefs and actions.  If our love, our actions, our sacrifices don't match up with what we say we believe, why would they decide to join the hypocrisy of the church?

 

Ouch!  And He still keeps pounding this lesson into my mind.

Some of the other sermon notes I took over the last few weeks are:

"Giving like Jesus is not about money- that's about obedience.  Giving like Jesus is giving of ourselves, our time."

"What's broken in my life?  What about my life is causing God's heart to break?"

"Our tendency to isolate is selfish and self-kingdom building."

"We are supposed to spread the goodness of His image."

 

I don't know what exactly this is going to look like in my life yet, but I know a change is needed.  Whether it's learning to be more selfless in serving my husband, stopping when I see the "hungry-anything helps" signs, being more intentional, or finding some other way to serve, I want to model genuine love for Evelyn. 

Even though it's not my own strength, I've been lucky enough to have parents who have shown me what this looks like.  I won't share examples because they would be completely uncomfortable with me bringing them to light.

She is already watching us.  She sees what we focus on.  She notices the phones in our hands.  Whether she recognizes them yet or not, she is hearing our words and how we speak them.  It's only a matter of time before she starts mirroring our actions.

As, what I would term, a raging introvert, this whole idea can tend to make me uneasy.  However, God has given us different strengths, and I think that allows for us to show love in different ways.  So my goal is to start brainstorming and finding ways that introverted little me can act on.

All of these thoughts started when I read 7.  Molly was right.  It wrecked my life... in the best way.  It showed me so many practical ways to show love.  If you still haven't taken my word for it, go get the book.  Seriously- here's the link to Amazon.

Well, I think that was the gist of all my thoughts.  Since I lost my notes, I guess we'll never know.  Hopefully another of my "planned" topics will resurface in my mind soon. Ha.

'Til next time.

Aim