The Rate of Love

Did you know if you want to be successful as a church you must be willing and able to love?

And… real love takes us beyond ourselves!

What love does cost is our will; the first thing that we must do for true love is sacrifice our strong-willed, self-centered selves and focus on the person and work of Christ, and what He has done for us. Once we realize that life is about sacrifice and costs as much as it is about the experience of love and relationships, then we will have a better understanding of life and comprehend how we must live. The Bible tells us that love keeps no record of wrongs; Christ keeps no record of our wrongs. When we become a Christian, saved by His Grace, our sinful nature is covered and hidden. God is not up there writing it all down; if we have repented, we're clean. So, what happens when we go around in church and society with a little notebook, writing down every single record of others wrongdoing and harboring, escalating, and milking them for all they’re worth? They become the bullets of destruction we carefully craft and hone for our targets of opportunity. But, those opportunities become mixed up and confused as we skew the targets from glorifying God and expanding His kingdom, preferring instead to satisfy our lust for power and revenge. How does this affect our love relationship with Christ? Is this how we are to live? Is this the right way to use ammunition? What about focusing collective Christian behavior in a unified force so that we can be more effective to the people around us?

Churches are crippled because members go around harboring a list of wrongs. The lists turn into resentment that grows and grows until the church is filled with people harboring resentment and all attacking one another as if they were soldiers of war with their guns of truth loaded with bullets, each one a record of the wrong they may have received.

When we are not exercising our faith, we will be consumed with doubt and distrust—the opposite of God’s call and plan for us. This, in turn, becomes a turn off to those outside the Church.

What do you think?

Read more here: http://www.churchleadership.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=42264&columnid=4545