Love From God, Love For Neighbor

Found at Tullian Tchividjian's Blog.

 

FEB

01

2013

TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN|2:47 PM CT

Love From God, Love For Neighbor

My friend, Jono Linebaugh, and I sat down recently to talk about what love looks like horizontally and how it actually happens.

Love for Neighbor | Jono Linebaugh and Tullian Tchividjian from Coral Ridge | LIBERATE on Vimeo.

Love is...

LOVE IS...

What is love? Here is what Paul Tripp says:

·         Love is being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of your husband or wife without impatience or anger.

·         Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.

·         Love is the daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.

·         Love is being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding, and being more committed to unity and love than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.

·         Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.

·         Love means being willing, when confronted by your spouse, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.

·         Love is a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to your husband or wife is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.

·         Love is being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged but to look for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.

·         Love is being a good student of your spouse, looking for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support him as he carries it, or encourage him along the way.

·         Love is always being willing to ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.

·         Love is recognizing the high value of trust in a marriage and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.

·         Love is speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack your spouse’s character or assault his or her intelligence.

·         Love is being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt your spouse into giving you what you want or doing something your way.

·         Love is being unwilling to ask your spouse to be the source of your identity, meaning and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of his or hers.

·         Love is the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a husband or a wife.

·         Love is a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your marriage.

·         Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn’t seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.

·         Love is the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of your marriage without asking anything in return or using your sacrifices to place your spouse in your debt.

·         Love is being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm your marriage, hurt your husband or wife, or weaken the bond of trust between you.

·         Love is refusing to be self-focused or demanding but instead look- ing for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.

·         Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God’s protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.

(All quotes from What Did You Expect?)

Disciple Making

Disciple Making

The reason the missional movement may fail is because most people/communities in the Western church are pretty bad at making disciples. Without a plan for making disciples (and a plan that works), any missional thing you launch will be completely unsustainable. Think about it this way: Sending people out to do mission is to send them out to a war zone. Discipleship is not only the boot camp to train them for the front lines, but the hospital when they get wounded and the off-duty time they need to rest and recuperate. When we don’t disciple people the way Jesus and the New Testament talked about, we are sending them out without armor, weapons or training. This is mass carnage waiting to happen. How can we be surprised that people burn out, quit and never want to return to the missional life (or the church)? How can we not expect people will feel used and abused? - Mike Breen