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Touched by Love

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And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:13

Listening to Nancy Rollin’s interview about her terrifying experience at the Boston Marathon touched my heart deeply. I was moved because I could feel how much she cared about all those who were hurt and suffered.

Seeing one human being love another is what touches and inspires me the most. Love is a word that is used and understood by young children as well as adults. The phrase,“Love you,” is a staple in most relationships.Kids know what they mean even though they may have no adequate definition. As adults we recognize that love is easy to say and much harder to do consistently.

Eric Fromm writes in his book The Art of Loving, “Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself; to retain his integrity.”3181451090_d9b3390973_o

Life is about relationships. Alfred Adler believed that the foundation of healthy living was our concern for others, growing out of our respect and concern for ourselves. We too often confuse love with excessive or unnecessary sacrifice. Love involves a mutual exchange between individuals much like the love experienced between a mother and her newborn infant. The infant does not appear to give as much as the mother; however, is there any question that the mother feels loved by her child? Love is a reciprocal experience of sharing concern and giving to one another.

Love is also a transcendental principle and ideal, which has been the base drumbeat driving my life. Looking back, I see how I have been chasing love from my earliest memories. I did not recognize my hunger nor would I have described it as a yearning for love. I have yearned to love and be loved from the very beginning.

2569927379_a34556beeaLove has been North on my compass. When I was younger I thought I understood what love was. I could quote 1 Corinthians 13 and many of the “love one another” verses in the Bible. Time and repeated failures have humbled me. I now experience a sense of reverence and awe when I think of love, believing that apart from Divine Assistance I will continuously fall short of its demands.

At the heart of love is giving. Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) A rich and meaningful life is the blessing for those who will choose to invest their lives in loving one another.

Watch today for the divine appointments that are offering you the opportunity to give and serve others. These are the building blocks of a life of love. Jesus challenged the disciples saying, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 13:35) Remember, loving is an act shared in community with others. In its purest form, it is a mutual and reciprocal act of concern for and giving to one another.

God’s Infinite Love: My Choice by A.M.

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When I first joined assignment group, a senior member of my group told me that no matter what happens in the group, to remember that Rich was always for me 100%.  I learned over time that this was true and that despite whatever happened in group, Rich always had my back.  Even though I was messed up and full of it, Rich still believed in me, supported me, and loved me.  Later I came to learn that this was love and positive regard.

This love was a stark contrast to anything that I had experienced for the first 40 years of my life.  My Dad was anything but loving.  He was a volatile and punitive man and his “love” was conditional.  He was harsh, abusive, and selfish.  I truly feared my father for the first 40+ years of my life.  I see now that he was just trying to get his own needs met, and that he himself had grown up with a harsh and unloving father.

I viewed God as an extension of my father.  I saw him as harsh, mean, petty and unloving.  This was a choice that I made and it colored all of my core beliefs about the world. That took me right up until 2004 or so when I accepted Christ as my savior.  In fact, it took me beyond that.

In 2004, I went on a CLE retreat and experienced Rich’s love in a breath work  exercise.  The next week in church at WCNS, they did an altar call and one of my group members from the retreat joined me as I went forward from my seat.  Shortly after that I was baptized.  It was at that point that I accepted Christ, and my relationship with God began to change.  I began to read the bible and talk more with people about God. And ultimately the door opened for me to change the way I thought about God.

Even after those experiences, I still believed deep down that God was unloving, mean, and punishing.  It is only recently, many years later, that my core beliefs about God have changed.  And I know it has changed because my world view has changed, rather, I have chosen to have another world view and that is only possible because my core belief about God has changed.

It all goes back to Rich and his uncommon love and positive regard for me.  It had been a big leap of faith to accept this as love after what I experienced with my own Father.  I wasn’t always great about taking it in, but when I did, it had a profound impact on me.  I gradually began to love myself.  And I gradually began to accept the possibility that God loved me the same way Rich did, and more.

This all came to a head this summer on a trip to a Willow Creek Camp.  During my daily quiet time with God, I came to see that I did not act in ways that showed that I believed in and trusted a loving God.  I acted as if the world was a place of fear, pain, and scarcity, rather than a playground of abundance and possibilities.  I played it safe, and had a relatively small life as a result.

I had a choice to make.  I could continue to see the world as i always had, or I could see the world through the eyes of a loving and kind heavenly Father.  My experience with Rich in assignment group and on retreats was the means by which I was able to change how I viewed God.  A great verse from the Bible is:

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
(Luke 11:11-13 NIV)

When I compared my Dad to Rich, and then extrapolated Rich to God my heavenly Father, I realized that I had underestimated God’s love for me by an infinite amount.  More importantly, I saw that my belief about God’s love and goodness is a faith choice. I can choose to see God as loving and kind and the world as full of opportunities and abundance.  Or I can continue to believe as I always have. This is really a question of faith, since there is plenty of evidence for both.

I have decided to trust God and to and to believe that God is for me 100% (or more!)  I believe that God loves me, and will provide for me, and that the world is a place of promise, of opportunity, and of abundance.

My work is to act out that faith every day.  I need to live a big life, and take appropriate risks.  I need to see a loving God at work in the world, in everything that happens to me, and to see it all as for my good.  It is a choice that I must continue to make every day.

The Web of Life: A Divine System

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The first time I met John (alias) I knew I was in for a battle. His face was hard and his gaze was steady. My characteristic use of warmth, fun and humor were not working; if anything, I was making things worse. His answers were short and brusque. He was angry and sarcastic. He loved to argue and I could tell that he was a black belt in dispute. I was scared.

I wasn’t sure whether John would come back. Not only did he have a session the following week, the weeks turned into months and I gradually saw his heart soften and his soul heal. Since that day I have had the joy of being in relationship with John for many years. John was the proverbial lion with a thorn in his paw. His anger was a shield used to protect his wounded heart. He presented himself as a combatant, yet, underneath his mask he was a lover.

John, like all of us, was deeply impacted by the family he grew up in. It was in this system that John learned the rules of life and roles that he was expected to play. He was the oldest and it became his responsibility to raise his many siblings since dad was an AAA kind of guy—angry, absent and alcoholic. John experienced a lot of pain and endured a lot of hardship—not the least of which was witnessing the senseless death of his brother.

We are parts of a whole, never meant to operate independent of one another. We are interconnected and form what Fritjof Capra has termed the web of life. We are unique and interrelated individuals; each of us is separate and unique, yet, designed to be a part of a whole much larger and more complex than the sum of its parts.

Without an understanding of systems, we will live life with a very narrow and limited perspective. We will see only the parts and miss the mystery and awe of the whole. We will not understand the building blocks of lasting change. We will live isolated and insulated lives that will blind us to the larger system of which we are a part.

The Apostle Paul understood the importance of systems making up the core of the divine creation. He wrote, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free —and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. (1Corinthians 12:12-14)

Life is a series of interdependent systems. Systems have a hierarchical nature and consist of subsystems combining together to form increasingly complex and dynamic systems. The human body is the picture of interdependent magnificence—cells combine to form tissues, tissues form organs, and organs make up organisms.

We are all cells, tissues, organs, and organisms created in the image of God. All of us are fashioned to love and care for one another. We are intended to need each other. What better way to honor God than to live authentically and consciously in the here and now, maximizing our potential in every moment. There is no greater calling than to love ourselves, love each other, and love the Source of All.

Friendships: The Most Worthwhile Investments

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Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:13 

 

Relational unrest and breakdown is all around us and has hit close to home. Recently, we were surprised to see moving vans in front of the house of our next-door neighbors. They were a young couple with three kids. We later learned that they were going through a messy divorce. We never even knew they were struggling. Last week we were shocked to see the police surrounding the house of another neighbor two doors down from us. A domestic disturbance led to a five-hour siege with SWAT teams converging on this older couple’s home. We had no idea they were having any trouble. Sadly, the husband committed suicide.

 

Relationships are a mixed bag. We experience the most intense pain as well as the most meaningful pleasure in our relationships with others. From the moment of our conception, people are surrounding us. Conception initiates a relationship in which the fetus is completely dependent on his or her maternal host for existence. From start to finish, we cannot live without each other.

 

Admittedly, our survival is dependent on other people; however, without meaningful and nourishing relationships, we only exist and fail to experience the fullness of life. If we desire to have the abundant life that God wishes for each of us (John 10:10), we must cultivate our capacities and sharpen our skills for engaging authentically and meaningfully with others.

 

Relationships are a function of how we relate to ourselves. We are the living channel through which we relate to others. How we see, feel about, and treat ourselves matters—it impacts how we interface with others. Much like how the diet of a breast-feeding mother influences the digestion of her baby, so how we relate with ourselves influences how we will attach with others.

 

Many of us take our people skills for granted, mistakenly assuming that our capacity to connect meaningfully with each other is automatic—it is as if relating to each other were a part of our autonomic nervous system. Most of us will spend at least sixteen years investing in our education; yet, how many of us will even spend a couple hours with a counselor or life coach to enhance our friendships. We assume that we should naturally know how to relate effectively with others. Patently untrue.

 

It is a fact that we will all have relationships; however, what is in question is the quality and depth of our relationships. Relationships are on a continuum, from schizoid and splintered to intimate and interdependent. We have the choice as well as the responsibility to decide whether we want to have mediocre relationships or fulfilling friendships.

 

How we relate to others is heavily influenced by the quality and characteristics of the relationships we had with our parents and our siblings. It would behoove us all to take a second look at the health of our relationships within our family of origin. No family is perfect—all are filled with a blend of hurtful and healthy experiences.  The wise person is the one who learns from their past and practices for his or her future. As you learn and grow you can increase your capacity for intimacy with others. You attract more relationships and build more nourishing and genuine friendships.

 

Please join me for a free webinar at 12:30 CST on Wednesday, January 4, in which I will be introducing some of the key concepts about friendships from my new book, Grappling with God: Renew Your Relationship and Deepen Your Faith. The 25 minute webinar is entitled, “7 Steps for Genuine Friendships.”  Register @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/466304954.