“A Communist officer told a Christian he was beating, ‘I am almighty, as you suppose your God can be. I can kill you.’ The Christian answered, ‘The power is all on my side. I can love you while you torture me to death.'”
~ Richard Wurmbrand
Everything in the life of a Christian is meant to bring us to one place; love.
To get to that place and stay there until we die is the fight of our lives. Everything comes against love.
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
Matthew 24:12-13
The human heart is a fragile thing and it protects itself above everything else.
When it is constantly hurt, threatened, or agitated, it does what our skin naturally does; it gets calloused. A callous protects us by thickening our skin so it doesn’t stay hurt all the time. Ask any body builder to show you their hands and you will see exactly what I mean. The constant agitation of gripping the iron bars produces calloused hands that can take the abuse. This is natural and healthy.
However, if we let what’s natural guide us spiritually, we will end up with a life that is a total waste.
Even though our hearts are unseen, they will grow callous (just like our hands) if we do not cooperate with God. God created us in His image. The foundation of His throne is justice and righteousness. That means (even for the atheist) we can’t function in a world that is not right (righteous) and fair (justice). Inside each one of us is a scale of justice, and when it is not in balance, we are not ok.
When wickedness is all around us, MOST will grow cold and hard. Our hearts can’t take it. Feeling nothing is preferable to feeling pain. Most of us become good debaters, not lovers. We long to be right and prove it.
Oswald Chambers, in My Utmost For His Highest quotes St. Augustine “O Lord, deliver me from this lust of always vindicating myself.” Chambers writes, “Such a need for constant vindication destroys our soul’s faith in God. Don’t say, ‘I must explain myself,’ or, ‘I must get people to understand.’ Our Lord never explained anything – He left the misunderstandings or misconceptions of others to correct themselves.”
People can argue truth all day long.
No one can argue with love. They can try, but a person who loves with God’s love has the most powerful and invisible force in all the world on their side. God’s love is not a love we possess. It is from heaven. When we live our lives in that love, we bring heaven to earth all day long. We spread the fragrance of God everywhere we go.
Anyone can love pleasant people who love them.
No one can love irritating and horrible people with human love. Heck, we can’t even love pleasant people half the time. They will get on our nerves too. I remember being “fake nice” before Christ (and after Christ). I learned hypocrisy at an early age. I watched people in my own family be nice to people and then talk about them as soon as they walked out the door. It is the natural way to live in a fallen world. God calls us higher. If we knew the power of love, we would pursue it with everything inside of us. Psychologists would probably go out of business. Why? God’s love poured through us is healing medicine to our bodies and souls. Because we don’t love, we are sick and depleted.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1
- Gift of prophecy
- Fathom ALL mysteries
- Fathom ALL knowledge
- Faith that can move mountains
That list of things we can possess with the absence of love is impressive to say the least. The fact the Bible says we can have those things without love scares me. In the Christian world, we value all of those things so much. We can be full of them and yet be nothing in God’s sight.
No Thing. Emptiness.
When I see people who think it is their job to correct every false belief in others, I want to avoid them like the plague (they usually know their Bible and are always fully armed). They are always listening for heresy and trying hard to correct the whole world. Their whole lives become consumed with fighting for God. The problem is, they end up fighting against God. I have never met a happy and free truth fighter.
I have never met an unhappy person who was filled with God’s love.
God’s love (in us) looks beyond the wrongs in people and even wrong beliefs (peripheral things, not the Gospel) . When someone begins to love God completely, He will guide them in all truth.
God goes even further with His truth about love.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:3
- Give all my possessions away
- Choose to be burned to death instead of compromise truth
In God’s eyes, we gain nothing. No thing.
If at any time, I do not have love for others, an alarm should go off inside my soul and tell me to run to Jesus. It is ALWAYS an internal problem. No one can make me unloving. No action done by anyone can cause me to hate. Only a disconnection from God, to some degree, can produce a lack of love.
Jesus cried out on behalf of the people killing and hating Him from the cross. Make no mistake, that attitude is His goal for each of us.
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Romans 8:29
Conformed (Greek definition)
Sýmmorphos– conformed by sharing the same inner essence. Showing similar behavior from having the same essential nature.
God wants us to have the same inner essence as Jesus Christ.
When Jesus was squeezed, nothing yucky ever came out. How does God get us there? He has to put us in situations that squeeze us so we see what He sees. We should never deny what runs through our minds or runs out of our mouths.
My lack of love, my insecurity, and my anger have told me a story about myself that nothing else could. I hate the circumstances that bring them out. It’s humiliating and embarrassing. However, if I face it and let God walk me through it, He will bring me to a place of joy unspeakable and full of glory.
“I have found truly jubilant Christians only in the Bible, in the Underground Church and in prison.”
~ Richard Wurmbrand
How could Richard Wurmbrand make such a shocking statement? Only people who choose to let God walk them through hell down here will ever get the hell burned out of them. We can avoid difficult circumstances and people all day long. We can refuse the cross that Jesus said we are to carry daily, and choose comfort instead. There is only one problem with that life; it will produce a stone cold heart. If we don’t allow God’s fiery trials to set us ablaze and gladly let Him burn away self, we will live with this hag for the rest of our lives.
We will live our lives in judgement and misery when we could have danced with joy and reckless abandon because we were so full of God that we couldn’t stay still. David danced before the Lord with all his might. Richard Wurmbrand danced before the Lord in solitary confinement. When we are full of God, our very presence will invite people into His Presence. Every single day we are alive, we can be the love of God to our children, our husbands, co-workers, and strangers. We will never be in the presence of a single person who God does not love.
If we do not live in God’s love, we will never, ever transfer it to others. Our lives will tell them our truth about God; not THE truth about God.
To prove this point, I will share one more story about Richard Wurmbrand.
At one point during Wurmbrand’s imprisonment, one of the other prisoners confronted him in the middle of the prison compound. He said that the way Wurmbrand had been imprisoned and tortured proved that there was no God. Wurmbrand is said to have quietly responded, “If I can show you God, would you then believe?” The man retorted, “Of course, but look at you, look at us! You can’t show me God.”
Wurmbrand looked at his fellow prisoner and said, “God is like me.” Instantly the man fell to his knees and gave his life to Jesus.
In God’s Underground~Richard Wurmbrand
If we would only cooperate with God, we could say the same thing. There is no one more like God than His Spirit inside of us.
1 Corinthians 13 is a mirror. I challenge everyone reading this to memorize the first seven verses. Read it twice a day and in a few days (if love is your goal) it will become a part of you.
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Psalm 119:11
Somehow, God’s Living Word has the ability to go deep inside our souls and make us what it tells us we should be. I can think of no better place to start than love.
