Love is one of the words that gets tossed around in such an easy and often flippant way.  We say “I love you, I love this or I love that” and often apply it to all sorts of different things, when what we really should be saying is “I like”, but it’s more than like, so it must be love right?  Wrong!

Love is the action of sacrificing for and being committed to another for nothing in return.  Love is much more than a word, it is action.  Love is much more than feeling, it is commitment.  Love is much more than emotion, it is divine.  Love is not about what it can get, but what it can give.

I Corinthians 13:4-8 describes it this way:  “4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  8 Love never fails.”

When we think about what it means to love, we need to think about how God loves us. Listen close to the birds as they sing to one another and you will hear the wisper of God’s love.  God out of His great and amazing love for us has an ongoing conversation through what we see, hear, feel, taste and smell.  God communicates with us even when we are not paying attention, because He loves us and in that love He is waiting for us to hear it, get it, experience it.

Our way of loving Him back is by being attentive, by paying attention, by hearing what it is that He is saying.  The world that we live in is alive with God’s presence, power and love.  Through His great love for us God can and will take even the bad and use it for our good as we love Him back.

Love is an amazing gift of God.  Receive it and give it!  Dr. Kent M. Keith gives us some great advice on receiving and sharing the love of God with the actions of our life, when he teaches us in “The Paradoxical Commandments” that:

“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”

For a big part of my life, I have allowed what others thought of what I say or do, to have too much of an influence upon who I was and what I did.  It is almost impossible to relax and enjoy life when you are trying to look and live a certain way for the purpose of being accepted or loved by others.

It is only by coming to the end of yourself that you realize that this life lived for the opinions of others actually robs you of the life that your Creator intended for you to have and experience.

I do not deserve to have God in my life.  In fact, I deserve to have God against my life, because of my almost continual attraction and submission to sin.  But God loves me and not because I deserve to be loved, but because He is love.

God created me for a love relationship with Him.  A relationship that provides joy, happiness, purpose and fulfillment that flow through His presence with and in me.  I deserve to be eternally separated from God, His love and blessing.  I deserve to be unhappy, unfulfilled and miserable.  But God does not give me what I deserve, instead He gives me what I don’t and could never deserve.

We learned in yesterday’s blog that grace is getting what you don’t deserve.  Today, we want to focus on another amazing gift that God has blessed us with – the gift of mercy. Mercy is being spared from judgment, harm or retribution for our unlawful, wrong, bad and sinful behavior.

Titus 3:4-7 puts it this way:  “4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

While grace is getting what we don’t deserve – an amazing relationship with God that last for all eternity, mercy is not getting what we do deserve – eternal separation from God, His love, protection and blessing.

William Shakespeare said:  “The quality of mercy is not strained; it dropeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.  It is twice blessed – It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.”

My faith is not in myself or what I can do to try to live a life that is pleasing to others.  My faith is in the grace and mercy that flows out of the love of my God.  It enables me every moment of every day to experience the miraculous and unexplainable.  It enables me to entertain the real pleasure of living with myself in God and God in me.

Thank You God for life and the luxury of real and right relationship with You.  Not relationship that is earned or deserved, but relationship that flows out of your love through grace and mercy and allows my ordinary life to bring You extraordinary glory.

When I was a boy growing up in the small town of Williamston, one of the things that I was taught early in life was the value of working hard, making your way and earning a living.  My family was and still is made up of men and women who believe in working hard, giving 110% and going the extra mile.  My Dad and Mom taught and practiced that you always give more than what was paid for.  When I was a Boy Scout, we worked hard to complete certain tasks, so we could earn merit badges which we could then display to show everyone how much our hard-work had accomplished.

In recent years, God has been teaching and showing me that while this is a very good thing, it can actually get in the way and corrupt our relationship with Him.  What I mean is this, while a good work ethic is valuable in all of our lives.  And while it is very important for each person to do their part in earning his or her way in the daily living of life.  It is also very important that we realize and understand that there are some things we can’t do.

And these things that we can’t do have been done for us by a loving Father God, Who has always had our best interest and His glory in mind.  Somewhere, somehow as I grew up, I began to think that my hard work and due diligence had earned me something in the spiritual realm.  After all, I had always heard that God helps those who help themselves.  After a number of years of consistent hard work, I began to think that I deserved something more in the spiritual realm.  That is, until God decided to take me to school.

One of the first things that God started to teach me about was His Grace.  I thought I understood it.  I had heard about since I was a little boy in Ms. Dora’s Sunday School Class.  We sang about it in some shape or form every Sunday for years.  I heard sermons, listened to lessons and even read about it in my very own Bible.  I knew about Grace, especially God’s grace – at least I thought I knew.

But what God is teaching me is this:  There is so much that I do not know and a lot of what I thought I knew was all wrong.  I was confusing the teaching of my upbringing in the physical world with some of what I was learning about life in the spiritual world and often the two are totally different – almost opposites.

Let’s look at the example of grace – what is it exactly?  Here’s the best working definition I have some up with thus far:  Grace is unmerited, undeserved and unearned favor, pardon, rescue and redemption which produce restoration which allows the relationship.  I know that’s a mouthful.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says:  “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not of works, so that no one can boast.”

Grace then is God’s gift to you and me which gives us what we don’t deserve and have not earned, all with the ultimate purpose of our being able to live in relationship with the One Who created us, sustains us and has an amazing plan for our lives.

Grace is getting what you don’t deserve!  Everyday at Grace Place, we give stuff away.  It is stuff that the people have not earned and it is stuff that they do not deserve, but they get it, because their getting it is a powerful example and witness of how God desires to give to all of His children.

“Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal.  It is a way to live.  The law tells me how crooked I am.  Grace comes along and straightens me out.”  -Dwight L. Moody  Grace is the gift of God, a gift is not earned or deserved, it is given and received.  Giving is God’s part and receiving is our part.  Once we receive this gift of grace then along with it comes a responsibility to grow in it and share it with others.

Take some time today to think about just how much God must love you to give you what you don’t deserve, so that you can live the most amazing and powerful life ever.  Don’t waste this sweet gift, grow it for God’s glory by sharing it everywhere and with everyone you can – trust me, you will be glad you did!