Love suffers long and is
kind… —1 Corinthians 13:4
“We cannot predetermine our
thoughts and actions by saying, “Now I will never think any evil thoughts, and
I will believe everything that Jesus would have me to believe.” […] The
fountains from which love flows are in God, not in us. It is absurd to think
that the love of God is naturally in our hearts, as a result of our own nature.
His love is there only because it “has been poured out in our hearts by the
Holy Spirit…” (Romans 5:5).[…] The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute
spontaneity of our love, which flows naturally from His nature within us. And
when we look back, we will not be able to determine why we did certain things,
but we can know that we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His
love in us.” CHAMBERS
As we have served in ministry
over the past 11 years, especially, there have been many people who have
approached us asking for help. I have
one person in my mind’s eye at this moment. It is a Haitian woman who would linger
around the entrance to a grocery store that many missionaries frequented. Each
time she saw me, she would approach the truck, tap on my window and mouth the
word “grangou” (gran-goo) which is “hungry”.
There were many times when I would not give her any money and then other
times when I would. The times that I did, it was because I felt prompted by the
Spirit. When asked why I chose one time
over another, I said because I ask the Lord and He tells me. There is a difference between feeling sorry for
a person’s plight and responding to a person’s plight. I cannot help everyone. Jesus did not try to heal everyone. But there were those He did heal. I don’t pretend to know what impact my helping
that woman, or others has had in their lives. That is between them and
God. What I do know is that I must
respond to the prompting of the Spirit whether I understand or not. Not doing so is between God and me.
In Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and goats, it is about
people who did and people who didn’t. That
is often my focus. But at the root of the
“didding” is the Spirit of God. Jesus
might have said “When you submitted to the will of God and the leading of the Spirit
and showed love to those who I brought into your life, you showed the world
that you are my disciples.” Well done, “didder”. (Ok maybe Jesus would not say “didder”) But Jesus
did say (John 13:34-35) “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I
have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that
you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Be spiritually prepared to hear the Spirit’s prompts, obey what you
hear, and trust God to do the rest. Let your response to people is not be spontaneous but let it be "Spirit-taneous".ELGIN
Charley Elgin
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