Saturday, April 30, 2016

Your Life And Your Love Should Not Be Spontaneous - But Spirit-taneous

My Utmost For His Highest
 
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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