The God Kind of Love Never Murders

My God! The rate of backstabbing and murder going on amongst believers today is mind boggling. I honestly believe that even “the world” will be shocked at the amount of evil that we do to one another. It is so bad now that we do not trust each other anymore. In my Country, one is immediately on guard when someone you are about to enter a business relationship with mentions that they are also believers. All of this is because we very easily destroy one another while yet claiming to be children of the God who is love. The truth is, much as we may hate to admit this, we don’t love one another. We actually hate each other and I wonder – is this the Spirit of God. Since we barely study the scriptures, we also do not know what love is. Our understanding of love is totally warped; built on the world’s definition of love. 

I John 4: 7 - 8 “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

1 John 4: 16b “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them

It is strange to claim to be born again and yet have the capacity to hate anything other than sin. Sadly, sin which we ought to hate is the one thing we love to love. Worse still, we actually hate other believers so much despite God’s admonition. We hate them so much that we do all we can to destroy them especially with our mouth and our quick excuse is that we are angry. How can you claim to love someone whom you tell terribly destructive lies against, behind them, stabbing them always in the back? It is not possible. No reason in the world makes it okay for a believer to destroy another believer. You don’t know it but you are a murderer; the bible says so. Every time you tell those terrible lies, you are attempting to murder a believer and God will be against you.

Proverbs 25: 18 “Telling lies about others is as harmful as hitting them with an ax, wounding them with a sword, or shooting them with a sharp arrow.”

If you claim to be a believer yet hate another believer enough to forge those terrible lies against them, the scriptures unequivocally declares you an unbeliever. Unfortunately you also will barely make progress in life because you are in darkness and as such will not have clear direction for your life. Hatred is blinding and facilitates bad decisions so that you are ruining your own life and giving satan room to enter your life but you don’t see it. It is for the same reason that Cain was made a fugitive for life. Many of us hate our fellow believers so much that like Cain we are killing them though we do it with our mouths and yet we pretend to love them. Loving is more than what we say. 

I John 2: 9 – 11 “if anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness. Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble. But anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness.” 

God hates this attitude so much that He responded to the cry of Abel’s blood. The pain of the cry of some believers has come up to God who may be compelled to respond. We have to repent of this behavior and turn around before the judgment of God is poured out even against such “murderers.” Unfortunately, we don’t grasp the meaning of the love that God is. The world’s definition of love has totally warped our understanding of the God kind of love. Though love may be deepened by relationship, the love required of us especially toward other believers, is regardless of relationship. 

1 John 3: 11 – 12NLT “This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous.”

Returning To Basics – Handling Relationships

This past Sunday school class in my church was about divorce and the topic was Precious relationships; a reminder of our relationship with Christ, the most precious of relationships, upon which our other relationships, including marriage, are built. It occurred to me that the high divorce rate in the church today may not be unconnected with the fact that we don’t grasp what Christian relationships should be and what is required of us to make them work; and we won’t understand it if our relationship with Christ is faulty. If this is true, our approach to saving Christian marriages may need some adjusting for it to be more effective because the problem would then be foundational. 

1 Peter 1: 18 - 19 “For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.”

A good Christian marriage cannot be built on a faulty relationship with Christ. Webster’s dictionary describes relationship as “the fact or state of having something in common” so that all believers are in a relationship. If we understand what we have in common, our attitude toward each other will be much better. We have the same Father and Saviour whose precious blood flows in our veins making our relationships precious; a fact we are unaware of because of the faultiness of our relationship with Christ which said faultiness impacts on the way we treat our spouses. There are some things you won’t do to your spouse if you understand how precious your relationship is; your relationship is “blood deep.” 

If we don’t understand what is expected of us in Christian relationships, then we obviously don’t know what is expected of us in Christian marriages. We have to unlearn all the world taught us about relationships then learn the new to conduct ourselves in marriage. You won’t get good results mixing both. Today, believers take all they can in relationships and give nothing. Even with God, we pay no price and argue that Christ already paid the required price but God is asking us to die to self which we won’t do; and all because we are too selfish. We are so selfish, our relationships are getting ruined.  

1 John 4: 11 “Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.”

At the height of selfishness, life is only about you and what you want; every other person is “someone else”, even including your spouse and children. You will treat your family like “others” no matter how much you profess love for them. They will be tools in your hands for accomplishing your purpose though you “love them.” You will lose them one day if you don’t stop before they get fed up. The level of selfishness that exists in our midst is alarming. Life is about us and our needs even to the detriment of all others. Every other person becomes a means to achieving our one goal or the other. 

1 John 4: 8 “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

The love we profess is not God yet the bible says God is love. The truth is what most of us feel and profess is lust and that is what we build our lives and relationships around. We don’t know love because we don’t truly know God. We kill ourselves yet we speak against people who kill believers. You can’t lust after God and claim to love others; you deceive yourself. If you love Christ, you won’t treat any believer like thrash particularly not your spouse. Your spouse is first your brother/sister in Christ; if you understand that, there are certain things you won’t do to them. We need to return to the basics of our Christianity; Christian marriages must be built on a relationship with Christ and guided by the rules that guide our love relationship with Him.  

Digging Is Tough! It Is Hard Work but God Gives Grace

It is interesting that Jesus likens the man who obeys His word to the man who digs deep enough to build his house on the rock. Digging deep connotes hard-work and speaks of strong desire or longing for something. Effort is often driven by desire and knowing God does take some effort. To find Him, one needs to diligently seek Him. Knowing God is to understand Him; it is to know the way His mind works and know it so well that you almost see Him in everything. He becomes so real that the reality of His existence is no longer questionable to you. 

Luke 6: 48b “It is like a person building a house who digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock.”

I realize that the more one knows God, the more they find they don't yet know Him because there is yet more to know. God is like a treasure chest, the deeper one digs, the more precious the gifts you find. The more one knows God, the greater revelation of truth they have and it is upon this truth that the believer’s life should be built so that their success is then guaranteed despite the major challenges that life may present them with. The place to seek God is in His word wherein He has hidden the secret of success. So, as we dig into and obey His word, we prosper in every sense of the word.  

    

Proverbs 19: 8 “To acquire wisdom is to love yourself; people who cherish understanding will prosper.”

Ecclesiastes 12: 1 “Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, ‘life is not pleasant anymore’.”

God has put out His word in which wisdom is hidden; it will be sad if one only engages the word when they are too old for it to make a difference in their own life. All that wisdom hidden in the word is not just for us to teach others but also for us to live life successfully. We must discover it before we are too old for its application to make meaningful impact in our lives. We must dig into the word while we yet have strength to use the wisdom therein for living that we may fulfill our destinies. Unfortunately, instead of making the effort to know God better, our preference is often for the easier and lesser route because we would rather not pay the required price.  Yet our relationship with God is a love relationship and love cost something. If we love Him, we must make sacrifices for Him.

Proverbs 14: 12 “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.”

Proverbs 2: 6 “For the Lord grants wisdom! From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.”

There is no love relationship where only one person is required to pay a price, it would cost parties involved something. Sadly, we have become so selfish that we prefer to give nothing and lie to ourselves that the only price required has already been paid by God. God will not commit His secret things to those who don’t love Him enough to desire to pay the required price. He longs so much for us to display our love that He even gives us grace to do so knowing that the forces sent to ensure our disobedience are strong. Salvation is the beginning of a journey in Christ; a journey fraught with victories and difficulties so fierce they sometimes make the victories appear non-existent. Even the emotional trauma one goes through with every difficulty makes it feel worse than it actually is. However, we are more than conquerors through Christ. We must bear in mind the glory that is set ahead of us if we “dig deep”. 

Psalms 18: 17 “He rescued me from my powerful enemies, from those who hated me and were too strong for me.”

DISCRETION – A Virtue Believers Have To Acquire

The word “discretion” has been on my mind for a while now. So I have taken a closer look at it and would like to share some of what I learnt. Who knows, just one person may be blessed. I checked the dictionary as well as the scriptures, for correct application of the word. The dictionary describes it as “the quality of behaving or speaking in such a way as to avoid social embarrassment or distress”. It is also “the freedom or power to decide or act according to one’s own judgment” and is referred to as “prudence, decorum and tactfulness”. All the best intentions in the world can be ruined by indiscretion.

The scriptures affirm that God definitely urges discretion for believers. It is one of the traits we should acquire as believers. No matter how anointed or nice we are, we must learn to be discrete otherwise we would destroy meaningful relationships including marriages despite that the other party or parties still love us. Being tactful or prudent is not to lie or pretend about the way one feels; it is to speak the truth in the most appropriate way and/or time. To do that, we must have good sense of judgment. It won’t make painful truth less painful for the receiver but it makes it more appropriate.

James 1: 19 “Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.”

Discretion starts with thinking and listening well before one speaks. When we fail to hear others, we find out too late that they were not saying what we thought they were saying yet we already responded. We need to hear people to respond to them appropriately. Speaking “out of turn” often, makes even people who love us prefer to stay away from us. Though they love us, they are “ticked off” by the things we say and/or how we say them. Unfortunately, apologizing all the time doesn’t make it less annoying. Moreover, they already know one didn’t mean harm anyway but who wants to be “ticked off” always. It is honestly tedious and very frustrating dealing with people who lack discretion. Sadly such people often see themselves as the wounded party never understanding what they did wrong.  

Proverbs 18: 2 “Fools have no interest in understanding; they only want to air their own opinions.”

The problem sometimes, is not with what we say but the inappropriateness of it at the time and in the circumstance. We have to realize that the same rule of speaking does not apply to everybody and every circumstance no matter how similar they may seem, so we have to be thoughtful to be appropriate. Inappropriateness is never masked by sweetness even if you are as sweet as pancake syrup; it is even more annoying because it adds an insulting edge. It creates the impression that you think the other person is so stupid they won’t notice your indiscretion. 

Proverbs 11: 22 “A beautiful woman who lacks discretion is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout.”

Proverbs 16: 22 “Discretion is a life-giving fountain to those who possess it, but discipline is wasted on fools.

It is never too late to unlearn and learn a more appropriate way of speaking and/or dealing with others. Daniel saved his life and that of others by speaking appropriately at an appropriate time. It is wisdom.

Daniel 2: 14 “When Arioch, the commander of the King’s guard, came to kill them, Daniel handled the situation with wisdom and discretion.”