We often toss around phrases in church circles like people are fake and some of us recluse to our own comfortable isolated bubble.  Determined that no one will ever hurt us again in church because we shut the door on any possible contacts or relationships.  Some of us merely come to church like a person trying not to step on a relational landmine, so we hear the preaching, serve in a ministry without connecting, and leave church avoiding any emotional connections.  Yes, there are smiles, handshakes, and courteous conversation, but if we are honest it's all wrapped up in a thin coating of religious correctness.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit is allowed to crack the spiritual facade that is a protected shield against further offence.  Yet we don't want to address these offenses biblically, so we go on year after year, decade after decade trying to negotiate our way through our congregation not really knowing and being known by others.  

This longing for isolation that many of us seek, while claiming to love God, seeming allows us safety, but when investigated closer is an erroneous philosophy that really amounts to us seeking to save our lives.  Unconsciously some of us desire to sit on the throne of our minds thus controlling our lives with a guidelines that diminishes faith in God.  

The challenge is how can we love God and not love those people that He died to redeem.  John says, that God's love is revealed and we know that we are of God when we love specifically fellow believers.  Let me be crystal clear the test of God's love abiding in us, that we are truly believers, is that we display love one to another.  But you may say, I'm sure that God doesn't want me to be continually getting hurt by people in the church.  No, God is not sadistic, yet He doesn't mind allowing us to deal with hard situation, so that we may grow more like Him.  Each time we say that someone hurts us in the community of faith directly or indirectly and their actions cause us to shut down, and not love as the bible instructs we deny our faith in the sovereignty of God.  Refusing to love as the Word of God commands suggest that there is an issue with understanding how God’s love operates within His Kingdom. 
 
Let’s step back for a second and look at God’s love personified in Jesus.  Hopefully we may wrestle with our understanding/definition of God’s love.  Abraham and Isaac was commanded by God to go on a mount in the land of Moriah.  Abraham was willing to offer his son to God as a burnt offering because of his commitment / love of God.  Notice that the father’s (Abraham) love for the son (Isaac) didn’t withhold his son from the harsh reality of death and was yet ready to confront a difficult episode in his life through faith. Jesus was the love gift given to humanity so that man could regain their lost relationship and power that was forfeited when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden.  Although this process of redemption meant that Jesus (God’s son) would go through the process of death just as Isaac suffered with the permission of His Father. So by definition God’s love is not principally focused on believer’s comfort but that their spirit is formed to be as the very likeness and image of Jesus.  


Until my next blog, live life to reveal God’s presence, revive man’s soul, and rejoice in new life. 
 
Blessings,
Bishop Tylos Jackson, Jr.