2021-10-15
Good Morning Dear Ones,
Agape love isn’t self- seeking. This means disapproving : concerned only about getting what you want or need and not caring about what happens to other people. It’s a tough subject, but we must deal with it. By the way, this definition comes from the Merriam Webster Dictionary. Let’s look at some of the ways this happens in our society. In my day, during my growing up years, we had very self-seeking discussions at the dinner table. Because I was the youngest in the family, I was always low person on the totem pole. These discussions were always very stressful. Our family thought they were solving the world’s problems. My parents probably thought this was a good way to keep us children informed on their views of the troubles going on around us. While we were informed about the world’s issues of the day, we were not given a view where all the sides of an issue were presented, only my parents’ views. Sadly, some of these discussions were well over the heads of my parents’ youngest children, which would result in immature behaviors that led to admonishment being necessary. We had other issues that intervened, like my mother’s stubbornness about feeding us the same food night after night. She thought that would teach us to eat things we didn’t like that she made. Dessert was canceled if we didn’t eat it. One such occasion regarding the same home-made tartar sauce went on for three days straight! That was until I finally fed it to our dog under the table!
Another, more serious form of self-seeking is what happens when people run for office. Certainly, not every candidate for office is self-seeking, but many of them are. This is the person who rides roughshod over his fellow man on the way up the ladder of success. As you can see, in both my examples, there is a lot of conceited competitiveness. Senator Joseph McCarthy made quite a name for himself in the 1950’s claiming other people were secret members of the Communist party, and many careers were ruined. 2 TIM 3: 2-5a, “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good…lovers of pleasure, not lovers of God…” While my parents were generally good, hard- working people, they had no idea how to parent. There are some children, who have no idea how to be respectfully obedient. I’m sure I could have saved myself a lot of trouble, had I kept my mouth shut. But I didn’t until I was older and more mature.
I know of one man who later achieved high office, who earned the enmity of his cousin to the extent that she wrote a scathing book about him. He was successful in business and erected buildings, always with his name emblazoned on them. He had the idea that no one could stop him from his ambitions. Once in that high office, he tried to present the image of someone able to befriend our most devious enemies, and whose projects were always beneficial to those in his sphere of influence. However, he has a history of multiple divorces, brought shame on the dignity of his office, and had extraordinary transition among the members of his administration. This man kept the fact that he used every loophole to avoid paying taxes secret for a long time, and he made his share of mistaken decisions over his term. His interests were in the corporate sources of money and not in the common man. His term of office left me asking, “what would Jesus have done?”
The words “not easily angered” appear in some Bible versions in 1 COR 13: 5. Each of us must ask: Is this the way we behave? If we pray in all honesty, how many of us can say we have the patience and self-control to hold our tongues when something riles our emotions. God, in His agape love, is not easily angered. By being patient, we can help avoid misunderstandings. We get to hear the beginning, middle, and end of what someone is saying to us, particularly on controversial subjects. Consider the situation where something that is said hurts your feelings. We must come to know that there is constructive anger and destructive anger. This issue was huge in my life. The first example in today’s devotion led first to destructive anger and later to constructive anger. Destroying my sense of self-worth cost me a lot in those early years of my life. By middle school, I was happily vandalizing the property of others, taking out all the years of accumulated anger that my immaturity could muster. Later, after very appropriate correction by my father, I came to realize that the damage I was doing was not solving the problem and was fueling my anger. I also realized that my parents were parenting the way they were raised, and that they didn’t know another way. The anger I had became constructive when I figured out that not raising my own family in this manner was a way out. 1 COR 10: 13, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out [through Jesus Christ] so that you can stand up under it.” Our wonderful Lord solves our earthly problems, if we will only ask for His help. Praise and thanks be to Him!
PRAYER: O Lord, as humans we have many weaknesses. They may be intellectual, emotional, physical, or spiritual [2 COR 12: 7-9]. You, our loving God, can help us become overcomers. We must turn to You, hopefully first, and open our hearts to Your keen advice. Then, we must decide to act on it. Each of Your children mature inherently-some later; others early. JN 15: 5, “I am the Vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” Without You in our lives, solving our problems is hard to impossible. With You, we can revel in Your logic and make sound decisions. There is the overarching truth of Your grace [EPH 2: 8-10]. We offer You our utmost praise and thanks, for Your presence and intervention in our lives. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: As part of our continuing discussion of agape love, i.e. the love of God, I am led to share more on anger. Anger is a natural emotion, but how it is carried out and the long-term effects of that expression do make a big difference in the quality of our lives. As I spend time discussing each of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I am impacted by how much the Holy Spirit is giving me to write about them. Once again, I remind you that the privacy of people I discuss remains guarded. That is why I share a lot of my own experiences with the issues, rather than name names of others (unless they are deceased). So, Dear Readers, hang on for the ride, as the Holy Spirit has plenty to say about how we can improve our own lives and be obediently faithful to the God Who loves us so much. He is the One and only true God, our Triune Creator, Jehovah.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2021. All Rights Reserved
<-- Back to Archives