Musings on Love (Part II)

II Samuel 13:14-15    Howbeit he would not hearken to her voice: but being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.

Love is a verb so said Dc Talk. I agree. Like I said in my last post, love is all about doing. Love is not something that should be said alone, it must be shown. However, many women seem to be looking for the words alone without taking any thought about whether it is being shown. It’s been said that women react to what they hear and that’s why a lot of men now use those three words, “I Love You” as some sort of magic wand to get their way.

The story is told in the Bible in II Samuel 13 of Amnon, one of King David’s children. He developed this passionate and intense “love” for his half-sister, Tamar. This passion was so great and intense that he developed a ploy to get her to come to his room. He pretended he was sick and got Tamar to come to his room to serve him. He then tried to get her to sleep with him. She protested, asking to instead ask their father David for her hand in marriage. But of course Amnon wasn’t interested in that kind of commitment. All he was interested in was scratching an itch. He proceeded to rape her and after he had slaked his lust, he grew to hate her as passionately as he thought he loved her. In the end, she committed suicide from the ensuing shame and he ended up being killed by Absalom, her brother. The story is a cautionary tale on what love is NOT.

I would really like us to be real here. We’ve all seen one Hollywood film or the other where the young, handsome boy wants to have sex with the beautiful girl. She’s reluctant at first but then he tells her if she loves him, she’ll sleep with him. The girl thinks she is so she agrees. And the audience goes “Awwww” at young love. I think we should back up here. There are so many things wrong there. First of all, love does not demand, nor does it seek to get. Love gives without demanding anything in return. Love expects to be loved in return but will never demand it. God loves us and expects us to love him but he doesn’t demand our love. He gave us Jesus, grace, joy, peace and an awesome life package in the covenant he made with us. Jesus said if we loved him we would keep his commandments but he doesn’t beat on us on the head when we don’t obey. Instead he gives us more grace.

The second thing is that love is not a feeling or an emotion. A feeling or emotion arises based on certain circumstances. A person might feel they are in love when someone pays them attention, makes them laugh, agrees with them, lets them have their way, tells them they’re always right. Any set of circumstances can lead to the “feeling” of love. Love is not a feeling. Its foundation is not a feeling. Love is a decision. God knew each and every one of us before we were born and yet he still loved us and set Jesus ahead to die for us. He told Jeremiah that before he was born, he knew him. That tells me that love is a decision. Love is about knowing what you know about someone and still loving them. If love is a decision, then it follows that love is a choice. If love is a choice, hate is also a choice. As I have said earlier, love is not an emotion. So then, it means that love is a decision, a choice to continue to do the things expected of love. Which is why I do not believe in love at first sight. There might be attraction at first sight but not love. Which is why I also do not believe that love can “die”. I believe that what happens is that people refuse to continue choosing to do the things that love requires of them. In essence, love is work.  

Love is not sex. Today’s culture has made sex synonymous with love. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I stated above, there are certain circumstances that might making a person feel he or she is in love with someone of the opposite sex. When you have those circumstances and then you add sex to it, you get a combustible mixture. God created sex and I believe he did it to engender closeness and feeling of goodwill among married people among other uses. However, outside of marriage, it takes on the feeling of just wanting to scratch an itch that comes along very often. In that case, anybody or anything would do. Love does not use to slake a thirst.

What then is love? I believe that love is a deep, abiding and intense desire that seeks the best of and for the person loved and doing all within our power to make sure that desire comes to pass and is fulfilled. Even when rebuffed or not acknowledged, it continues on. Love is not based on present circumstances, emotion or needs but a vision of what the beloved person can be or become with love. That’s why love builds, edifies, encourages, provides, sustains and ultimately lays down everything for the sake of the beloved if needed. Anything else short of this will not do.

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers.http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal

The Power Is Yours (Use It)

While meditating on the story of Moses, I realised there were certain similarities between his story and that of Gideon, Joshua and practically everyone that God has ever used whose story is recorded in the Bible. It starts with the called man who has just been intimated with God's will of how he intends him to use him to bring salvation to a certain people, usually the children of Israel. The man makes known his feeling of inadequacy and asks God how he is to accomplish the task God has set before him. God tells him "I will be with you." That usually settled the matter. The man would then go on to do amazing feats and exploits. But the fact is that he did them because God backed him up. That was in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, we understand that Jesus is the express image of God. In Matthew, as he was about to ascend back to God, Jesus promised the disciples he was going to send the Holy Spirit. He then gave a charge, a command to them. "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen." (Matt 28:19-20). In the above verses, Jesus follows God's example and gives us a command, telling us to into all the world and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all things he has taught in his word. He then promises, not be with us, but that he is always with us.

I read a post on Facebook from Reinhard Bonke. He talked about how Christians want to have a feeling of power before they move to do what God expects of them. He said that the Holy Spirit is like potential energy. You won't feel him till you actually get up to do something bigger than you that you require his power for. I recently read Ann Voskamp's blog, A Holy Experience. In it, she talked about an American woman, Katie Davies who has lived in Uganda for the past seven years. Katie was a student president and home coming queen in high school. But on leaving high school at 17, she travelled to Uganda to care for the less privileged and she has been there ever since. At 24, she is a mother to 13 Ugandan orphans and runs an organisation that raises money to help ensure that poor families do not have to give up their children. She documents her life and experiences in a blog called Kisses For Katie.

Most Christians seem to think that all God exists for is to meet their needs. There are things that God wants us to accomplish. While God and the Holy Spirit will always be with us as a sign that God is committed to us, I believe that God is even more committed to those who are actually doing what he has called them to do. I believe that God is less committed to making our dreams come true than he is to making his will and plan for our lives come to pass. He has given us a commandment through Jesus. We need to get off our butts and stop waiting to feel powerful. The Holy Spirit is waiting us to get moving and fulfil our own part of God's grand plan. If you're thinking that you're not good enough, then you're in good company. Just ask Moses. Or Gideon.

What is it that God has called you to do? What are you waiting for?



JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelso Publishers http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND published on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00DPLLEUQ/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

Abortion: Murder, the American Way (Part 2)

So, the question then is what is abortion?

I believe that in a society where government distrubutes contraceptives free of charge to girls as young as eleven or twelve and children as young as 15 or less can get abortions,  there is a fundamental problem. One of the fundamental problems with western society is the issue of identity. Thanks to the curriculum being taught in schools, children grow up being taught that they are nothing more than slightly more intelligent chimpanzees. As they grow older, Hollywood then passes across its own message that we are nothing more than dogs with urges. Urges that need to be acted upon. When you couple that with the overriding message of freedom, you have a distressing situation. Government is busy gleefully handing out contraceptives and can't be bothered to tell people that there is another way. Parents on the other hand don't have the moral authority ro tell their children what to do because when they were that age they did the same thing although they are now older and wiser. Which is why more teenage girls are getting pregnant at a younger age because no one tells them there is another way. The only message they are getting is that that they are free to do as they please.

Thanks to the pill, American women seem to no longer think that pregnancies are caused by sex. I really don't know whether they have gone back to the idea that storks bring babies, but thanks to the advance of science, American women now get shocked when nature asserts itself and they get pregant after sleeping with a man. They seem not to realise or want to accept that getting pregnant is a time tested consequence of sleeping with a man.

So back to the question. What then is abortion? If getting pregnant is a consequence of sleeping with someone, then abortion is a reaction to that reality. What liberals say is that abortion is a choice. That is disingenious and quite a blatant lie. When a woman meets a man, she has different choices. She can choose to wait before sleeping with him to find out if they are both ready for commitment so that she is not left holding the baby. Even if a woman were to decide to sleep with a man without knowing if either of them was ready for a commitment, either to themselves or a child, there is still a choice as to what contraceptive to use (of which abortion is not one as explained in my last post). However, from the moment a child is concieved, there can no longer be talk of "choice". Or at least not in the way it is used. The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines choice "as an act of choosing between two or more possibilities". When a child has been concieved, there can no longer be talk of choice with regard to contraception because life has already been concieved. There is an inevitability about the situation. The choice that arises at that moment is whether to allow the child to live or to kill it. To dispose of the life created like so much unwated baggage. Just because the parents who unthinkingly decided to create life no longer want the life created because it would cramp their style.

In that case, abortion is no longer about choice. Abortion then is a result of the fact that one person or the two people involved in creating life did not think through their choices before hand before creating life and the consequences of such choices. We live in a society where people nowadays are always trying to evade the consequences of their actions. Abortion is one way women have been evading the consequences of the actions they take. However it is quite sad that the millions of unborn children aborted over the years are the ones who have to pay the price of the fact that their parents didn't think.