Be intentional with love

Posted by Joe Braun on Jun 30, 2010 in Daily Bread | 2 comments

This past Sunday, a dear servant came up to me right before the church service started and asked me to go and speak with a gentleman who was seated in the auditorium, alone. She told me everything she knew about his background, which she learned in about a 3-minute conversation. This gentleman was a first time visitor, had just moved to Atlanta a few months ago, and, as it sounded, was just checking out Church for the first time.

I’m becoming increasingly aware that when people break through the iron curtain we call the walls of Cumberland (or any church, for that matter), they are most likely in search of something. Some legitimately are searching for God. Perhaps they are just lonely. Maybe there is some problem in their lives, and they see that God/church/religion might help them out of their situation. Whatever the reason, their coming to Cumberland might be the one and only time they consider God – it might be their last ditch effort to open themselves up for the possibility that there is a God, and people, who love them.

Imagine the weight that put on my shoulders as I approached this gentleman.

If you were in the church service this past Sunday, you heard the great reminder that Jon Franz gave us. Jon said that God is constantly writing His story on the lives of humanity, even those who are “far from God” (who draws that box?). So, my conversation with this gentleman in many ways could be the one thing he needed to feel just a bit more loved, the one thing that he was looking for to keep him engaged and willing to give church, God, one more attempt the next week. But I certainly can’t hold that weight entirely on my shoulders, though I may be a piece of his (and His) story, I’m not the lead character. I am an instrument, a servant, of Jesus Christ, and if He uses me to touch and love someone on a particular day – if that is what this person needed at that time, I want to make myself available.

I was reading 1 John 4, starting in verse seven, this week. John reminds us that Love and God are one in the same. You cannot separate love from God – you cannot truly – selflessly – love without the love of God.

Dear friends, as faithful servants of Jesus, and because Jesus first loved us, I beseech you to love each other. I find it easy to love people I know and, well, that I like. It’s a little harder to go out of my way to extend a handshake and look someone in the eye and ask him or her how they are. But because “God so loved us (first),” I am asking you to go out of your way to make someone new feel comfortable. Because God loves you, I am asking you to live out the love you have for Him, and make someone inside and outside of the iron curtain feel loved. You may just become a major character in their story.