Tag Archives: Perfect Our Love

Seeing People Through Christ’s Eyes

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Seeing People Through Christ's Eyes

“I see whole people.”

With the heart and mind of Christ I should be able to better see people as they would be if they were in the Kingdom of God, apart from the corrupting influence of sin and their trauma from this world, and then deal with them with the patience, compassion, care and courage to love them where the Father would have them to be: whole in Him.

“But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.”
—Matthew 9:36

‘Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.”
—Matthew 9:35

Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
—Matthew 9:37-38

So, when we encounter people, we should pray and ask, “Lord, show me who they would be in Your Kingdom” and, “Help me to bear the fruit of Your Spirit and grant me Your manifold grace to love them there.

Make me a laborer in the harvest of my Lord, Your Son, Jesus Christ and I ask this request in His name. Amen.”

#perfectourlove

Helping vs Helping At People

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Helping Versus Helping At People

Something we Christians do a lot, is we “help at” people which is not the same as helping people.

We give food baskets to the blind man and buy glasses for the lame, when that’s not their primary issue.

We want to do what we want to do, just to say we’ve done something rather than what they need done.

Jesus is Immanuel, “God with us”.

To help someone, we have to start with where they are and what they’re doing. We have to be with them. We have to expose ourselves long enough to SEE THEM, to see who they’d be, what they’d have and what they could do if the kingdom were to come to their life.

Then, we could come alongside them to help them walk in that reality.

We help people by first elevating our view, elevating their view and then elevating their circumstances to match that as it is in heaven.

We should be satisfied with nothing less.

That’s help.

#help #service #ministry

Love Is More Than Kindness

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Love Is More Than Kindness

We often confuse a kind face with love. But love is not always approval, hugs and kisses. Sometimes love is resisting you to the face and telling you you’re wrong.

Love is much more than kindness.

Love will bruise you to make you better.

Love will brave the risk of your rejection and retaliation to help you.

Love will bear the expense for your profit, often ridicule and sorrow.

Love will boldly resist iniquity; what causes harm.

Love is so much more than kindness.

#perfectourlove

What To Do When I’m Not Feeling It

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What To Do When I'm Not Feeling It

Anyone who has been married for any significant amount of time can tell you that there are days when you’re “not feeling it”.

It’s the whole reason faithfulness is a thing.

If I were “feeling it” all the time, there would be no need for faithfulness.

On those days that I’m not feeling it, I **feel** like doing something that makes me feel better, that satisfies my craving, that soothes my pain, that fills what I’m lacking…

But, I **choose** to be faithful: to continually advance that which I have committed to.

“Feel”
Sense
Senses:
Touch, Taste, Smell, Hearing, Sight

Sight

But, the just live by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)

I must choose to be faithful.

#perfectourlove #thriveday

My New Found Freedom In Slavery To Christ

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - My New Found Freedom In Slavery To Christ

I am beginning to experience a wonderful new found freedom as a slave of Christ.

I have been in the bondage of worry, thinking that I have to take care of things, I have to make ends meet, I have to make a way, I have to do this, I have to do that to hold everything together, which is true if I’m building my own house.

But, Christ provides for His house.

When I forsake all as following Christ demands, abandoning my own ambitions for my own house and instead serve Him and His house, when His purposes are my pursuit **first** (πρῶτον – “chiefly” or “above all” as in Matthew 6:33, which means everything that follows is subordinate, whatever is 2nd, 3rd, 4th will not violate what is 1st), I find that I can have complete confidence that He will provide everything I need, including the grace needed to glorify God in hard times (2 Corinthians 12:8-9, Philippians 4:11-13).

Because, God’s glory is the goal and He will have it (John 12:28).

If I am truly in His house, the glory of the Father is my goal as is my Master’s, Christ.

His glory **is** increasingly becoming the singular goal of my life, and in this new stage of my walk with Christ, I am consistently seeing His perfect provision even though I serve imperfectly!

He is so faithful.

But it started with dying, beginning with dying to my own identity and my own ambition. You can’t serve two masters.

To enjoy this freedom and the peace that comes with it, I have to forsake all.

And, please do not confuse this as me saying I don’t have to work. A heart that loves compels action to prosper what it loves. I work and in many cases the job I do every day does not change, but what does change is who my work is in service to.

I am not saying I do not have to work.

What I am saying is, I don’t have to worry.

Christ provides for His house.

He will provide everything I need, including the grace needed to glorify God in hard times.

I only need to love Him and do what love does.

This is so freeing.

And, it results in better work too.

The challenge is not allowing myself to be seduced back into the clutches of my old master.

Please pray for me.

See: Matthew 6:24-33
#perfectourlove #work

The Discipline Of Looking For Life In Others

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - The Discipline Of Looking For Life In Others

It’s easy to focus on what’s wrong or where I believe a person is falling short and completely overlook the areas where they’re growing and making an effort.

To ignore or deny where a person is trying is discouraging and destructive.

I realize how I’ve been guilty of this and I repent.

Very often, we kill the grape vine we’re given because we’re looking for an apple tree (and it might not even be the season for whatever we’re looking for).

I must learn to work patiently with the Holy Spirit within His appointed seasons, to sow what I want (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31) and faithfully attend to what I get, to nurture and cultivate what is rather than railing against what isn’t.

God has placed me in a garden. I have been entrusted with many fields. The goal is that there would be life in those fields and to help them be fruitful.

I must remember that the goal is not to get what I want, but to seek what God wants -fruit: to be co-laborers with God in conforming each person, all the fields He’s given me the great privilege of working with Him in, to the glorious image of Christ.

So, a good question to ask in my frustration about what I’m not seeing is, where else are they trying, where else are they budding, what is needful for Christ to be further formed in them?

Then I can turn that budding seed toward the Son, nurture it, and lean into what God is doing -in them and me.

“[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.” –1 Corinthians 13:7-8

#perfectourlove

How God’s Love Is Different

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - How God's Love Is Different

One of many ways the love of God is different:

God’s love is not transactional, it’s relational.

When I love you with God’s love, I love you, not on the basis of what you do or even who you are, or not even because of my relationship to you, but I love you based on my relationship to God.

The beginning of love is not the appreciation of some virtue in the subject.

Love is like light. There is no virtue in the darkness that activates light. Light shines simply because that’s what light does.

The beginning of love is God. Loves does what love is. Said another way, Love does who God is.

The question is, do I have Him [love], or perhaps better said, does love [God] have me?

If so, love is just going to do what it do and there should be nothing the subject can do to stop that.

The principal thing then, is to know Love, to have Him and Him have me.

Abide.

Only then am I in a position to love.

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.”
-John 15:9

#perfectourlove

Bad Love

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Bad Love

Hardly anything is more destructive than a bad definition of love.

We do more harm to each other in the name of what we think is love than we do with hate.

At least with outright hate, it’s clear who the enemy is so you can avoid them or defend yourself.

But, I find that most of the harm that people suffer, and the most devastating came at the hands of people we thought were for us and who were actually well meaning (to the extent of their ability), sincerely thinking they were loving when they were doing the opposite.

Examples:
A guy who claims he loves a girl but is defiling her.

A parent who thinks they’re loving a child but is actually teaching them to hate themselves.

A person who think they’re helping the disadvantaged but is only further setting them back.

Me doing something that feels good or seems good that makes me worse off.

Etc.

But, Jesus came so we’d have an accurate definition, to teach us Love that “does no harm”.

If you want to know how to truly love: yourself, your spouse, your child, your family, your friends, your neighbor, God, look to Christ.

“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Matthew 6:23

#perfectourlove

One More

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - One More

Something that struck me today as we were reflecting on the last utterances of Jesus from the cross…

There’s no indication that the Man had eaten.

He’s likely dizzy from the blood loss of the scourging alone. ¹

He struggles to carry the implement of His torture, weighing upwards of 175 lbs (79kg), for more than 650 yards (600m). ²

When He finally gets to the hill, He’s rewarded with nails driven through His flesh to fix Him to the cross. ³

He’s struggling to breath from the asphyxiation the cross was designed to produce.

He’s being humiliated, openly mocked even by both of the thieves He’s being crucified between. ⁴

But somewhere along the way, one thief has a change of heart. ⁵

Bloodied, beaten and dying, what does our Lord think?

One more.

Hallelujah.

In His state, Jesus makes the time for a thief, a “convicted felon” as someone put it today, to accept his repentance and to assure his salvation because the condemned man simply believed Jesus was a King not of this world. (Luke 23:39)

Jesus makes time for him in the midst of all He was going through to minister to him and say, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” ⁶

To His dying breath, Jesus used every ounce of strength He had to do His Father’s will.

This illuminates John 13:1,
“[…] Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” -John 13:1

He loved them to end with everything that He had -love that reconciled them to the Father.

That’s the standard.

This is a Perfect Picture of what it looks like to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. ⁷

My Lord and My God.

What excuse do I possibly have for not loving to the very end, especially since I “have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin”?! (Hebrews 12:4)

The calling is indeed high. So, “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12)

When I am tired, hard-pressed, perplexed, persecuted, and beat down ⁸, by His grace I aim to be like my Savior and think, “One more.”

¹ Matthew 27:26, John 19:1
² Matthew 27:29
³ John 20:25
⁴ Matthew 27:44
⁵ Luke 23:38-42
⁶ Luke 23:43
⁷ Deuteronomy 6:5, Mark 12:29-31
⁸ 2 Corinthians 4:7

Perfect Our Love Triangle

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Perfect Our Love Triangle

A weapon is not any good if you don’t know how to use it.

I’ve previously shared what I refer to as the Perfect Our Love Triangle.

It emphasizes the Father’s love for us and Jesus’s love for the Father which results in Jesus’ love for us.

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.” -John 15:9

The aim is to be conformed to Jesus’ image and reflect His example by focusing on God’s love for us that allows us to love God with all our heart, mind and soul, which results in us loving others -who God loves in the way that He loves.

“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” -1 John 4:10-11

How did God love us?

He spared no expense, to the extent of willingly suffering, being humiliated and allowing us to kill Him, for the purposes of saving us from what’s hurting us, to remove everything that’s separating us (which is the same as what’s hurting us -sin)and reconcile us to Himself that we may be together and have life abundantly and safely in Him.

I heard a great quote last night from Dr. Andy Brown, Pastor of First Baptist Church in Starkville,

“Jesus loved lavishly in so many ways. The cross is the greatest, most unimaginable expression of love we’ve ever seen. But, He would have gone farther.”

And, God does.

“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” -Romans 8:32

So, how am I to love others?

To focus on God’s love for me, to stand firmly in the love of God by loving Him with everything I am and have, and to spare no expense to draw others into that love, seeking to destroy everything that is between me and them, that we may be together and have life abundantly and safely in Him.

“Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” -Ephesians 5:1–2

When do I use this?

The Sunday School answer is “always” and that is correct but what does that look like practically in real life.

I take instruction from a recent fight with my wife. A useful cue is anger.

Whenever, I feel anger or an unpleasant emotion toward someone, it should trigger remembrance of this triangle.

First, remebering God’s love for me in that Jesus has paid for all sin -not for mine only but for the whole world (1 John 2:2).

I don’t (and shouldn’t) have to make them pay (Matthew 18:21-25).

That switches my approach from debt collection to compassion, and instead of dealing with someone on the basis of what I believe I’m owed, I can deal with them on the basis of what I can give which is admonishment and edification about how we can more effectively walk together in a way that does not cause offense and that produces more love.

“And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” -Ephesians 4:32.

I honestly didn’t mean it to be -God’s timing, but as we celebrate the Passion of Christ on this Good Friday, this is the message of the cross, God’s unsearchable love for us, Jesus’ perfect demonstration of that love and the high calling for us who believe to take up our cross and follow Him.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” -John 3:16.

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.” -John 15:9

“Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.'” -Luke 9:23.

#perfectourlove