OK, I’ll admit on the front end (right here in the first sentence, even) that quite a few readers won’t know the band “Extreme” or the song “More Than Words”. So I’ll provide some back story for those that don’t. Those that do, please hold *click*
Extreme is a mediocre hair band from the late 80s. One of their most popular songs – if not their most popular song – was a song without most of the band even playing in it (which should give some clue about the quality of the band, right). The singer (Gary Charone, who was later in Van Halen for about 27 minutes) and the guitar player simply sang and played a song all about the girl he loved. And if he took away the words “I love you” how would she show him that she loved him. He sings about how easy it would be, by doing simple little things, to show him that she loved him without ever having to say the words. How would she make it right, if she’d broken his heart and had to do something other than saying “I love you” to try and fix it? And if she’d been living it all along, then she wouldn’t need those words anyway. That’s all he wants her to do, not repeat some simple over-used phrase (more on that in another email), but just reach out and hold him close and never let him go. And then she’d never have to say “I love you”, because he’d already know. OK, now fess up. How of you that know that song and were reading this part anyway sang that last line in your head when you read it? It is, however, a pretty song, and if you’ve never heard it, you could do worse than to look it up on youtube, or the video/song hosting site of your choice, and give it a listen.
*click* Those that already knew all of that, thank you for holding…we appreciate your patience.
But what if, instead of some mediocre, marginally-successful hair band ballad, we were talking about Christianity. How often do we say with our mouths that we believe in Jesus, but then yell at the guy in front of us on the interstate for going 15 miles per hour slower than the limit? You want some self-reflection? Try getting on someone’s bumper – you know, that someone that’s driving 20 in a 45 – and saying in a deep, overly dramatic voice, “WHY are you going so SLOOOOW?” and you hear that voice from the back seat say, “Because he’s an idiot?” And right after you hear your 10-year-old finish your rhetorical question with your normal I’ll-answer-for-them answer, you hear James 3:8-10:
8 but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.And you realize, that if a 10-year-old kid notices that my habit is to insult people I don’t even know, then surely God notices. And in John 14:15 when Jesus says, “if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments”, I don’t remember finding “in all matters, insult people you don’t know” in the list as being one of them. (Or insulting those you DO know, either, for that matter).
Either way, simply saying “I believe in Jesus” over and over and over isn’t enough. You have to live your life like Christ wants you to. Read James 2 if you want it said better than I ever could. But if we truly loved Jesus, then it would be obvious to everyone around us. We wouldn’t have to answer the question “do you believe in Jesus” because it wouldn’t need to be asked. And by saying it over and over and over, who are we really trying to convince, God or ourselves?
I mentioned James 2, and that’s the passage that talks about “faith without works is dead”, and that’s often debated about what all that means. It’s not about earning salvation – it’s about John 14:15. And John 14:15 is about me showing Jesus how much I love Him by not acting like the jerk that insults slow drivers in front of me…or the jerk that takes walked-away-from baskets in Walmart and moves them two aisles over because you left it in my way to go get your hot dogs 3 aisles away (and yeah, I’ve really done that in my past – more than once, actually)…or the guy that tries to justify the reasons he DIDN’T share the gospel of Jesus all those times he had the chance…or the guy that never talks to God or studies his Bible or visits the sick or helps his neighbors or smiles and says a kind word to an elderly person on the bench at Walmart or…should I go on? John 14:15 is about being the Good Samaritan. John 14:15 is about Jesus already knowing how much you love Him based on how you act. “Whatever you’ve done for the least of these, you’ve done for me” Wait, ummmm…Hey, Jesus, does that mean that I actually called you an idiot for driving too slowly in front of me? Yes, yes it does.
This wasn’t an easy devotional for me to write. Because anyone who knows me, knows that I have a VERY sarcastic side to me. A sarcasm that I’ve tried very hard to tame. And the story about Cameron saying “because he’s an idiot” actually happened. In fact, it happened less than a week prior to my writing this. And that’s a hard thing to hear. Your own insults coming from your son. Way to go, dad! Way to raise him up right!
We’ve all heard the verses about “when did we see you hungry…”, “even the wicked love those that love them…” but I heard John MacArthur make a point one time. He asked “does ‘love those that persecute you and pray for your enemies’ mean that I only love Jesus as much as I love the person I hate the most?” That’s one of those twisty sentences, so I’ll repeat it: Do I only love Jesus as much as I love the person I hate the most? Wow. That’s a meditation thought right there.
It’s not about who can put others down the quickest or be the meanest when someone’s done something to us or who can come up with the best insults. It’s about love. God is love – 1 John 4:8. And we’re supposed to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength – Mark 12:30 (Jesus quoting Deuteronomy 6,). And love our neighbors as ourselves – Mark 12:31 (Jesus quoting Leviticus 19 – he quotes the Old Testament a lot, but that’s another show). It’s about 1 John 3:11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. It’s about listening for the whisper. And sometimes the whisper that God uses to convict us comes from the back seat from our own children.
Loving Jesus is more than words. Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. 1 John 3:18,19.
~Dwayne
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