Fellowship

Yesterday, I taught a lesson out about Social Justice to my youth group (http://www.navpress.com/store/product.aspx?id=9781600062995) and loved it. There were some technical issues with my PowerPoint (turned out to be user error, believe it or not) that got me awful stressed but the lesson went great.

Afterward, my pastor taught on Matthew's conversion story. How he, the disciples, and Jesus dined with the taxcollecters and "sinners." The religious right... i mean, the pharisees, couldn't stand it. They didn't want anything to do with these "sinners" and couldn't understand what a Holy man like Jesus was doing with them. Jesus' response is clear... "It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners."

Jesus showed these men love. Made it clear that he thought they needed spiritual life, that they had sin, but He loved them anyway.

I have spent a lot of time trying to convey to the youth group the meaning of and need for unconditional love in our communities. So often, as Christians, we think our only calling is to share Christ with people. That is true that we are necessarily called to do that, but we always translate that to mean a 5 minute gospel presentation.

When Christ called us to love, there were no strings attached. No neat little gospel presentation at the end of the love. No motive at all except to unconditionally love. We are to love as Christ loved us. You see, his disciples didn't know all they were going to gain by following Christ, and they rarely understood the point of any of his messages. But they understood He loved them. After His resurrection and the Holy Spirits indwelling of the disciples, they began to understood why He had done what He did.

The early church therefore went around loving the unlovable. Caring for the poor, watching after the widows, and feeding the orphans. This was true love. Unconditional love.

You see, we often wonder why the early church grew the way it did, in the midst of persecution, without any military or violent influence of their own. Its not that the Holy Spirit was moving more then, as I've talked about (http://swannthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/03/we-did-study-of-acts-last-night-with-yg.html). They just loved people. People saw that love and responded. They knew that these people loved them and they wanted to know why. There answer was simple, as John said "We love because He first loved us."

I encourage any believer reading this to do the same. Love others. With all your heart, unconditionally, no strings attached. Simply because He loved us. Proclaim Christ in everything you do. Let the Holy Spirit bring about the change in people's lives.