How can you fulfill the greatest comandment (In short: Love God. Love people) without being a war-monger?
Ok, what am I talking about?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
Let me ask you another question.
Is anything holding you back from being the person you can be? Are there restrictions on your life?
Ok... those restrictions are there through the things you have experienced and made decisions about during your life.
Things have happened and we have made decisions that it would be better not to do x otherwise we will experience y again in the future.
Therefore we modify our behaviour until our life is one big collection of modified behaviour.
We live in a box. We have created boundaries that we dare not go past. We have imprisoned ourselves.
I have another question for you.
How on earth are you going to love people when the circumstances come that require you to go beyond those barriers to love them.
Answer.. (ready for this..)
You Can't!
So, the solution is to go to war.
Ask God to reveal to you the things that have led you to boxing yourself in and ask Him for wisdom on how to destroy them in His power.
You know - we try to deal with these things. Maybe we've been to counsellors. Maybe we've tried to ignore them. But they're still there.
We destroy these things - in Christ.
Oppression, depression, fear, anxiety... the things that have contributed to our box will stop us reaching out to people. They will stop us loving people fully. They will stop us forgiving people. They will stop us prodding people. They will stop us being patient with people. They will stop us going out on a limb for people. They will stop us having compassion for people.
How do you feel about that?
Have you had enough of living in your box?
We have been given weaponry to blitz the box.
The weaponry has been provided at great price. A great price.
Get to know your weapons - and use them.
Be cold hearted about the things that are restricting your behaviour and therefore restricting your capacity to Love God and love people.
It's nothing personal. It's just business.
It's our business.
Here's our business:
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
Let me put something to you.
You cannot live in the greatest commandment without a total ruthlessness and discontent for the things that come against you living in the greatest commandment.
Demolish strongholds in Christ. Demolish pretensions. Your weapons have divine power for their destruction.
The longer we live in our boxes, the longer the enemy will have a grip.
The weapons that have been gifted to us have phenomenal power.
Lets use them so that we can love in Christ to the full.