Me: Prodigal, what a nice day to find you on this one-way street!
Prodigal: Yeah, one-way streets were confusing to me at first but then once I learned the trick to them, it has been easy.
Me: If you try to avoid one-way streets in can make it harder.
Prodigal: That is why I just tried to figure it out and put it to practice. So does then mean you are going to talk about one-ways streets?
Me: No, I am not but I am going to talk about one-way expression.
Chuck Swindoll in his book Living On The Ragged Edge does a detailed review on the book of Ecclesiastes. In this book it talks about loving the way God calls us to love.
So much today is a two-way exchange rather than a one-way expression. I do good because you are going to do good back to me. I treat you nice, and in return I expect you to treat me nice. Reciprocity brings us pleasure. But God says He gives us the ability to do good in our lifetime….whether or not others do us good in return. And let me urge you not to wait. Now is the time to do good.
You and I don’t do anyone else a bit of good once we are six feet under. It is all over. Don’t wait until then to make life happier for someone else, to give someone else some financial relief, to express your availability and to help them through a hard time, to baby-sit, to house-sit, to help them purchase a car, or help them get an education. Don’t wait until later to invest in others relief. God says He gives you the ability to do it in your lifetime; it is a gift from Him. Which means that no one can explain in human terms why you would do it. It doesn’t come from any heart of love and compassion, because you and I don’t have hearts like that. Face it, our natural heart is depraved and desperately wicked. That is the kind of human nature we have. Without help from God we are sunk.
But when God, in the person of Jesus Christ, comes into a life, He gives that once-selfish individual the capacity to do good. And that means the ability to do good without being thanked, getting credit or receiving applause. You find yourself motivated to do good, because God’s life is at work in you.
God has been teaching me so much about this. It is so easy to be there for others when they appreciate us. When they give us things in return. When you are popular. When you get favors done because of who your friends are.
Image this scenario though. Imagine that God sent you to his people because they did not understand His love but only know men’s love. God wants them to grow and move to a new understanding of love. You show up, and they turn against you. They don’t want to hear Gods love because they have their own plans. God still loves them and it causes an ache in your heart because you see how they are missing out on Gods love.
So you go around every week. They continue to defile your character, they persecute you, they try to condemn you in front of others. You take it and you turn around and go next week. Why? Why do you put up with it all? Because of God. There is no way in your natural self you would put up with this. You do it because it is Gods people and he loves them. You do it because he has called you to obedience and you love God. Showing God you really love Him is sometimes putting yourself in tough situations and you stay in them. Do not avoid the fire, show God you love Him today. He is calling you.
1 John 4:19
We love because He first loved us.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
