The Movement

I've talked about love before. Love goes hand in hand with grace. It's difficult to discuss love without submerging one's self in cliche, but I find it necessary to remind myself often. Sometimes the best thing to remind me of God's love is music. I always work with it. I study with it, I write with it, I sleep with it and I browse with it. So what I want to do now is just quote a couple of my favorite songs when it comes to love and make sense of them later.

My love is over
It's underneath
It's inside
It's in between 
The times that you doubt me
When you can't feel
The times that you question
Is this for real 
The times you're broken
The times that you mend
The times you hate me
And the times that you bend 
-Tenth Avenue North, Times

So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love
Let my love look like You and what You're made of
How You lived, how You died
Love is sacrifice
-For King & Country, The Proof Of Your Love

Love is the movement
Love is a revolution
This is redemption
We don't have to slow back down

The stars are alive
They dance to the music
Of the deepest emotion
And all of the world
Is singing in time
And the heavens are caving in
Mysterious ways
Why God gave his life
To put motion inside my soul

It's bigger than cold religion
It's bigger than life
-Switchfoot, Love Is The Movement

These songs all talk about love. They talk about three different instances of love. Let's take them one at a time.

Times shows us the insurmountable love of our God. The love that is everywhere. The love that's in the lungs of the smoker, the veins of the addict, the mind of the inadequate and the heart of the lonely.

This love should call us to action. We love because God first loved us. For King & Country based The Proof Of Your Love off 1st Corinthians 13, which is my all time favorite passage. It challenges us. It puts into words what I want my life to look like. If I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. No head knowledge, no faith, no generosity, none of them have use without love. The only way we can have this love is if we daily draw from God's unending stream of grace so that it flows out of us like a fountain.

As per usual, Switchfoot finishes off what I have to say. As ironic as it sounds, most of us walk away from discussions of taking action with head knowledge. We know that we should take action, but we don't. That defeats the purpose. Our love cannot be an idea in our brains. It has to be a movement. A daily effort that we strive towards together. This is redemption. God loved, so we love others.

Get up, get up
Love is moving you now
-Switchfoot, Love Is The Movement

Doubts

Sometimes I question. Sometimes I lay in bed at night wondering why I've chosen to live the life I do (yes chosen, I live my life for Christ on my own volition.). It's hard. It sounds crazy. It alienates. I live my life for Christ because I know he gave His life for me. I'm sorry, that's another cliche, but what option do I have? I have every right to be burning in hell right now, but God found a way to rescue me, so what reason do I have to live my life for anyone else? I doubt things, but there are things in my faith I know I will never doubt and those things will always lead me to the One who gave Himself for me.

1. I am broken. God or no god, creation or evolution, this remains true. I and the rest of humankind are evil. We strive for ourselves. You call it "survival of the fittest", I call it sin nature. One and the same.
2. There is a Creator. I can save the debate. I believe 100% that this world is not here by random chance. Too much detail, to many stories of hope, love and joy to believe that emotion and life are both bouncing, very lucky electrons.
3. The Bible is truth. The Bible will never be proven false. I dare you to try. It is the truest thing in history. It has been preserved by God and when all knowledge of the current human culture is gone God's word will remain. The Bible tells about Jesus, leading us to....
4. Jesus is Savior. I can't doubt it. I won't doubt it. Because of #3 it is the defining belief of my worldview. I refuse to believe anything else. This is what gives me hope and joy. The life and death and resurrection of Christ. My brokenness taken away and my joy made complete.

These four things are my thesis for life. they are what I live through, and what I try to live out. When I am attacked by doubts, I come to these things and more importantly, my God, and there I find peace. No, not peace, but Peace. Not some simple feeling of contentment, but the ultimate rest in Christ. What was once called shalom. This is my Joy in all levels. In dark and in light.