Love Machine

John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son..." & Romans 8:29, "and these whom He predestined, He also called, and these whom He called, He also justified, and these whom He justified, He also glorified."

After "Stuck," and my admitting to myself that don't love the majority of the people in the eclectic Wednesday group called Love Machine, I decided to take a different approach to this week's meeting. I decided to pray before hand and ask God to show me why He loves the individuals there. What an answer I got!

I was hoping for just a little nugget of truth. What I got was a full on buffet. And not just any buffet, an all you can eat buffet with everything on the menu being tasty.

The main entree of this love feast is a young lady that in weeks gone by feel under my judgmental eye. And to be frank, my judgments were not pretty. I don't know what is "wrong" with her, but there certainly was something in my opinion. There is nothing overtly offensive about her, she is just one of those people that I don't click with. Only at the end of this experience do I realize she is the star of God's show. That she is deserving of the title Miss Love Feast.

So today, Miss Love Feast tells us of a recent struggle with a friend of 14 years. A woman who has man issues. These man issues led their friendship to a very difficult spot where Miss Love Feast was put in a very awkward position to choose between her friend of 14 years, or the recently cast aside ex-lover of the friend. All things really side issues at this point. Miss Love was really just trying to rescue the part of her old-self she saw in her friend. Which led me to my question. I asked how did you get here? How did you escape whatever it was you escaped? Thinking the answer to her escape would be the answer for her friends escape.

What I got was a tale of innocence lost. I heard of a downward spiral in the adult entertainment industry that was getting worse when the random happened. It sounded to me like she had reached the point of being sucked into the sewer by the whirlpool of life's toilet. But God stepped in. She described a series of random events that began with a woman asking to borrow her internet, to miraculously being introduced to Love Machine and Jim Spivey. I was blown away. Undeniably God loves her so much that He snatched her out of literally the pits of hell. I witnessed her predestination, calling, justification, and glorification in this unconscious testimony. I had to ask, why does God love you so much to pull you so miraculously out of that destruction? And she doesn't know.

Which is a bite on the buffet of love. If you ask me why I love my children I can not give you an answer, but I do. And if you asked my children why their dad loves them I would hope they would say they don't know why, but he love us. That is how God's love is. It is unexplainable. And really it is unnecessary to explain it beyond its presence. And so as I moved down the buffet not really understanding this lesson yet, I pleasantly got to take a bite of a completely different form of love.

I had invited to the meeting a pastor I know. I will call him Pastor Fountain because he is a fountain of God's word. A NEVER ENDING fountain of God's word. Full of truth and A LOT OF IT. (get the picture) Suddenly the fountain gets the floor and here comes scripture to address Miss Love Feast's dilemma.

Every word was true, but I was struggling to not cut him off. To not stop him, and explain my rules of love machine. On and on he went, and in spite of my looks to shut up he continued. I was thinking that the word of God is good, but only when seasoned with love. I didn't feel Pastor Fountain was walking in love. At the end of his sermon Jim spoke up.

Before Jim's Grandfather would sexually abuse him, he would preach the bible at him. That put a pretty bad taste in Jim's mouth for preachy people. I have a lot of people that I associate with that have been victimized by people wielding the Bible without love. But Jim has overcome that past experience, and I have learned from his different approach. He explained his feelings, but that he let his feelings become thoughts, and he let his thoughts settle until he could hear the truth. The truth was that Pastor Fountain was saying I love you, just in a whole lot more words than any of us would use.

So today I discovered that God loves Miss Love Feast so much that He would snatch her out of a lifestyle and into His life. I discovered that it is not important why God loves us, but that He does. And I discovered that those expressions of His love come in many, many forms. Sometimes it comes in a simple hug, years of being drawn closer to Him, and even wordy messages of truth. Probably most importantly, I discovered that if you will take the time to learn how God has loved someone, it makes it super easy to love them too.

It was a good, good day!

Now I had finished this post when through the internet came my desert from this buffet of love. I was wondering if the random person who introduced Miss Love Feast to Christ through Jim and Love Machine knew of the great work for God that she had done. I wondered and prayed, and thought how wonderful it would be for her to share in this. And I got this message from Miss Love Feast. It said, "I told her about today's love machine, and how I know God put her in my life that day to save my life."

I am full as a tick on this incredible feast of love. I am also really enjoying reporting on humanity as it interacts with God.

Breaking Addiction

Matthew 10:39, "He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it."

My thoughts and prayers this morning were on the similarity of my current walk with God and breaking an addiction. Sounds a little bit crazy, but the addiction that is being broken is the addiction of self. This ever present, holy need to die to self. Yes I am an ego addict, and the pain of getting over the addiction is horrible at times.

I remember all to clearly breaking the addiction to nicotine. Day 1 was hard, day 2 was harder, day 3 - 11 absolutely impossible. I wanted to turn back every step of the way. I was meaner than a rattlesnake in the whole process. It was pure insanity.

This point of wanting to quit is where I am in today with this discovering God as Provider and Provision. It is insanity. It is impossible. It makes no sense to anything natural in me. My flesh, my humanity is kicking and screaming telling me to just stop. Stop ignoring my intellect, training, society, and education. I hear the voice of, everyone else does it that way, why can't you? And I seriously consider it.

Then I read T Austin-Sparks, he said, "We know, do we not, of many who will go just so far with the Lord and then they draw the line; some will go a little further but then they stop short, and it seems that very few, very few indeed, go right into the absolute oneness with Him in His Heart, His Mind, His Will: and He is seeking for those who will be of His own Spirit, who will go a little further than the rest, than perhaps the most advanced of all the others, a little further still, to take them into the innermost secret and suffering of His own Heart."

Followed by Oswald Chambers who said, "You may talk about the nobility of human nature, but there is something in human nature which will laugh in the face of every ideal you have. If you refuse to agree with the fact that there is vice and self-seeking, something downright spiteful and wrong in human beings, instead of reconciling yourself to it, when it strikes your life, you will compromise with it and say it is of no use to battle against it."

Into my mind pops 2 Peter 2:22, "... a dog returns to its own vomit, and a sow after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire."

After that I think I will quit thinking about quitting and press on.