Dying to self vs dying to others

This past week has been... interesting. Interesting in the ancient Chinese curse sense of the world. (Although, according to the great and mighty Wikipedia, that particular Chinese curse could well be western in origin and far from ancient.)

The text for today's post comes from the 22nd chapter of Matthew, begining in verse 37. "Jesus replied. 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. 'Love your neighbor as yourself'. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

All of the Law is based on those two commandments. The first one, while difficult in implementation, is very simple in concept. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God." The second one, however...

Who is your "neighbor"? I assume that includes everyone. All people. But it doesn't say love some more than others. In fact, Jesus points out that those who love their friends and hate their enemies are no better than the tax collectors. It is only a matter of degree, then, to say that it is wrong to love their friends and love their enemies less. Perhaps 'wrong' is not exact... God's will is that we love everyone equally. As we love ourselves, to be exact. But that brings up another point of contention; What if we don't particularly like ourselves? And Jesus said that anyone who followed him would have to "deny himself". If 'Love of Self' should equal 'Love of Others', and 'Love of Self' must die for the Cross, then should not 'Love of Others' do the same? But then, that just points to the supremacy of 'Love the Lord your God' and the subordination of 'Love your neighbor'.

My point is this. Is it required that a Christian sacrifice himself for another? We are called to subordinate ourselves to God, to the Cross, and to the pull of the Holy Spirit. We are not required to subordinate ourselves to each other. Let me clarify: If God calls me to sacrifice all that I have, then I am obligated to comply. However, if another person calls me to give him all that I have, I do not have to comply. We are called to love them as we love ourselves. Which can be interpreted many ways. I would say that we provide for our own needs, from what God has provided for us, and then provide for others whose needs have not been met. This means that there will come certain times when God provides only what we need, usually to focus our attention on our reliance upon him.

On the other hand, there is a blessing in given out of our need, in sacrificing ourselves in someway. Jesus gave an example of being a servant, and John tells us that laying down our lives for a friend is the greatest love one can have for another. There are also times when God calls some specifically to sacrifice something for others.

There are applications of this that I will hopefully get into at another time.

So a friend of mine was put into a horrible, horrible situation today. A nightmare scenario. No one should be puit in that place. She was faced with 2 bad choices. But she, amazingly, went God's way, option 3. It was a wholely earthly problem. But she choose to face it as a chance to further God's Knigdom. She still was hurt, badly. Perhaps not physically, but mentally and emotionally. Although I can only assume these things; God's healing has no earthly bounds.

But my point is, her faithfulness astounds me. I am totally impressed, and a little jealous. Because I know that grace didn't come from within her. That was a gift of the Holy Spirit in her time of need. Wow, God is good. I find it amazing that after a day like today, God can still bring my soul to praise Him. Amazing Grace.

Word picture for the day: Yesterday during the service, I imagined a metaphor for the love of God vs the love of people. I pictured a person blowing against a sail vs the wind. First of all, the person blow cannot generate anything close to enough volume to make a differnce. Secondly, the breath of that person may be smelly and probably contains germs, because it's coming from a place inside that is none-too-clean. On the other hand, the fresh breeze can move the largest ships, and is free of bad breath or (most) germs.

Just an idle thought.

And for another thought... I saw a bus ad for the Sierra Club's Day of Action, which is a rally at the Capital for the environment. The thought that occurred to me is how much fossil feul is going to be burned to bring those people together. Wouldn't a Day of Inaction be better; a day to promote telecommuting. However, there probably won't be that big an impact, because I would be suprised if they get 1000 people together for that rally.

Ah, Friday night. How can I have waited so long to comment on Friday night?

Friday night we had an evening of worship at the church that included a time set aside for receiving prophetic word. It was a really awesome time. The Christlife group took part in the prophetic and I know several people were very encouraged by the word received and shared. I don't know how it was received from the majority of those in attendance, but from where I was, it was really cool.

Afterward I had a specific word for an individual who was there. I didn't think it was appropriate to be shared in a public forum, because it could be considered corrective. So as we were dispersing, I approached this individual. At the same time, someone else stopped this person with a word to share and the messages that we had shared were very similiar; they ammounted to "stop running" and "rest". That was pretty powerful.