transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:10] Hello, my friends, and welcome to Life with Sally podcast. I'm so glad you're here. So please make yourself a cup of tea and come on in. Hello, my wonderful friends. I greet you from Colorado today. Monument Colorado is where I live, up kind of in the mountains. And it's finally a beautiful day. We can take off our sweaters. It snowed yesterday and the day before, but now all the snow is gone, magically. Thank you, Lord. And so I'll tell you where I am. I'm sitting in my living room, and I have been working all day on various things, but I am actually getting ready to go on an almost four-week trip overseas again. And it's just been an amazing gift for me. We've gone through such a... We've had lots of company and people living with us, and things going on, and taking care of kids and grandkids, and this and that, the other, and writing and doing articles, so on and so forth, just my life. But I was just kind of like a little bit weary, just tired basically, just basically old tired. And I think the Lord just really must have had... The Lord and his angels got together and planned a surprise for me, because a few weeks ago, I had nothing planned. And then all of a sudden, three things popped up that were really a gift to me. And I think maybe it was as though, you know, when Jesus announced his disciples and said, let's get away and rest. Well, that's how it is for me. And I am actually a very precious friend of mine, made it possible. I've never done anything like this in my life. Usually if we're traveling, we're working. But made it possible for me to go on a really looking forward to it fun trip in France for a little while. And then another friend who has a home in Oxford, knew that I was wanting to work on a new book project. And she said, I would like to make my home available to you just for you for a week. And then my Joy asked me to do something really fun with her because of what we did together when she learned how to drive. So all of a sudden, I just had these three trips. The airfare is provided, the places are provided. It was just kind of one of those never happens sort of things. And Clay said, well, of course you can go. My goodness, that's like somebody looked at you and said, okay, she needs a break. And so I'm getting ready to leave on a little three and a half week trip to these places. And so if you see some of the fun pictures that I'll be showing from overseas or from my little home that I'll be staying at and trying to work as hard as I can to lay down some thoughts I've had for a new book. And though I know that I'll also be with my children and grandchildren some while I'm there. And so I am just as tickled pink as one can be. And I feel very blessed because I never had any idea that this was what was waiting for me in my time ahead. Sometimes we have difficulties waiting in our time ahead that we don't anticipate. And sometimes we have these surprises. So I'm very grateful and very grateful that I have such generous, thoughtful friends. But anyway, another thing that I just have had in my heart a lot, I have been trying to decide whether I just needed a little bit of break from writing in the past few months. But I'm always going to be message driven. And I keep thinking, I even thought, you know, I could have some across the country sort of very short conferences in different cities. But the thing is, I didn't realize how when you got to be my age, that your wonderful children that you're close to, would all still want you very involved in their lives. And so all of our children are at different kinds of transitions and some are moving, some are changing jobs, some are doing this and that. And so I find myself, most afternoons, I'm talking to one of my children, or two of my children at different times. I get to be with them because of these special ways that people have provided for us, to talk with them and to find out what they're doing. And just between that and I've been meeting most days, I would say four or five days a week with an individual woman who just needed some counsel or wanted to get together for some encouragement or had questions about life and goals and so on. So my life has been packed to the fullness of time with all of these different precious people in my life. Just in every way, whether it's phone call, counseling, different people, I think that I'm seeing so much that there are needs for personal friends, for people to affirm you and so on. And in the midst of hearing all of these different stories, I've realized that over and over and over, people come to me and say, I am exhausted, I don't know how I'm going to make it. I find myself yelling at my children. And then other people say, I was raised in a passive family, a family where there was some physical abuse, a family who is critical, or a family who wasn't present for me. And I am doing the same thing with my children. Or I just don't feel like I can keep going at the rate I am. And one of the things that has come out of this for me is that I feel like this whole area of God's love, unconditional love. I've been going through different attributes of God. And today, though, it may seem that it's obvious, I really wanted to assess and talk with you a little bit about what actually does it mean to know God's love, to ingest God's love, and to act it out in our convictions, in the ways that we treat people. It's what Jesus said people would know, that we were Christians by our love for one another. And so I'm going to be talking today about how we can focus on all the rolling goals. So we can focus on moralism, and like trying to live a perfect rule-oriented life, or we can focus on trying to get the best education, or we can focus on being sure that our children don't miss out on any activities or whatever. But all of these things, all of these efforts, if we have not love, we become a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And all of our effort goes to not. And so I just wanted to write about that today and talk about it a little bit. I've got a bunch of verses to share with you. But to really understand, and I want you to think through as we're talking about this. Right now, what is your view of God? Do you feel that God is judging you because you've made a mistake or that you're disappointment to him because maybe you have these voices in your head from your childhood that said, you are a disappointing person. You never quite live up to perfection. Whatever it is, we have a view of God, and your view of God will determine the way that you live. And so I'm going to be talking today about how necessarily important, profoundly important it is for us to understand biblical foundations of love, and how important they are to our well-being, to our lives, to our relationships, to our marriages, to our relationship with people at church, in our neighborhood, in our work ethics, where we are working. And it's something that I feel like sometimes people don't take into account. They don't ponder the passages. They don't say, oh, this is radical. This means I need to be radical in how I behave, and how I ingest the love of God, and how I live in peace because of the knowledge of the stability and security I have in Him. With His always gracious response to me, from Genesis to Revelation, we see that God continues to reach out, to teach, to provide, to lead, and that He is communicated to us that even as a father has compassion on his children. God is a father. God is a shepherd who takes care of his sheep and looks for them. God is the light. God is the salt, the tastiness. God is the one who invades the darkness and brings light and encouragement and truth to our whole beings. And so we're going to talk about some of that today. But as you can see in the picture that I have on my blog, Instagram, social media, Facebook, this is me. I love pathways. Pathways to me promise adventures and promise destinations of life that you can't even imagine. That might be wonderful. And so this is me walking near a wall in this very back wooded area where I was in Oxford area, over in the meadows. And the verse I wrote down as a part of what this reflects to me, it's one of my favorite verses in scripture. It's the path of the righteous. And I suppose you're righteous if you're committed to the Lord, you bear his righteousness in your life. The pathway, the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn. Now, let's stop there for a second. I want you to think about what is it like when the sun begins to come up from the dark and shadowy evening, then as the sun starts to come up, the light of dawn, the dawning of a day, a new day. And it says, the path of the righteous is like that. It's, it shines brighter and brighter until the full day. In other words, we are on a pathway of learning righteousness, growing in righteousness, growing in our understanding of God. And it is little by little, even as the sun comes upon us, brighter and brighter until the full day. That's what it's like to walk with God. We are on a journey. We are on a journey toward righteousness, towards learning about God and His attributes, and then living it out in such a way that our lives would cause other people to perceive what God is like. And so I wanted to talk today about the path of love, the pathway of love. It took me a lifetime of choices. It has taken me a lifetime of choices to love step by step, to become mature in living it out in my life. It is indeed a process. We don't become holy, or we don't become loving all at once. There's personalities involved, and people can have very different personalities, expectations. Ideals of people are very different, and sometimes people aren't fair, and they might be selfish. I think all of us are sometimes unfair and selfish. But at any rate, as I look back on this whole pathway, I realized that the basis of our foundation of influence, in the lives of any of our people, the neighbors, the children, your husband, it's based on your ability to communicate love and unconditional acceptance and serving of them and their needs, so that they can be more open to see that maybe there is a god who is like that, because they've felt it in a real relationship with you. So the path of love took me a lifetime. I'm still learning all the time, but I've kind of reflected on Clay's and my relationship because we'll be married 45 years this summer. And I thought, you know, we have gotten to the point where we're softer with one another. We know each other's flaws and we have accept with them. It's been a pathway of maturity. And we have compassion on each other. And we give each other a lot of space for having different personalities. And we're a team. We work together. I cook dinner every night. Clay washes the dishes every night. How did that evolve? I don't know. It just did. But anyway, this growth from immaturity to maturity, from toddlerhood to adulthood, is a process. But I get so many letters from people who say anger. My parents were angry. I always felt like I was going to disappoint something that they expected of me. They were angry, and verbalized it, and showed it to me in their behavior. My parents were passive. They didn't care about my life. They didn't spend time with me. Or my family had sharp words and criticism that shaped my life and my thought of myself while I was growing up. And then, all of the different letters, all the different people with their own unique stories, their own precious stories, they say, now I'm doing the same thing to my children. I get so exhausted that I'm not always patient when they're having little fusses. I'm tired when I have to get up every night with a little baby. My teenagers are fussing with everything I say. And I'm fearful that I am ruining my children because of my own behavior, but I feel helpless and hopeless and exhausted. Helpless to change, hopeless in my future and how to live every day like this, and exhausted from spending so many years trying to give up my life. But without love, my friends, as I mentioned earlier, we do become noisy gongs or clanging cymbals. Love is the foundation. It's how to, if you fail to reach the heart of your children because of a lack of love, all of the material prospects, all of the events in the world, all of the gifts you give to them aren't going to be of any use because love opens their hearts to the messages of what you think is God's truth for you to share. Love is the most profound reflection of Christ in a fallen world. Jesus said, they will know you are my disciples by your love for one another. Now, as I look at my own life, I've never been loved too much. Have you? In other words, it's impossible to give too much true love to your people, your children, your husband. In other words, sometimes love might call somebody to your best or it might call you to have some hopefully peaceful discussions or know how to really cultivate the person that you love by encouragement, by help, by affirmation. And so I think that we long for companionship, for friendship, for understanding, for someone to attend to our feelings, our dreams, and our needs. We need help sometimes. And so do our children. They are not going to be perfectly mature or perfectly loving. They're growing toward it if you are learning to train and teach and love as a family culture. And I just thought that this might be a good reminder today of what exactly does love cost. We invest in love by so many different ways. Maybe it's asking someone out for coffee or inviting somebody home to your own house for a cup of tea. That's what I do. I invite people to come over to my house. I light candles. I put out mugs for a cup of tea or coffee. I always have either a little roasted nuts with some salt and a tiny little bit of sweetener on it or I have cookies or some kind of bread. I always have some little something to eat, something to drink. I have music playing. This is all so easy. I don't do profound big teas most of the time. I just have people over, come over and let's talk. I can't wait to hear your story. I would love to know more about you. And then, candles lit, they come in and I focus my heart on investing in people. All people need love, understanding, encouragement. And so this has become something that I do. I've done it since I was 19 years old and started doing small groups in my dormitory room. But we long for these things, relationship, understanding, to share our dreams, just to share our fears or what happened, our frustrations. But so do our children. So we ask them to meet for coffee or tea. If you ever think I'm getting distracted, it's only because it is. It's either a dog that came in or something equivalent to a dog. Anyway, we stay up late even though we're exhausted with a teen who is anxious about life, who wonders if she is acceptable to her peers and wants to be liked and has tears over it. It's holding a baby and rocking the baby gently, like wrapping her arms around the baby and holding it close and singing or rubbing its sweet little head or just staying with the baby until it securely falls asleep in our protective arms. Love is taking a cool drink or snacks with your husband so that he can unload the stress he feels in life. I think sometimes we're so busy with our own goals and taking care of our family that a lot of husbands who work so hard or try to get a job or whatever, they have lots of stresses. And I think when we see our husbands and when we validate them and affirm them with our life-giving words and even take the time to give them time separate from everyone else, that there is a natural strength in friendship like that. We are all made to be companions, companions who are thoughtful and kind. And so I found that I've been doing that with Clay for a long time. Almost no matter or without fail, when it's sometime between 3.30 and 4 o'clock, if you are in our home, then you are going to have a cup of tea with us around a sweet little bite of some sort. And we have influenced our children by the conversations we've had there. We have talked about books, we have unearthed some of the struggles that people have in their lives. This tea time isn't just a frivolous thing, it's a marking of a, oh, let's stop now, let's take a breath and be friends and talk. What's on your mind? And we all long for that kind of relationship with somebody that we trust. But we built that into our lifetime. That's one of the ways we show love. Doesn't have to be long, and you can just grab a mug out of the cupboard. It's just making the time count in your relationship. But making love a priority, my friends, almost always means giving up yourself over and over again, putting up with the interruptions in your day. It's the foundation of passing on faith. Without love, it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who see him. Now, did you notice that I was talking from Hebrews? It says without faith, it's impossible. But faith to love people when you're feeling a little bit drained, is living by love, having the faith to act in love even if you are weary, because love has become a priority to the way you think, to the way you speak, to the way you behave. And so it is a process of giving yourself up. If you want to be great in God's kingdom, you must learn to serve all. And it's, it is the foundation of passing on the faith that pleases God. As I would read these verses to my children, and I have a bunch of verses for you today. I hope they'll be very encouraging to you. But my whole point in establishing this is that I want you to understand how prevalent it is that God has spoken to us about the importance of love. As I would read these verses to my children and talk about them, and I'd give examples of friendship or examples of Bible stories where people, Jesus laid down his life for us, and he trained his disciples to try to love and heal people. I slowly realized that I was taking in knowledge that I had never learned or been given as a child. And so little by little, I captured the vision for becoming a living picture of God's love as I practice one step at a time to behave in a way that would help them believe in the truths of Christ. I think so many times when our children act a little bit out of the norm, or say something harsh, or do something that we don't think is right. Sometimes we jump to conclusions instead of looking at them with the eyes of love and thinking, I bet they're exhausted or, oh, they're just going through a normal, immature stage of life, and they want to be understood. They're saying something because they want you to know what they feel. And so I began to see that the more I was teaching this as a regular way of life in our first morning devotionals, I would practice seeking to give them grace and encouraging them forward to use their emotional muscles to give love to people. And I changed, and they changed, and it gave them a foundation. And my kids have not been perfect. And in other words, they also have arguments with one another once in a while. And they're all very strong minded and have high convictions, which is kind of an attribute of the Clarksons. But then I see them on their own, make amends, bring peace to each other, love to be together. There is this pattern of loving, forgiving, peacemaking, serving that we established in our family because that's the model that Jesus gave to us. And if you are in anger with someone right now, if you are judging, maybe it's non-believers who are acting in a non-believing way. If you are critical of somebody and it's causing poison in your heart, then you need to examine that and say, am I showing the reality of the servant leadership, the unconditional love of Christ, the words of his encouragement, or do I have a pet little corner in my life where I am storing up negative thoughts and bitterness and not forgiving? It's not always easy to forgive, but we have to move in that direction and say, Holy Spirit, can you please fill me with your love in such a way that little by little, I can be gracious to this person or this child that I'm struggling with. It is necessary, it is the centerpiece of all of our faith in Christianity, to love as Jesus loved. So I was learning little by little what God's love was like because I was taking responsibility to teach my children about love. Now, I've talked to several people lately who are either having trouble in their marriage or trouble with their children or trouble in some way. And I would say to them, have you been spending just a little bit of time every day in the Word because that is what's going to illuminate, bring light to the darkness of your heart. And they'll all say, no, I've been too exhausted. I haven't done that lately, but I have known and seen that when I memorize scripture, little by little, that that's what God uses to communicate to me. And first is like, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. That means with all of your passion and feelings and convictions, it means all of your mind in the way that you are a co-creator in life to reflect God through beauty, that you also create as He created the world. With all of your strength, you serve people, you take care of them, you bow your knee to wash their feet, so to speak. And then the second verse is just like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. That means to prefer other people. Even if they're difficult, it doesn't say love only the people that deserve it. It says, if you are related to me, you can look at my life and see that I laid down my life for my disciples, for tax collectors, for prostitutes, for children. I served with every ounce when I was with you. I brought my light to bear in dark places. Are you making it a goal to serve and love all the people that God has brought to your life? Because you are a vessel of His love. They will know you are my disciples by your love for one another. First Corinthians 13, 4, 8, it's such an important verse to memorize. Love is patient. Okay, just stop there. Love is patient. If you're impatient, and if you're irritated all the time at someone, you gotta get over it. Love is patient. Love is kind and thoughtful. I feel so blessed that several people in my life have given me the opportunity to have a little bit of a break right now. It says love is not rude. Don't be rude, don't be angry. It is not self-seeking. I want my way, and I want the biggest piece of chocolate cake. I want the best for me. No, it says love is not like that, Paul says. It is not easily angered, and it keeps no wrong of records. It keeps no record of wrong. Sorry about that. And that's so important. If you keep a record and if you keep rehearsing it in your brain over and over again, it is going to bring poison there and darkness. Because you've got to get it to God in the file drawer of heaven or go to a counselor or do whatever you need. There's such a variety of stories. You can't answer every story with the very same application. But if you can't forgive, you will find bitterness in your soul. And so God helps us little by little through friends, through counselors, through truth, to learn to give up our demands. And most of my demands for people are pretty petty. They're just small irritations from whether somebody's immature or not or disagrees with me, or just has an irritating personality. Yes, I deal with all those things too. But God wants me to keep no record of wrongs. Jesus was wronged. We will be wronged. It's a part of the chaotic world we live in. Love does not delight in sin. You don't engage yourself in sin and justify it because the culture is doing it. But love rejoices with the truth, with the beauty, the purity, the goodness of God's truth. It always protects, always hopes, always trusts, and always perseveres. That's the key, as I was thinking about love as a pathway. You just keep going. If you fall down, get back up, take a deep breath, keep going forward. Love never fails. And I think what Paul meant by that is that love is such an attribute of God's reality, and love is so strong. And so it can cleanse, it can redeem, it can bring beauty and forgiveness and hope to hopeless people. Love never fails, it says when we enact the real love of Christ in this dark world. It requires practice, it's a skill. And then we read in John 15, greater love has no one than this. Here's that lay down your life for us again. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friend. What does that require? It means sometimes you have to put away your schedule. Sometimes you have to be interrupted. Sometimes you have to give generously in a time when maybe you're having a difficult time. But greater love, this is basically the whole picture of the life of Christ. Greater love has no one in this that one lay down his life for his friend. I love 1 Peter 4 verse 8. Keep fervent. Fervent, that means passionate, strong in your love for one another. Cultivate it, water it. Whatever seeds you water are going to grow. Because love covers a multitude of sin. Guess who said that? Peter. He was saying, be fervent, be passionate. Jesus was that way towards me. He forgave me when I blundered, when I left him, when I denied him. He forgave me over and over again. He was fervent in his love for me, and he covered my sin by his graciousness. So Peter is calling out to us from the experience of his life. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for a friend. John 15, 13. Another verse. I just have filled my mind with these verses over the years. I've memorized them. I've taught my children to memorize them. They come back to you when you need them. Keep fervent in your love for one another because, oh, I'm sorry, I just read that one. And the next one is put on love. For love is a perfect bond of unity. And actually what it says in another version of mine is, clothe yourselves in love. In other words, as you begin your day, Holy Spirit, help me to live in your love today. Help me to clothe myself that my words would be loving, that my behavior would be loving, that my reactions would be loving. Lord, help me to remember that I can clothe myself intentionally, my thoughts, my heart, my emotions, because I do want to live in unity with the people that you have put into my life. And ultimately, the verse that we need to remember is that there's two more verses I'm going to talk about. One is at the end of Romans and it says, nothing, nothing can separate us from God's love. I want you really to ponder that neither height nor depth, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing can separate us from the love of God. God's love is so complete, covering all moments of the lives that God's love covers all. And we cannot escape God's love because that is the essence of what He is like. It's so important that we don't just blow this off and say, oh, I know all these verses. But it is the way that we live reflecting love that shows people what God is like. There are so many verses more that I could give to you, but I wanted to at least give you this many. But the one I'm going to end on today is God is love. Everything about Him is love. Everything about Him is just love, is good love, is beautiful love, is humble love. I am humble and meek, He said, learn from me, and nothing will separate you from my love, because I'm humble and meek, because I care for you. And I just think that the reason I'm emphasizing this is sometimes when we're over familiar with something, instead of continuing to understand how profound it is, I would doubt that most of the people that you know in your lifetime, live and feel the presence of God's unconditional love and grace. But the reason that they don't is because all of us who are filled with Christ, Christian means Christ in one, the Holy Spirit enters our lives, all of us who are supposedly followers of Christ, if we aren't exhibiting this unconditional love, this mercy and grace, this peace giving and forgiveness, forgive 70 times seven, if we are not exhibiting this as a way of life, to the postman, to the next door neighbor, to the friend you meet at church, to somebody who needs a favor from you, if we aren't living in the reality of the supernatural love of God that has been shown forth in our hearts in all of the minutes of our days, if we're not moving along that pathway, step by step growing, determining to love instead of hating, and to, instead of being evil, then there will not be an attraction to Christ because people can't see the reality unless they can see it in our lives. Give words of love, give your time, give yourself, give support and encouragement and compassion and sympathy. The way of love is the way of God. And so I just thought that would be worth talking about today as a very important attribute. So many kids in our lives who are now adults have said, I couldn't believe in all of the things my parents were teaching me because they were angry, impatient, judgmental, moralistic, without grace. And showing the love of God is the way that we will win a whole generation because we will exhibit integrity. We will exhibit all of the ways of grace that heal people, the grace of Christ. And love is the means through which we bring light and beauty to our world by the strength of God, showing love through us. If you enjoyed today's episode, but are longing for even more spiritual encouragement, practical motherhood advice, home education resources, and so much more, join my membership at lifewithsally.com. That's lifewithsally.com. Thanks so much for joining me.