A Stake in the Ground

What do you love? Tacos? Blue Bell Gooey Butter Cake Ice Cream (it IS spectacular, but do you REALLY love it?) The Longhorns or Aggies? (Now I’m just meddling, I know).

Ultimately, we use the word “love” to describe a variety of things we are fond of or have a strong affinity for. But true love is something altogether different.  Even when we talk about romantic love, like the love you had for a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even your husband or wife when you were still wooing them, it probably wasn’t really love. It was more like sexual or physical attraction, coupled with a desire to do what it took to make them yours.  You probably never truly understood love until that stuff started to wear off, until love became difficult, when it started requiring you to set aside your selfishness, dying to your need to be right and at the center of your universe, and began costing you something. That’s when you started to learn that real love was more of a decision than an emotion, or a hormonal response.

Instead, love is a stake you plant in the ground and say, “This is where I am and the posture of my heart towards you. I will always and forever be right here for you, seeking your good and God’s good for you. And I will never move from this spot.”  In our culture, movies, literature, and art have convinced us that emotion precedes action. I feel love for you, and then I perform loving actions towards you. Tragically, this results in people abandoning each other, not only in marriage but in all relationships, because they’ve “lost that loving feeling.”

The exact opposites are the truth of Scripture and the truth of life. We decide to love, so we then do loving things. Over time, doing things associated with love inclines our hearts, our affections, and even our emotions towards the person or people we love. If you’re in a successful marriage or relationship, you know this to be true. A wise woman once told me about her long-standing marriage: We aren’t married because we love each other. We love each other because we’re married.”

When I tell you I love you, like I did in last week’s blog, you may be inclined to read it and say, “You don’t really know me. How can you love me?” Whether I know you well or not, I have decided to pray for you and your children regularly. I have made it my mission and life’s purpose to help design and lead a place where your kids (and you) can be discipled, equipped, loved, and cared for.  I spend most of my waking hours thinking about how we can improve that place and this experience. I pray for you and try to comfort you when you or your kids are sick, in the hospital, or when someone close dies.

These are all intentional acts, part of the ministry to which God has called me. They are also all acts of love. When someone does these things over and over for a period of years, God designs it so that it causes your heart to incline toward that person or those people. You actually begin to love them.

In my mind, practicing the presence of God begins with the Great Commandment: loving God with all your heart, and soul, and mind, and strength (Luke 10:27).  It begins with a decision to love God, not with an emotion or a feeling. This is a good thing, because if we’re waiting to muster up a feeling to love God (or anyone else, for that matter), it could take forever. The decision to love leads us into doing loving things, like spending time with God in prayer, reading His Word and engaging with Him over it, spending time in silence and solitude with Him, and those other ways of putting ourselves in the path of the Holy Spirit so He can transform us. Over time, God changes our hearts, not only making us fundamentally different people but also ones whose affections and loves are inclined toward Him. Eventually, He also inclines our hearts toward others.

It’s tough to love other people with the love God commands in the second half of the Great Commandment, loving our neighbors as ourselves. We don’t want to because we’re selfish, they’re annoying and self-focused too, and we have to create space in your lives for them.  We need a transformed heart and a supernatural love to love the way Jesus loves us and commands us to love others. But, as you spend time in God’s presence, letting his love for you transform you, you can actually engage in actions that incline your heart toward other people, too. One example of such transformation is my time at Grace, where God changed my heart to love you, but God can change our hearts in even more radical ways.

My stepmother entered my life as a family member when I was five years old. Before that, she was one of my mother’s close friends. If that sounds dysfunctional to you on its face, you’re not wrong.  We had what could generously be called a complex relationship as I grew up, one that will always probably be a part of my story. I won’t go into too much detail here, because it’s dishonoring to her and this story, which is one of love and redemption. However, I’d encourage you to consider that very few relationships in life are so devastating that God can’t bring healing through love and forgiveness.

My stepmother and father had a son, my half-brother (I can draw a flowchart for you if you’re not following along). When he was in his twenties, my half-brother went through some intense struggles, and the Lord used my parents’ experiences walking with him through these trials to lead them into a more profound relationship with Jesus that truly transformed them. My stepmother (and my father) became a different person.

As I grew older, had kids of my own, learned of the tragedy that was her childhood, and life revealed the depths of how much Christ had forgiven me, the Lord transformed my heart toward my stepmother as well, giving me compassion and empathy and allowing me to forgive. I began intentionally doing loving things toward my stepmom and dad, like visiting them in Dallas regularly, bringing my children to see them, and working to ensure my children’s relationship with them was something they could enjoy as the people they now were, just regular grandparents, not who they had been, tainted by my past experiences.

This story, once so sad and painful for so long, grew into its own tragic beauty. Several of my students over the years who were truly sick or needed extended hospital care in Dallas were fed, housed, and had their needs provided for by my father and stepmother, who had no more connection with my school friends than my friends’ connection with me.  As they age and my father struggles with the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, I have witnessed my stepmother plant her own stake in the ground.  She kept him at home way longer than she probably should have, so she could care for him. Now that he’s in a memory care facility, she goes to him for every meal, sitting with him whether he remembers her that day or not. She advocates for him, speaks kindly and lovingly to him, and is infinitely patient with him.

After many challenging years together, this person is someone whom I now admire, feel immense gratitude for, and yes, have come to love. Could anything other than the love of Jesus, pierced by a stake in the ground, truly empower us to love unconditionally and radically? Nothing else is worthy of our love, of our life, of our devotion.  And, if you can actually learn to love God deeper by living in his continuous presence, why wouldn’t you want to learn to do it?