With the pastor’s farewell and the installing of an Interim Pastor the Call Committee started their task of seeking new leadership for Lucas Valley. But with a small congregation, limited facilities, a lack of sufficient income, and the ever-increasing challenge of a Marin County setting amid several megachurches, potential names of candidates only trickled in. Other ABC Pastors in the area had a few to recommend, but most proved not to be suitable for this struggling situation. The church was called to pray and to hope for a miracle!

Then the Lord opened a door none had anticipated. The Committee found just the person to give the church the leadership and forward thrust it needed. A candidate surfaced that was available, talented, gifted, well qualified, as well as good looking, experienced, personable, and highly committed to serving God’s people near and far. A person of vision. The Committee was unanimous in its recommendation. But there was one real problem: what to do with her husband? So they decided to make him the pastor! And now you know the rest of the story!

That’s how we found Cindy and she brought Steve along with her plus four kids that swelled the role of the Sunday School! The church accepted them warmly, hopes of growth revived, and as they moved into the parsonage a new day dawned for LVCC. It has never been the same since! Steve and Cindy have been at the heart of the fellowship’s growth and spiritual depth as well as its outreach for over twenty-five years. To God be the glory, great things He has done and will continue to do! Watch it happen.

Seriously though, this recently married Blended Family had what this fellowship needed. Before long the chapel was crowded. It needed replacing by a sanctuary and social hall, with expanded classrooms, offices and the revamped school. The warmth the Henderson’s generated was heart-warming. The parsonage was sold and the pastoral family allowed a housing allowance. Between golf and moves and remodeling houses, pastor was kept busy. Before long the church was only limited by the land owned and the expansion allowable. But the vision for ministry and world outreach along with local outreach keep up with the Spirit’s leading. An Associate Pastor, able worship leaders, warm and caring worship services, the music program, and teachers and other ministries at home and overseas, kept the fellowship growing, vital and committed. Look at it today! 

Pastor Steve has done a remarkable job during his twenty-five years at Lucas Valley. First is his commitment to His Lord and then to his expanding family. His love for Cindy manifests his love for the Lord and for the people of God. He is steady, a plodder, works with his leadership, and keeps himself sharp and alert. His decision to work for a D. Min. Degree was a natural. He keeps himself on the cutting edge of Evangelicalism and his collegiality with colleagues in ministry making him an encourager and mentor. He lives the Word that he preaches. In all this his primary focus has always been with the local church and its outreach and spiritual depth.

Pastor Steve caught the vision of growing a local fellowship in and through small groups. The programs at Lucas Valley reflect this concern and vision. Early on he saw the need for Divorce Recovery using lay-leadership as well as the input of he and Cindy. Wherever you look in Marin County, deep needs abound, and Lucas Valley had been a lighthouse to so many in crisis.

One of the hardest tasks facing Pastor Steve after twenty-five years in place is when to let go and allow the church to transition into a phase involving new leadership. What is best for the Church? This is his primary consideration. But in concert with Cindy in seeking the Lord’s will, ego is not as important to him as is what God wants for this fellowship. My concern for any professional church leader is a timing that allows them to retire on the crest of the wave rather than under it. The Holy Spirit that has led him and the church assures him and us that the church will continue to prosper because God is in it. So will Steve and Cindy wherever the Lord leads them. The one will be praying and encouraging the other.

There is an old joke about a pastor retiring and those attending the service on that Sunday told him, “How can we go on without you?” The very next Sunday the same ones were asking him, “Where is it you said you are going?” By the third Sunday they were saying, “Oh, you still here?” Let me assure you, this will not happen here. They are too much a part of you and you of them. But in God’s timing, and through a solid Interim Ministry, the transition will happen and God’s anointing of this fellowship will be renewed all the way. Together we’ll wish the pastoral family God’s best, to His glory and your joy.

The church will call another pastor in the Lord’s time but when all is said and done, this fellowship turned a corner under their leadership and those who have been involved with it over the past twenty-five years will remember their years with Pastor Steve. He and Cindy will serve elsewhere in retirement, and what they leave behind at Lucas Valley is glorifying to the Lord they so faithfully served. It will be hard for me to think of Lucas Valley without them. I am so grateful to be able to call them friends as well as colleagues in ministry. The years I have been privileged to share with them is awesome to me. If I could have had one wish during the years I was privileged to serve as their Area Minister, it would have been to clone them for many other churches who would have prospered as did Lucas Valley with a caring ministry like God has given them to share with you in His Name.

Cindy, thank you for being God’s woman behind God’s man. You are a team. Steve, thank you for being a colleague and friend, and remembering my heart-felt advice: listen to Cindy. 

On a personal note: Thanks for publishing my works over the years on the Church’s website. Thanks also for having the privilege of being on staff with you. And thanks for the promise to get together as often as He leads. Donna and I prize our relationship with the two of you.

In the bonds of His love and grace,

Emil

eauthelet@cox.net

December 2011

THE TWELVE C’S OF LOVE:
1 Corinthians 13 and More…

C IS FOR CELEBRATION

Introduction

There is nothing in all of life more important to us than the relationships that we cherish and that sustain and encourage us in our life’s journey. Nothing can displace them. In fact, what an empty and meaningless journey it would have been without them. When all else is said and done, our final days will be spent in relishing and celebrating these choice relationships. They are far more valuable than any amount of silver and gold.

Since we are made for love, we are always surprised by how these relationships impact us and how we are also impacted by those who, for whatever reason, chose not to love us. People love us because they are loving and know how to give of themselves. Those who do not love us are not capable of loving, yet how often we believe it is because we are not worth loving. Any who deem us not worth loving know nothing of God’s unconditional love of us. They may have their reasons and be able to articulate them, or they may not. But at the root of their inability is a lack of self-love. We celebrate our worth in Him but we still have to deal with the pain of not being loved by another. And when that lack of love is with a significant person in our lives, that adds to the struggle we have to deal with. The younger we are the greater this impacts us.

Our greatest celebrations focus around these meaningful relationships we have learned to cherish and maintain. Those that are with significant others in our early life shape us the greatest and remain our major source of celebration. Moving from the known to the unknown, from parents to God, as a child, is greatly influenced by those parental images, and for many of us God got a raw deal. We saw Him through our parental experiences. This left little to celebrate and a whole lot to fear. But as we matured, God took on a new image for us in the Face of Jesus, His Son.

One of the characteristics of love is joy, and joy is the basis of celebration. Love always finds sources of joy and each is celebrated fully and wisely. Love wants the best; love seeks the best; love rejoices in the best taking shape and fulfilling itself. This is the hilarious, meaningful aspect of love that knows how to celebrate to the fullest. We see this in the Apostle Paul when he has almost lost his life on the part of new churches and then sees the result in changed lives and transformed souls. Love forgets the pain and suffering endured and glories in the results.

Love rejoices in the truth. We live in a culture of duplicity, spin and deception, as well as self-deception, and when the truth emerges and can be seen for what it is, the heart rejoices. The truth is out; now it is discerned and celebrated. At long last it is revealed and it is obvious to us God is in it. Now we know what to do; what to become. Love has triumphed once again and love is eternal.

Love rejoices in its own being and doing. No matter how long truth may be waited for, love believes it will be present and known. It rejoices in hope, and rejoices again when it is fulfilled. It knew within itself that the fulfillment would come, because love is of God. It was willing to hang in there and await its consummation, for the Promise is present, and love will never come up empty for it is of God.

It brings joy within itself and celebrates life. Life is God’s gift to us; how we live it is our gift to Him. Life is His God-gift bought for us at the price of His Cross, and we are going to surrender to it and allow it to be lived out in and through us. We can celebrate the results of this transforming transaction for it is all of God. This is why He gave us life and this is how it is to be lived out as unto Him. This is the reason for love’s very existence.

Love knows how and why to celebrate. It is going to spend all eternity doing just that. With all praise to the Father, to Christ the Son, and to the Spirit of Holiness, our forever-celebration will know no ending, and for its beginning, it was fanned to a blaze at the Cross and Empty Tomb.

Our marriages and families recall celebrations as milestones along the way. Every couple has their own occasions to celebrate in addition to holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and times cherished only by them. The same is true of families as well. When a special memory is recounted, all chime in and add their observation and feeling to complete the whole. These measure the joy that flows through their history together. These are the highlights that mark their way.

1.    Love celebrates life…its high points and bumps

We are here because God wants us here and however we got here is not the question, but why we are here is. We are in God’s planning and we are here on purpose, a divine purpose. Now we seize it and celebrate it. The high points affirm us; the bumps mature us. We honor Him for it all.

2.    Love celebrates forgiveness and reconciliation…and its struggles with alienation

Love celebrates His forgiveness and how He has reconciled us to Himself. But at the same time we see His working in and through our struggles with alienation, bringing us back to Himself and to harmony with others. We honor Him for it all.

3.    Love celebrates loving…and being loved…along with every time of loving

Love celebrates every aspect of loving and being loved, and wherever it is found and shared. God is omnipresent when love is present; God is omnipotent when love is active; God is omniscient when He is allowed to be in control. Love isn’t God but God is love.

4.    Love celebrates growth, development and maturing…and
the transforming accompanies each experiencing of it

Love creates growth; it brings development and maturing; it creates transformation wherever it is present, active, and affirmed. Love forges out the Kingdom of God in hearts, homes, and wherever two or three gather in His Name.

5.    Love celebrates meaning and purpose…and cannot go without it

It brings meaning to all who experience and share it; it gives them purpose and a genuine sense of worth; they know life is meaningless without it being present. No matter what life holds for them, love is what makes it all worthwhile and purposeful.

6.    Love celebrates all it receives and shares from His Spirit…it is all of God

Love knows it owes God its very existence, and everything it has is received from Him. Its very breath is a gift from Him. It is ours only through the Gift of His Holy Spirit abiding in us. For this reason it owes Him its all. I cannot celebrate His Gift enough.

7.    Love is in love with God and God-life…and cannot live without it

It learns to love God with all of its being and to seek to live life as He ordains. Living as unto Him is the summum bonum of its existence. God-life is the highest form of life possible. Its only life is in Him and that is where it delights to be. Christ is its very life and pleasure.

8.    Love lives to the glory of God alone…and thrills when He is thrilled

To be able to thrill the heart of God is its deepest pleasure and joy. This is its reason for being. It gives its utmost to achieve this pleasure. It has no other reason for living and loving. It thrills to the experience of counting for Him.

9.    Love rejoices in the truth…and this truth is what sets it free

To us truth is found in Jesus Christ, and all of the issues of life are judged in terms of who He is and what He has done on our behalf. To us, truth is the quality of a proposition as it corresponds to the very nature of God. To rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in God, and Truth is who He is. That is the truth that truly sets us free to believe fully in Him.

10.    Love will celebrate all eternity…and will go right on loving fully, freely, eternally

When Paul wrote “the greatest is love,” it is because of the greatness of God and the great gift of redemption He has shared with us in His Son. As we praise Him every day for what He has done for us in Christ, so eternity will echo the same. We will never have said “Thank You” enough.

Conclusion

Look at all love has to celebrate…beginning with the Cross, Empty Tomb and the full Christ Event. Now add to this all He has blessed us with because we are His and have our life in Him. Then add marriage and family life, friends and extended family, and all we have in the Community of Faith. Think of the love the Spirit has immersed us in!

Love makes a difference…and where would we be today if that had been missing in our lives? As every Child of God knows, we have been and are blessed.

Love is eternal…and so are we. Can you imagine an eternity where love is supreme and it leaves no room for anything else but more love? We will know nothing but love. Sure sounds like Heaven to me!

God is love…and in His Kingdom of Love, it overmasters all else. Love finds real answers to all life’s questions because then we will know as we are known. We will see Jesus as he really is as mirrored in 1 John 4. The only mystery left to consider is why He chose to love us as He does.

Love isn’t God but God is love…and in the reality of that truth comes the destiny He has chosen for us in Himself. Paul said he wanted to be apprehended by that for which God apprehended him in the beginning and that means being apprehended by and for His love.

But all this also leaves us with a great challenge here and now. “Thus, if there is no conceivable human behavior that as such could be unambiguously referred to as ‘love,’ if ‘love’ is beyond all separation in which people live, and if everything that people can understand and practice as love is conceivably only human behavior within given separations, then there is still a puzzle here, an open question as to what the Bible could mean by ‘love.’ And the Bible does not fail to give us an answer. It’s also well enough known to us, but it’s just that again and again we misinterpret it. The answer is: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:16). For the sake of clarity, this sentence must first be read with the emphasis on the word ‘God,’ whereas we have been used to emphasizing the word ‘love.’ God is love. This means that not a human behavior, not an attitude, not a deed, but God Himself is love. Only those who know God know what love is, not the other way around. That is, it’s not that we first – and from nature – know what love is, and then on that basis also know what God is. Rather, no one knows God, unless God has revealed Himself to them (1 John 4:7-9). … Love has its origin not in us but in God. Love is not human behavior but the behavior of God (1 John 4:10).” [July 20, page 211. I WANT TO LIVE THESE DAYS WITH YOU: A Year of Daily Devotions. Translated by O. C. Dean, Jr. Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville/London; 2007.]

I’m glad we could make this journey together here and now and also in eternity as His own. It is a journey in love, for love, to love, and into a first-hand encounter with the One who is Love. There are more than twelve C’s to be considered, but this has been a good beginning. Now the challenge is to live it out until He calls us Home. Can you imagine what awaits on that Day?

Together we love Him, but remember, He first loved us and gave Himself for us.

Dr Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

November 2011

THE TWELVE C’S OF LOVE:
1 Corinthians 13 and More…

C IS FOR COMPASSION

Introduction

We all have our personal definition of what love is and how it is to operate but what is there that can serve us as an objective definition by which we may affirm or change our own? That is the reason behind why God gave us 1 Corinthians 13: it is a living example of how He defines it. Until we are able to accept and seek to live out His definition, then, and only then, are we in reality about understanding it. The One who is Love has to define it for us.

The King James Version of the New Testament used the word “charity” for this passage but that word has undergone a redefining because of its use in our culture as an act of charity. Both the Greek and the Aramaic make use of love – a God-love – based in the concept of “agape.” It is not a mere human love; it is divine in its Source and in its understanding.

You can read 1 Corinthians 13 and substitute the name of Jesus for the word love. Try it and see how it flows. Jesus is God’s definition of what His love is like in action and in essence. He defines it for us when He tells us He is the Good Shepherd and the Good Shepherd actually dies for His sheep. 1 John also defines it this way. Compassion is a love which is willing to give itself away for the sake of another. It also does it with no questions asked. It sees the other as worth dying for.

Marriage and family life thrive on such compassion. We are in the relationship for the sake of the others in it. We act toward them out of our compassion for their well-being. How we act toward them is born out of this compassion alone We are there for them. We are in it for them. God is empowering us to give ourselves away for their benefit. We are life-gifting them. All those living within such a relationship are blessed of God beyond measure.

The real test of compassion is in how it gives itself away for the sake of the other. Our giving is prompted by our love and our love is prompted by His love for us. Doing it for any other reason is not enough, for it is in giving for their benefit that the giving proves itself to be of Him. It is following and fulfilling His example.

A great example of such a love in action can be found in Mark 1 when Jesus is confronted by a leper. A leper represents a human being in great need who is totally repugnant to human nature and life’s sensibilities. We don’t have to be told to run the other way. But what does Jesus do? He embraced him. He receives him as an equal, and He demonstrates how God loves him. Then He healed him. He knew the man’s deep inner need beyond that of the body alone, and He reaches out in love to meet his full need.

Another example is with the Prodigal when the father sees him heading home, sick, broken, and at the end of his rope. He runs to embrace him, showers him with a father’s affection, and announces to the world, “This is my son who was dead but is alive again…!” Can you imagine such a reception in being welcomed home without being told how rotten you are?

Still another example is when Jesus was being crucified and He prays for the Father to forgive them for what they are doing to Him. That’s not exactly when they heard from the two who were crucified with Him.

And another one is when Christ dies for the sins of the world when most will never accept Him and others will trample His gift as if it means nothing. Yet He did it for them just in case they ever change their minds and seek Him and His saving grace sometime down life’s road. Didn’t He die for you and me while we were still sinners? While we were still His enemies?

How this challenges us when it comes to our expectations of our partners and kids. How we want them to be toward us and what we expect from them?

What are the expectations we place on others? We want others to be cleansed and healed before we are asked to embrace them. To have the Prodigal pay for the pain he has caused and the embarrassment and shame created and then maybe he might be forgiven. Hell would not be hot enough for one who betrays us much less nails us to a cross.

What does God expect of them and of us? He expects them to allow His love to save them and His grace to transform them so He can share His peace and eternal life with them in His Name. He is thrilled to embrace them and to call them His own. They may have disappointed Him but He is not about to disappoint them. He welcomes them Home!

Are we putting our stuff on them or seeking God’s stuff for them? That is how love operates. It knows the leper’s true need, the Prodigal’s full potential, and the pain to be suffered by those who offend us for whatever reason. And it responds with the deepest joys of Heaven in welcoming another Home.

We want them to be better kids but maybe God wants us to be better parents and then they will become better kids. We want others to be loving toward us but maybe we need to be more loving toward them. Compassion does not wait around for others to respond or act; it acts as God would and leaves the results up to Him.

1.     Compassion sees the big picture…

and acts accordingly

It deals with eternal values and hopes…and works within the present context with eternal values in view. This allows it to see the ending from the beginning…hope moved toward fulfillment. It envisions what can and needs to be and moves toward that goal in hope and joy.

2.     Compassion seeks the mind of Christ…

and allows it to control its own thinking

It has a worldview based on possessing the mind of Christ. This means that God’s agenda supercedes their own. Thinking His thoughts after Him and for Him lads into the fulfilling of His will in His way.

3.     Compassion seeks the will of God for itself…

regardless of the price to be paid

Doing His will pleasures Him and all who follow Him. us. It knows by faith that His will is the best we could ever achieve. Its truth in Him allows it to abandon itself to the doing of His will, knowing the is the best that could ever be achieved.

4.     Compassion holds nothing back…

it knows how to give itself away…giving its all

It is never in it for itself, therefore it has nothing to lose by giving its all in His Name. As John the Baptist understood, “He must increase and I must decrease.” It is in it for Him and for the others. To this end it gives its all.

5.     Compassion is its own reward…

it rejoices in its own being and doing…

it is of God and experiences God in the process of giving itself away.

Its joy is in knowing what all this means to God. It pleasures Him, and what pleasures Him is a joy to the child being faithful to Him. It experienced God in the process and in the outcome and this makes it all worthwhile and filled with joy.

6.     Compassion never gives up or in or out…

it prevails, it renews, it gives its all

Love never runs out of steam for its Source is in God alone, and it cannot give out or up. The giving of its all is how it is put together. When God is the Source of its very being, it partakes of things eternal.

7.     Compassion seeks to glorify God…

because it loves Him with all its being

Loving is never an end in itself…it is for His glory. Human love may be self-serving, but divine love is not. Like Jesus, it is committed to the one being loved and to the One who is the One calling us to love as He loves us. If God is glorified, then it is how it needs to be.

8.     Compassion is His love being realized…

and shared to the glory of God

Loving with His love is the greatest achievement possible. At the same time it is the greatest privilege possible. What His love is channeled through us, we find our life’s purpose and mission being fulfilled. Now we know of a certainty He is in it.

9.     Compassion is over-mastering…

it takes over because it gives total control to the Lord of its life

It tells us Who is in control and why…it raises us up to where we could never go or be apart from Him. We know He is in it and it is pleasing to Him for in His control there is peace and joy. Because it overmasters us, it carries us far beyond our own limitations.

10.     Compassion knows no limits…

there is never a time not to love…

it would never think in terms of time or costs or limits…

it just goes on giving

His love is complete and unending…and ours is to be of the same. There is none He does not love…and that becomes our challenge in Him. The Cross demonstrates its unlimitedness. There os a cross for us to bear as well.

Conclusion:

Compassion knows how to relate…and Christ is the Example. Everyone whom Jesus encountered knew exactly where they stood with Him. He had one way of relating. It was in love.

It knows when and why to relate…and His Holy Spirit is its Guide and Enablement. With the woman at the well who understood her self-condemnation, He accepted her and affirmed her and convinced her of God’s love. That is when forgiveness healing became real to her.

It is life-giving in its relating…for the love-gifting is of Him. Jesus gave of Himself to all in need, and He did it in ways that met their deepest need as well as an eternal one. They knew God had encountered them in Him.

It is Godly to the core…for He is its true Source. With Him there was never a question of motive. He was there for them, and acting on their behalf. Like the rich young man they might walk away, but they did it knowing they had seen the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

It honors God in every way…for that is the true nature of God-love. When God-love is present, lives are changed and challenged. They knew they were in the presence of Heaven itself. This love is not from below; it is indeed life from Above.

It gives life and light and hope to all who receive it…because He is in it. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 1 that we are “blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus.” To be possessed of His love is to have it all. There is no holding back on God’s part.

The greatest gift of all is one’s compassion…and all who receive it know He is in it. Being loved like that transforms something within us. We can never be the same ever again. And it makes such a difference we cannot escape experiencing God within it.

The world is dying for want of such a love…and we are commissioned to share it.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet

eauthelet@cox.net

NEXT MONTH:

C IS FOR CELEBRATION

Introduction

Two elements to be repeated here are these: both of these elements are based in the life of Jesus Christ and as such are to become ours as we mature up into Him as His own. First, the Christian life is a vicarious life; it is a life for others in His Name. It is not to be lived as we wish, or for us. It is to be lived unto Him and that means it is to be loving of others in His Name. Second, it is a life extending God’s love with which we are immersed so God can love-gift others through us. We are here to love them for Him. This means that at the very heart of who we are, what we have been called to be and do, is in fulfillment of His concerns for His own. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ is to be extended in and by us to His world. So, what is to concern us is what concerns Him, and when we understand these concerns we discover what He wills for each and every one of us.

We are not here for ourselves; we are here for Him. And because we are here for Him, what was true of Jesus now becomes true for us as well. We are to be extensions of His incarnation; we are here to do the will of the Father just as He Himself fulfilled it. Our life, then, is to be a living out of His concerns for His own, for His world, and for the Kingdom we now possess by being in Him. Whatever He calls us to be and do, it is in fulfillment of His will for us. And that becomes the basis of our worldview. We are to live it out as led and empowered by Him alone.

The Formation of Love’s Worldview

When we examine our life’s concerns, it helps us understand what we have chosen as the basis of our worldview. For example, how would you answer the following that flows out of your own heart, mind, and concerns?

1.     What are my concerns for my partner/mate?

The New Testament points out what God’s concerns are for us as persons and what ours need to be for ourselves. But what are our basic heart-felt concerns for our partner/mate? What do I want my life’s partner to be able to achieve and experience in his/her walk with Him and with me? I need to be able to spell out those concerns for, first of all, He is far more concerned for him/her than I could ever be, but if they are His concerns, then they have to become mine. By putting those concerns ahead of my own for me, then I know love is at work. To M. Scott Peck, love is “the extending of the self on behalf of the other, and putting the other’s ahead of one’s own.” This is love in action. This is how God’s love operates.

If my career or work or whatever is more important to me than that of the other’s, then that is not the love that is truly needed from me. If my well-being, hobbies, pleasure and desires come first, that is not how love operates. I have a lot of growing to do so when I do say, “I love you,” here’s proof of what that really means. My concerns for you are what motivate me.

2.     What are my concerns for my children?

Are my kids to be extensions of me and made to make me look good, or are they to become what God chooses for them to be and do? First of all, I want them to know Him and to mature up into Him in age-appropriate ways. I want them to be able to achieve their God-given potential and to become all they can be for His sake and for their own. They are not mine; they are His, on loan to me to and for Him. My concerns for them determine how I relate to them, how I care for them, and how I encourage them in their growth and development. They have the freedom to grow up in Him and to know I am here for them. What I can ask of them is that they honor Him and follow the example of how I honor Him with my own life and development. God is to make their life’s choices for them; I am here to assist them in discovering how to achieve that to His glory and their joy as well as mine.

3.     What are my concerns for family members?

Beyond the immediate family is the extended family, the clan of which I am a part as one of God’s gifts to me. How am I to fit into this mix and how am I to matter in its direction, depth and dimensions? What is the role I believe I need to play in it? What is expected of me as a part of this clan?

4.     What are my concerns for friends?

God has brought people into my life that I may become a source of encouragement for them as well as they are a resource for my life and walk with Him. How does He desire all this to take shape? I need friends but more than that I need to be a friend to others. These extended relationships add a depth and challenge as well as a rich source of serendipity along the way. What does all this mean to me; what does my friendship mean to them and their journey? What are my concerns for others?

5.     What are my concerns for the “stranger”…those unknown to me at present?

Love learns to love all. It learns to relate as Christ would with all. How am I to live out His love to those I meet along life’s way? Love’s only fear is missing the mark of loving another. I am here to love-gift them in His Name.

6.     What are my concerns for His world?

Love never isolates itself from the needs of all others. And love certainly does not insulate itself to these needs. Like Jesus, it lives and acts vicariously. Love carries the world in its heart. Love is willing to give until the real needs are met in good measure. This is its mission.

7.     What are my concerns for the Kingdom of God on Earth?

How is that Kingdom to be furthered? What is to be my role in its formation? What does it require of me in the fulfilling of His will? Whose Kingdom am I building, anyway? Mine, or His? If it is His, then I have to be very clear and committed to what His will is for me in it.

How These Concerns Take Shape

1.     Love is concerned for persons

It sees the worth of all others and its focus is on them and their well-being. Anything that takes away from another’s worth is a focus for action and intervention. It puts others above self-interest and self-being, and it extends itself on their behalf. The world needs my love-gift in His Name.

2.     Love is concerned for relationships

It loves God by loving others in His Name. It prizes relationships and treats them redemptively and forgivingly. It seeks to relate as Jesus would and is content in following His example alone.

3.     Love is concerned for situations

What diminishes another diminishes something in me that forces me to focus on protecting the worth of all others. Love works, fights, and claims justice and peace for all others. It cannot sit idly by and watch others disenfranchised or downtrodden or abused.

4.     Love is concerned for conditions

What robs and cheats others is an attack on love. It diminishes the well-being of others. What real needs are going unmet and why? Conditions can be changed and challenged. Our well-being depends on that of all others. Love considers no one expendable.

5.     Love is concerned for real needs

Finding a real need and meeting it in good measure is love’s goal. It thinks and acts globally. Seeing that no real need goes unmet is its challenge. How did we ever get so “me-conscious”? Are we that distant from Him and His ideals for His world?

6.     Love is concerned for life

Love speaks for those who have no voice. It helps those who have no real help. What degrades others degrades us all. The Kingdom of Love must prevail for all. This is what has to shape our thinking and our acting.

7.     Love is concerned for the King, the Kingdom, and the Kin

How am I to serve the King of Kings? How am I to be used of Him in advancing His Kingdom? How can I serve the Kin here and now? Love asks all these questions of me and how I answer is the extent of my love for Him as Lord of All.

8.     Love is concerned for God’s world in God’s way

Are God’s concerns my concerns? If not, why not? Can they be met in God’s way to God’s glory? If not, why not? What is there on His heart I am not aware of and why? I must know, if I am to glorify Him. Nothing in all of life is more important than answering these questions before Him.

9.     Love is concerned for things eternal

Working with eternal values in view is how Jesus lived. I must learn to do the same. Living in the hope of all that is to come is the Lord’s Prayer being lived out. It must become my prayer. Keeping God’s big picture in view is how Jesus did it. That must become true of me as well.

10.     Love willingly enters God’s concerns

Of course it costs to take on God’s concerns, but not to do it is the greater loss. Ask Jesus how much it costs. What’s more important than being found faithful as Jesus was? Love is eternal and with love nothing is ever lost. Without love life is nothing.

Conclusion

Our role in His world is determined by Him and His concerns. They need to become ours. Our life in His world is to be determined by His concerns, never just by our own. Until His concerns become ours, we are not in step with Him and His. Fulfilling His concerns is not an option for love.

You say, we can’t do everything that needs to be done. Why not? We are not doing it on our own. If it was impossible to do, why then would God lead us into it? How do we know it can’t be done? How well have we really tried? How much do we leave to others? Love calls us to do it as unto Him, or to die trying!

There is no real need but what you and God can meet it. E. M. Bounds, in his book on The Power of Prayer, states people are looking for better methods in the changing of His world. Bounds responds, “What God is looking for is not better methods, just better Christians.” Love makes the best Christians possible!

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

NEXT MONTH:
C IS FOR COMPASSION

September 2011

THE TWELVE C’S OF LOVE:
1 Corinthians 13 and More…

C IS FOR CONSIDERATION

Introduction

Regardless of your family of origin and what you experienced there while growing up, allow yourself for a few moments to imagine your parent’s marriage and family life would have been like if it were marked by an ongoing consideration of the feelings of each and every member involved. Dad and Mom were considerate of each other’s feelings; as your parents they were constantly considerate of yours. The parameters of every single day’s life and activities were enveloped in this atmosphere of consideration for each one’s feelings. Feelings would be out in the open, no one would be telling you “you shouldn’t feel that way,” and how you felt would be important and validated and affirmed. Nothing had to remain hidden and/or repressed.

Would that not be like Heaven on Earth to you? Would it not give you the thought your feelings are important, and that right or wrong, they are yours and are not going to be discounted just because they are adults and you are a child? Would this not also help you come to understand feelings, what they are and what they mean and why you have them? Would this not be a wonderful gift to you from them in helping you learn what they are, how to understand them, and that having them is a real gift of God?

Is this how you were raised during these early years? If not, how then did you come to understand and learn how to handle them? What gave you the feeling that you were important within your family? Did you think that only children have feelings and that when you get older you grow out of having them? Were you ever criticized for expressing a feeling? Were you ever told you were wrong to feel a certain way?

When did you learn that love does not deny feelings or seek to force people to change their feelings so they would fit in and not cause tension or conflict in a family? How do you believe love acts when it comes to feelings of another as well as of one’s own? Can you imagine love being anything but considerate of another’s feelings as well as of one’s own?

How does it make you feel when someone considers your feelings and makes you feel they are important to them because they are important to you? Does this not make you feel loved when this happens? How important to you are your feelings and those of others you are in a relationship with?

This is the life God intends for us here and now and forever. In any and every relationship a major consideration has to be for the feeling level of all that transpires in the relating. No where is this truer than in marital, family and close individual relationships. Unless we consider the feeling level between us, nothing else can replace this reality. There can be no intimacy without encompassing the feeling levels. This is the level at which far too many relationships fail, and a failure at this level too often leads to a failing of the relationship itself. Marriages and families failing to relate meaningfully at the feeling levels are in continual danger of doing permanent damage to their potential.

1. Consideration is a loving way of relating

          It prefers the other above one’s self
          It puts the real needs of the other ahead of one’s own
          It works out of an other-focus
          It operates at the feeling level
          It is committed to the other’s real needs
          It prizes the relationship

2. Consideration is a loving way to understanding

          It discovers that asking is the best way of learning about the other
          It finds reflective listening works best for its full understanding
          In being able to give it back proves its understanding
          It seeks correction to assure understanding
          It wants to know what is needed so it can understand and respond
          It seeks feedback to know it is on target in understanding

3. Consideration is aloving way of acting

          It prescribes how we relate and why
          It operates on the basis of invitation
          It sets the boundaries of the relating
          It presents itself to acting toward the other as needed
          It says by its presence I am here for you
          It wants to know how its relating can be improved

4. Consideration is a loving way of truthing

          Its word and deed speak the same language on purpose
          Its truth is in its action
          Its truth proves to be love in action
          Its word and deed affirm one another
          Its love speaks volumes
          It want to be known as truth in action

5. Consideration is a loving way of proofing

          It shows how much we care and why
          It shows what matters most and why
          It leaves no room for doubt or suspicion
          It does it in dependable ways
          It can be counted on to last
          It seeks to eliminate all doubt and confusion

6. Consideration is a loving way of need-satisfying

          It focuses on the real needs
          It seeks to meet it in full measure
          It proves itself as sufficient and caring
          It is here for the long haul
          It is need-satisfying and sufficient
          It seeks to meet a need in full measure as needed

7. Consideration is a loving way of life-gifting

          Need-satisfaction is life-giving/sustaining
          It is in response to a real need.
          Much would be lost without it being given
          It gives of itself in life-enhancing measure
          It wants God’s best for the other
          It gives freely and fully of itself to the other

8. Consideration is a loving way of loving

          Love is the motivation for its giving
          It asks for nothing in return except to be able to love more
          It is given as a means to a greater end to God’s glory
          Its motive is clear and demonstrable
          It seeks reflection to know how well it is doing
          Is the message “I love you” coming through loudly and clearly

Conclusion

Consideration is asking and not assuming so you know what is needed of you by the other. If we merely assume we will be wrong more than right. The relationship is too important to be assumed or taken for granted.

Consideration is knowing the other’s real need and reassuring it is being met in good measure. Naming a need is not enough; what does that need mean to the others and what it their perception? I need to see it though that person’s eyes, not just my own.

Consideration is connecting intimately with the other and developing the levels of relating needed for true intimacy. Surface considerations can miss the mark and lead to much confusion in the relating. Intimacy comes at a far deeper level and is far more rewarding when achieved. There can be no true intimacy where consideration is not a major part of the foundation.

Consideration is learning how best to relate and what needs to be unlearned and replaced. If we project our stuff onto the other person, we are going to miss the reward of true intimacy and understanding. Love is not a shotgun blast hoping some will hit the real target. Love is an arrow that aims at the bull’s eye, and it hits dead center for it has learned how to aim in response to the other’s real need. It doesn’t have to guess; it has learned how to know.

Consideration is proving how much you care and what the other means to you. I care enough to listen, then share back with you what I believe I am hearing, so that you can affirm it or challenge it. Your need is so important to me I want to get it right and respond to it with all my being. I need to know you know I care, and how much.

Consideration is connecting with the other so as to form a solid oneness between us. Love asks to know, then when the answer is clear and affirmed, it is plugged into the heart of the lover and the proper response is forthcoming. At times there is still the further consideration to make sure the need has not changed and love still knows how to respond fully and freely.

Consideration is how love operates and you can trust it unconditionally. Lessons learned become lessons remembered and honored. It never becomes “the same old;” it is refreshingly new each and ever day as it this were the first.

Consideration is to be so real it is palpable. You know it is there; you know it will be there. It is becoming as regular as a sunrise. You awaken to the realization it has been present and will always be present. You can count on it year in and year out. It is real.

Consideration is at the heart of 1 Corinthians 13. There is nothing more consistently considerate than is love as God shares it in and through us. Like Jesus, it is the “same yesterday, today, and forever.” With every beat of the heart the result is the same.

Consideration is never an accident: it is made to happen. That is because God is in it. This is why consideration is to be our mutual way of life. Remember true love: “I give to you and your give to me…” Love never stops giving of itself to the other. It is the nature of true love to give and give and give again.

Consideration must be based in the Example of Jesus for His own. He is the Example it follows. He is the one who births it within us. He gives it, the Holy Spirit applies it, and the one loved receives it in full measure.

Marriages do not die for a lack of consideration; they die because they have never been based on true consideration from the start. If the courtship and marriage were based in true consideration, they would never end. They’d just keep on growing until them became all He wanted them to be.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

NEXT MONTH:

C IS FOR CONCERNS

Introduction

A person with low self-esteem and a lack of self-love fears their needs are not worth meeting so they tend to keep them hidden, expecting another to know they are present, but fear keeps them from stating them up front. And when they are not met by another, who is assumed to know they are there, often reacts to their unmet condition by coercion, manipulation, begging, insisting or passive-aggressive forms of controlling in order to get them met. This is what can happen when love is not present and actively engaged within the relating. Can you think of examples of such among others you know? They fear collaboration for it may reveal their weakness and thus make them vulnerable to another’s control.

Collaboration is so frightening for them that it becomes impossible. Yet, sitting down together as equals and working together on what is needed and desired for mutual need-satisfaction is how love operates. Collaboration is necessary for one to know and understand the needs of another. If one has an itch the other needs to know about it so they can come to the rescue. We all have an itch now and again, but where it is may not be apparent. Love reveals it and love responds to it in full measure. Love functions on the basis of collaboration. This is how two become as one.

Love is up front and personal in sharing life’s needs. It speaks in “I statements” such as I need, I want, I desire, etc. It responds well to the “I statements” of the other. “I statements” lead to understanding and honest communication. This is how love operates. Anything less than this can lead to misunderstandings, frustration, a real lack of communication, and alienation. Instead of building intimacy, it works against it at all levels.

Love works at creating and maintaining intimacy at all costs. Intimacy is the heart-beat of love and loving. The goal of love is to form what is needed for all heart-hungers to be met in good measure and no real need left unmet. When one is asked, “How well am I doing at understanding and meeting your real needs?” the other responds openly and honestly and then asks the same question of the other. The basis of such intimacy is built through collaboration.

Here are some of the questions love asks in order to know how to function best.

1. What is our relationship to be like and why?

All of us were raised within relationships involving parents, family, and significant others within our families of origin. But whatever they were like, they differed from that of our partner. So what is our marriage to look like? What is there in our backgrounds that need to be assimilated into our present relating? It cannot be all of one’s and none of the other’s. What elements do we want to incorporate; what elements do we want to discount? What do we want ours to be like, and above all, why? How can we collaborate to come up with what God wants for us and what we want for ourselves? What we determine at the start may need to be altered as we go along, but the altering needs to be a collaborative event as well. We can’t afford to be like Topsy and just let it grow. We owe it to God and to ourselves to shape it as He leads us. We are collaborating with Him as well as with each other.

2. What is our family to be like and why?

Our marriage is off to a great start and our collaborating together for its formation and maintenance made it so. When we are planning to expand it into family life, a deep sense of collaboration is needed in forming what we believe our family is to be and why. If we just add children, taking what seems to come along, and allow circumstances to dictate to us, then where will we end up? What is our family to be like? What style of parenting are we to adopt? What is the role of discipline? How will it reflect our values? It may be very obvious to us what we don’t want it to be like, but, beyond that, what are our goals to strive toward in its creation? Not wanting it to be like we ourselves experienced is not enough to conclude. What does God want to see in place here, and how do we collaborate together to make it happen? In this we are collaborating with Him as well as with each other.

3. How are we to relate to each other in all phases of life together?

What we built together during our earlier years may get challenged in many ways when we shift into family life together. How is this to work for us? There are many areas in which our collaboration is essential. It cannot be left to hit or miss circumstances. We need to be able to have a plan and to work it meaningfully. If we are not careful, it is so easy to put the marriage on the back burner because of the overwhelming needs of a child and children. How are we to keep our marriage central and vital when time becomes hard to find for just being us together? With each new change comes the need to be open about us, and if we are not careful and purposeful, the marriage can be ignored until we reach the Empty Nest Syndrome and wake up to find there is not enough present to be recaptured. We have let too much slip away.

4. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours but who gets to go first?

When needs get ignored they don’t just go away. What may go away is the ability to communicate about them. If there is an itch that goes too long without being scratched, it can become an irritant that colors the relating to where it can’t be met or one loses the desire to focus on it. When this happens, a level of alienation sets in between them and continues to grow. With some couples the itch has been there so long they quit expecting it to be resolved. They just give up or sublimate for it in other ways. Love is fractured and in many ways becomes inoperative. Collaboration has ceased. This may mean outside help is needed to bring things back into focus. Know that there is an itch that is there. Know that it shouldn’t have to go away on its own. Love loves to scratch another’s itch. They know how good it feels when theirs gets scratched, and it delights them to have their partner experience such a relief. So love always acts first. Love puts the other ahead of itself. If one acts first, the other acts in kind, and no body goes away with an unmet itch. This is a perfect example of True Love at work. In this we are collaborating with Him as well as with each other.

5. How well am I doing as your life-partner?

Love always begins by calling the artillery in on itself. Love begins by asking the question of how well it is doing in being all the other needs me to be. One may think we are doing well; in asking of the other one comes to know and be reassured or corrected, or, better yet, both. Collaboration begins by asking the right question in the right way so as to acquire meaningful and helpful results. It is asking the question needing an honest answer and whatever is shared back becomes the focal point of the discussion. We need to know how we are doing in the perceptions of the other. Now we know we can affirm our own perceptions or work on changing them to meet the real need that is presented to us. On a scale of 0 to 10, anything less than a ten needs to become the focus of further collaboration. In this we are collaborating with Him.

6. How might I improve?

Even when a relationship is progressing well and real needs are being met, there is always a danger in allowing a given plateau to be viewed as the best it can be. But how often does God have something more for us to achieve together but it is never allowed to become a part of our consciousness. There can be hidden hungers that need addressing, and clinging to what is already in place may keep it hidden from us. So in our collaboration with Him can we isolate anything that needs our attention, either personally or collectively? For example, when we come to the Empty Nest Syndrome, or the Grandparent Syndrome, or the Retirement Syndrome, or the Because We Can Syndrome, how should any and all of these impact our relating to each other? Each of these provides an opportunity to reassess where we are at and opens before us possibilities we did not have earlier. A good marriage is not the same as having a great one.

7. Knowing there is nothing we cannot negotiate together?

Life together because of our level of love and ability to collaborate has proven to us how well we can face what comes our way. He is present not only to Guide us but also to Empower us to the meeting of each and every real need. But what lies ahead? There are uncharted waters to be sailed and how little we really know of what is going to be required of us. What may mystify us most is the physical needs of life as well as the familial ones. There are children and grandchildren with real needs. There are so many things that flesh is heir to. And what of the great challenges that might come our way such as a catastrophic illness, financial reversal, or a terminal disease? We know we can count on Him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But what of us and the small vessel in which we sail?

One day visiting Donna’s mother at her retirement home, the three of us had lunch at a table and Nick joined us. We thought he might be a widower since he was alone. He told us “no”, that he was “happily married but his wife was in a Memory Care Unit. She has Alzheimer’s Disease.” She did not recognize him anymore but he went there three times a day to feed her her meals. He added, “She doesn’t know who I am but I know who she is.” Love does that.

As I write, friends of ours are in California helping the family of their oldest daughter Sara cope with the death of their mother. They lost their father to cancer a few years ago. Now they will go and live with one of Sara’s sisters and her family. The daughter is 13; the son 9. How does love embrace them in such a time of deep and overwhelming need?

As for us parents we always pray we’ll go before our kids do. How do we make it through such a loss? In the midst of our loss how do we help the kids in theirs? Love learns how. We put their needs ahead of our own.

In our Family Issues Support Group at Church we have couples facing the divorce of a child or grandchild, drug addiction in the family, abuse, homelessness and alienation, to name a few issues. When left on our own there is such a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness. It can be so overwhelming.

Our resources to cope are limited, to say the least, but we are not in it alone. In this He collaborates with us as well as we with each other. We are never in it alone. At the same time we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Faith and trust work!

Conclusion

If we need help collaborating the Holy Spirit is present to lead us into the answers that come from above. No one has more of a vested interest in our marriage and family life than does God.
Knowing He is with us leading us in all we have to face, and it is always together, never apart from His presence and promise.

The things that we need to renegotiate He will lead us through to His Answer for us. We can trust Him for that. Whatever patience and grace we need He is there to provide it in full measure. As we put out trust in Him and allow Him to lead in each and every decision, we see His will being done and it is marvelous in our eyes. We don’t know where life will go from here but we do know Whose hand we are in. In His love and grace He has brought us this far, and He will lead us Home. When all is said and done, He will prove His faithfulness to us no matter what our real needs may be. And when it has run its course, in all of it He will have proven to be all we could ever need Him to be, and so much more. To God, be the glory; great things He has done and is still doing.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:
C IS FOR CONSIDERATION

THE TWELVE C’S OF LOVE:
I Corinthiasns 13 and More…

C IS FOR CONVICTION

Introduction

Love is a noun but also a verb at the same time. Love is what you do, how you do it, and why.

As a Noun = Love is who God is and whom we are meant to be 
        Love is what we are made to be within our True Selves
        The image of Jesus Christ is that of love
        That is the image we are to reflect, growing up into Him

As a Verb = Love is what we do for Him and in His Name
        We love others with His love and we experience Him in this loving
        Loving others is our deepest need
        This is what they need most from us

The rationale of love as we define it forms our unifying philosophy/theology of life.
        It is like a rudder on a ship…it determines direction and destiny
        If it centers in us then we think in terms of what we get out of it
        If it centers in God then we think of what glorifies Him
        If we think of others then their real needs are our focus
        Our focus needs to be as is His – on others – in His Name

The true Christian life is a vicarious one…as it was with our Lord…and He is our Example.
        It is a life for others
        It lives for others…it loves for others

Our vicariousness depends also on our convictions and what life means to us
        What does God mean to us…what is His role within our lives
        What do others mean to us…and why
        How do we count for Him in the lives of others

We live it from the inside out…according to our inner convictions and thinking
        We need the mind of Christ…to think and envision as He does
        We need the heart of Christ…to know and understand as He does
        This is how our insides get lived out…with Him as our Example

Because of our convictions this is how and why we live as we do. It challenges us to love God, others, our true selves, and life as He intended it to be lived out to His glory.

1.     Loving God with all our being
Every Hebrew child learned to recite Deuteronomy 6:4 and the doorpost of every home contained this portion of Scripture. The Shema calls us to love God with all our being. It is written on every believer’s heart and it is the key to all we are and all God expects of us. He knows us well; that is why it is in the form of a Command. Do it, and live. The reality of it is so far reaching within our lives and relationships that what God is giving us is the gift of life: God-life. Love loves God. He is its Source as well as its circumference.

Jesus calls it the first and greatest commandment. All else is built upon it. Without it we have no other sure foundation on which to build.

Learning how to do that is another matter entirely. That is because how we define love is not how God perceives it. To live according to our definition is to miss the mark. It is to build on a false foundation. The result is our own condemnation and self-destruction.

2.     Loving others as we love ourselves

When we learn to take God’s command seriously we come to discover it compels us to love others as He loves them. He means for us to take Him seriously. To love Him means to love others. In His love we learn to love others as He loves them. His joy is to be able to love them through us.

Learning how this is to be obeyed is a real problem for us for we would rather pick and choose, and His love does not allow for that. He goes as far as to command us to love our enemies, to love those who hate us, and mistreat us. That means that none get excluded. He also points out to us that we cannot love Him any more than we are able to love them for they belong to Him and He loves them all just as He loves us.

The real problem we have in learning to love them springs from the lack of love we have for ourselves. His command to us includes this love as well.

3.     Loving ourselves

It can be said that the greatest struggle we have in life springs from this command and our inability to realize it and live it out. We are commanded to love others as we love ourselves. But how do we love others when we have not yet learned how to love ourselves? This is a constant struggle for any shame-based person. Until we allow God’s grace to deal with our sense of shame and guilt, we have no real love for Him or for others, even in His Name.

There is no question in Scripture about us being loved by God, but that does not mean we accept it, believe it, practice it, and allow ourselves to feel it. Yet, who are we to call God a liar? Who are we to question or doubt the full, unconditional love of God for us? It is true others may not love us, but God does. We cannot prove to God we are unlovable when He sees it otherwise. He loves each one of us as if He had no one else to love! Now, how can we twist that into a lie?

It is time for us to see ourselves and others with His eyes…then, and only then, will we be in reality. And only then will we be able to love God as He is and others as they are in His sight.

4.     Love is doing God’s will…in His way

Only when we learn to love Him with all our being and love others and ourselves as He loves us will we ever be able to discern His will for us and find the strength in His Spirit to fulfill that will to His glory.

First, His will teaches us the truth about ourselves: we are not our own…we have been bought with a great price, and as a result all that we are and have we owe to Him and His grace. We have to know His will and do it to His glory, because we have no life apart from Him and His will for us is the best and greatest we could ever know.

Second, we are here for His purposes…and not for our own. To live for Him is His will for us. We owe our all to Him. We find our all only in Him. The doing of His will is the greatest thing we could ever do. Anything less is to honor only self and to honor only self is to dishonor Him.

Being His and doing His will is the summum bonum of life itself. There is no other achievement that can surpass it. In His will we find our absolute joy and fulfillment.

5.     Love values others…as He values them

The Christian life is a vicarious life: it has to be lived for others. Not only does it reveal them to us as His, but we also come to realize His place in them and within us as His own. In a very real sense the key word and concept for each of His own is others. We meet Him in them. What we do for them is what we do for Him. When we stoop to wash their feet we soon discover in doing it that the feet are in reality His.

By learning to put them ahead of ourselves we are honoring Him and putting Him first in all things. He is our Example in all this. We also discover all that we are doing, we are doing as unto Him. Herein lies our joy and peace.

6.     Love is living the life God intends for us

Jesus is love’s example of how to pray: “Not My will but Yours be done….” “Not what I want but what You want for Me….” Since we are not our own, we belong to Him, therefore doing His will is what we are to be all about. We owe Him our all on a daily basis as well as eternally.
We are here for Him and not ourselves or others alone. But living the life to which He calls us means focusing on the real needs of others as revealed by Him.

7.     Love is living with eternal values in view

Living today in the light of eternity means living as He did. Living as a child of God is what makes sense to us for He is in it with us and we with Him. Living it to His glory makes sense since we are doing it for Him and unto Him. All that we are and do has His mark on it, that is why and how it is eternal.

8.     Love fashions its own worldview

It learns to see life through God’s eyes. This gives us the worldview of Jesus and that of the Holy Spirit. How different this is from any human dream or vision. Love learns to care for that world by learning to care with God’s own heart, not our own. It sees the world as His, and knows that in making all things new it will become a Redeemed Earth in His time and planning. How we live and what we do within His world, we do as unto Him and in His strength alone.  Love determines to have its heart broken by the things that break the heart of God.

Conclusion

His is the One love we are willing to die for as well as live for and by whom it lives and dies. Love is building God’s Kingdom within His world for His sake and doing it in ways that glorify God alone. Love is living as unto Him. It is serving all others but it is doing it by living for Him so it will never lack His power, motivation, and outcome. Love is living as Jesus did in His earthly ministry and now in His Incarnational ministry in and through His own.

Love is living out His love within us. The love they are receiving and experiencing is of Him and they sense it. It is more than we could ever give them of ourselves. This happens because love is learning to allow Him to be alive in and through us. We are here to love-gift His world for Him.

Surrendering our hearts to Him and His purposes is what love is all about. This is also what true discipleship is all about. What we do for others in His Name is our life-gift to Him as our Lord.

May He find us loving when He comes for His own. This is the hope and the abiding conviction we have to live by.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet

eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:

C IS FOR COLLABORATION

C IS FOR CONFESSION AND CONTRITION

Introduction

“Love is never having to say I’m sorry….” Anyone committed to living in true intimacy knows this worldly wisdom is not reality. In any close, intimate relationship, there comes a time when hurts are created, misunderstandings take place, and offenses are committed. When any of these occur, there is a strain on the relationship and as a result things need to be owned, repented of, confessed, and forgiveness sought that will lead to reconciliation and a honest renewal and refreshing of the relationship. Offenses do happen, and when they do, appropriate action needs to follow. The relationship can sometimes be on hold until things are cared for redemptively. That is how love operates. It cannot stand alienation. It seeks out forgiveness and is forgiving. It is always open to forgiving.

In my book on FORGIVENESS: The Key to Wholeness, I have sought to share the forgiveness process from beginning to end. Forgiveness is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end. The end result is reconciliation, renewal, and a deeper level of relating within the realm of the intimacy love alone creates. (See the archives on this website for 2009 under “Family Matters” for the full discussion on forgiveness). If love is not forgiving, then it is not the love of found in 1 Corinthians 13. If love is not willing to accept being forgiven, then it is also not based in that same passage. How we relate to this topic tells more about us than of the offense or the offender. 1 John points out that when we learn to forgive we experience God in the process. If He is in it, then that is what love does. That’s because God is love. Since we are made in His image, this means we are made for love, also.

Any time we are tempted to play the numbers game – how many times am I to forgive? – we are reflecting our own insides for others to see. Love never asks the number question; its focus is on the relationship and on wholeness: that of the offender and of ourselves. You cannot love and not forgive. God has forgiven us because of His great love for us. Christ died to make that forgiveness possible and that love real. This is why we must learn to love with His love.

1.     Love Owns Its Mistakes

There are two kinds of offenses: real and imagined. Both cause a rupture in the relationship that is building on intimacy. Both need to be dealt with, and never ignored or neglected. Become aware of what has happened between the two of you and deal with it. Deal with both types as real until things can be resolved. Own your part in it and what it means to your partner. If you were wrong, then own it. If you are sorry, say so. If you aren’t sorry, then work on your self-awareness. Love seeks the best possible knowledge of self-understanding out of which to love others. Love is sorry for all its wrongs, slights, and offenses. If you need the other’s help in understanding what it means to the other, then ask and listen and remember. You want restoration and intimacy. That is your mutual goal. Forgive as often as needed. Forgive as you need and want to be forgiven.

2.     Love Owns Its Misunderstandings

Misunderstandings arise within any relationship, even an intimate one. We are not always good readers of the other, and we do not always send clear, understandable messages to the other. Love seeks to respond spontaneously and caringly, but misunderstandings do arise. Love seeks to avoid these from happening but when they do they are to be owned and corrected. Both can be sorry one took place, and both can work to correct the situation and go from there. Whoever is at fault owns it and both negotiate the correction. It doesn’t matter what happened or who is at fault; what matters is two mature adults can take responsibility for their part in it and see that it is corrected and the lesson remembered. Both desire the highest quality of relating. How we deal with our misunderstandings has a lot to say about our levels of maturity.

3.     Love Welcomes Carefrontation

You cannot imagine the stuff that gets hidden or buried or stored away for a rainy day when it comes to negative feelings and secrets. Lots of times this stuff comes out in illness and psychosomatic ills. They can also come out when the inner storage space gets full and running over. This can form an undercurrent in the relationship. So now which one is going to call for a powwow and get things out into the open? No one likes to be confronted, but carefrontation is different. When we are approached in love and genuine caring, we seek to respond in kind. “We need to talk….” “Something is bothering me and I need your input….” “Help me see what is happening between us….” Love responds with a “Thanks for bringing it to my attention…lets talk….” Intimate relationships are sustained by carefrontation and sharing. Both must have the freedom to be able to bring up what needs to be faced together. Like Paul admonishes in Ephesians, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” or whatever needs to be faced. Love listens to the pain within another.

4.     Love is Fractured When There’s No Contrition

The lack of genuine contrition sends the message our being right is more important than the relationship being mended, and the feelings of the injured are being discounted in the process. We need to be genuinely sorry for anything that hinders our relating or calls our love into question. When we are genuinely sorry for an offense or slight or misunderstanding, our partner will hear it and act accordingly. We are not making excuses nor are we denying our blame. If one is in pain, so is the other. It is as if the relationship is pained. Who ever offends needs to know the feelings and pain of the other. Their pain, and ours, cannot dissipate until it is mended and contrition is the key to the healing process beginning. We need to move through it together and at a pace that brings each along with the other. The couple will create the healing needed and they alone will determine the time needed.

5.     Love Knows How to Confess and Why

The word “confess” means to “say the same thing.” If one really offends the other by being thoughtless, rude, or slighting, a true confession is for the offender to own the offense and state it right up front in the confession. It isn’t enough to say, “Sorry, I goofed,” or “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” True confession works like this. “I was thoughtless when I (state the offense) and I am deeply sorry that I hurt you and caused you pain by (state what it was and what it means) and I ask for your forgiveness.” The “why” of it is “because I love you, because I care about your feelings, and because I care about our relationship. I want it to be all it can be.” The best way to own an offense is to put it into words that help the other know you see it, understand it, and regret having done it. If you have to ask the “why” of it, then forget it. Love has its reasons, and knows them by heart.

6.     Love Thrives on Wholeness and Wellness

First of all, I want our relationship to be whole and well because that is what we both need most and that is what we have promised one another by our love. If I am to love wholeness and wellness into you by love-gifting you, then I must possess it myself. If we cannot learn to thrive in ways that lead to wholeness and wellness then we are not really meeting each other’s real needs. Love thrives on meeting those real needs. We are working together at wholeness that guarantees wellness and maturity. You need to know I am growing within myself as a person because I have you in my life. I want you to realize the same for yourself because I am in your life. I am growing because of you and I thank God that He gave me you. This is how we want to spend the rest of our lives…together!

7.     Love Seeks Reconciliation and Renewal

Offenses can disrupt harmony, detour a relationship, and cause pain that can be disastrous. They take away from what has been in place and also can prevent it from being any stronger than it has been in the past. It needs to remain on a growing trajectory. We need it to become all God wants it to be. This is why love always seeks both reconciliation and renewal. Reconciliation does not just put us back to where we were before the offense occurred. It cannot return to how it used to be because a rupture has been experienced. But if reconciliation is allowed to bring us back together then the grounds for renewal are also present. Instead of basking in the reconciliation we move into the renewal so the relationship can be even stronger than before. This is how God’s grace works. The offense caused a downdraft but the results of renewal is being able to soar higher than ever before.

In Conclusion

Love is willing to endure whatever comes its way because that is the nature of love. We are in it for better or whatever, but always together, and for the good of the intimacy we are creating and maintaining in our oneness. We are committed to the long haul. We can count on each other doing their part to make it work to the glory of God and to our own personal joy. This is our heart’s desire and we are dedicated to making it happen by His grace and our mutual love for one another.

Over the years we have been and are building a strong level of resilience and sticktuitiveness in our relating. There is a level of companionship between us that makes it desirable to work at it as long as we live. No matter what we have to confront together, we are making sure it does not put a wedge between us or threaten what we have fashioned. We know in our hearts there in nothing we will ever have to face but with Him as our Guide we will make it through.

Love seeks to mature the two of us at all levels. It does not allow us to plateau or settle for less than what God has in store for us. We know the best is yet to come, but at the same time we desire to have each and every day move us more and more toward that chosen goal. Being mature at fifty does not guarantee maturity at sixty or even seventy. The challenges of life do not allow us to coast. Dealing with the concerns around us keep us needing to grow. This is why our Faith Journey and Faith Community are so important to us. We can draw from the wisdom of those around us. We can share our learned lessons with them. They help us see where we need to grow. Their wisdom needs to become ours. Others behind us need our example to follow. Graduation Day is not until He calls all of us Home.

Love learns to forgive itself and move forward. So many marriages and families get detoured or even sidetracked for a lack of self-forgiveness. Self-forgiveness is mirrored in our lack of self-love and self-acceptance. We cannot claim God’s future when we have been unwilling to allow Him to own our past. He died for that past. He owns it now. To carry it around and allow it to rob us of His present and future is to live as if He had not redeemed us. We heal our future by coming to grips with our past and allowing His forgiveness to care for it all. Who are we to hang it around our necks like an albatross and walk around beating ourselves up over what He has forgiven and buried in the depths of the sea? That’s like living as if He does not.

Love knows how to accept forgiveness and to be eternally grateful for it. It is the cleansing that frees us now to love others with His love. It allows us to be immersed in His grace and to seek the same for others. It allows us to accept the forgiveness of others and to move toward them in a forgiveness that makes all things new. Our problem in learning to love is based in our lack of self-love. Our difficulty in creating and maintaining intimacy is also based in our lack of self-love. The best way to know why there are problems in our marriage and we struggle with a lack of loving another is to look in the mirror and become aware of why we remain alienated from the person reflected there. Do you know how much God loves that person you see there? Stop and look at that person with God’s eyes!

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:
C IS FOR CONVICTION

Introduction

One of the first stages to be worked through in any intimate relationship is how each perceives the other. There’s the old joke of the nervous bride fearing walking the aisle with her Dad to meet to Groom. Her Dad counsels her: “Now Honey, all you have to do is first concentrate on the aisle, then as you get half way down, focus on the altar, and then when you see him smiling at you, concentrate on him.” As she walked, those sitting on the aisle could hear her murmuring to herself, “Aisle, altar, Him…” Translated to them it meant, “I’ll alter him!”

There are things that surface during the courtship that get ignored, denied or put on the back burner until after the marriage when one hopes these might change – for the better. These can plague the first five years or so if either has a hidden agenda of how the other needs to change. But this is also the stage in which reality can set in and one discovers they may not be changing or changeable. This is when maturity versus immaturity is challenged. This is also when many couples give up and settle for what is or lose faith altogether and look for ways out. Immaturity can never handle intimacy; it is far too self-focused.

What should be obvious to all of us right from the start is that intimacy is based on focusing on the other more than on one’s self. This does not mean your needs are not important. They are. But so are the needs of the other. Intimacy begins to take shape when our focus is on the needs of the other and not on our own. The other will be focusing on ours more than their own. That is how intimacy is built, works, and is kept alive for the long haul. Like the old song, “True Love,”
“I give to you…and you give to me….” Neither loses out; both receive in full.

So, let me ask you what it is you have to offer, share, and give to the other? What caring is all about is meeting the real needs in the life of the other. This works both ways. Therefore, in any caring relationship intimacy will result. But without that level of caring for the other, intimacy becomes impossible. Our goal is intimacy at the deepest possible levels. Here’s how that looks when we examine it together.

1. Caring for One Another in Knowledgeable Ways

You have reached an age of responsibility and with that maturing you have some perceptions of how life works. But, as psychologists can tell you, “Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus.” We are different. We see needs differently. We care differently. We tend to project our own stuff onto the other and assume they think as we do. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. Maybe we guess right once in a while; maybe we don’t. But since we are seeking to build intimacy and create a need satisfying way of relating, we need to know. We need to be knowledgeable lovers. The way this becomes a part of us is by asking, learning, discovering, and then acting out what is being learned. This allows us to learn how to put the other ahead of ourselves and show our care and concern in how we relate. The loving thing to do is to put the other first but in order to do that meaningfully we need to know how, when and why to do it. Now the other’s true needs can come first with us. We are learning to create a need-centered togetherness and it matters to us which need comes first. Love is putting the other ahead of self.

2. Caring About One Another in Meaningful Ways

Since men tend to live at the thinking stage (often denying the feeling stage) and women at the feeling/thinking stage (allowing feelings to control their thinking), a lot of miscommunication can be present. If understanding is to be present in the relating, things need to be clarified and understood from the other’s point of view. For example, you want your partner to know that they are loved by you. But how will that message get through to the other so they can really hear it?
How does she like to be told? How does he like to be told? How is this to be shown so both understand what is being shared? And when it comes to understanding what the other needs from us, how is that need to be defined? Does either need time to be alone to process something? Can the other allow for that time without feeling threatened? Does she need to share a feeling without him thinking he has to fix it? If any negative emotions surface, how are they to be handled? What is it we need from each other? And when we are sharing at this level, is there the freedom in the relationship to be able to ask the other, “How well am I doing…?”

3. Caring by Learning, Understanding and Remembering

Early in the relating there are times when both need to learn how to work with each other to achieve a sound level of understanding and thus coming to a level of self-understanding as well. But when we do learn we need to care enough to make that learning a permanent part of the relating. You care enough to learn, to come to a new level of understanding and to commit it to memory so it becomes a life-long lesson. This level of caring truly says “I love you this much….” We are learning the what, when, where, how and why of caring. Now that this has been learned and experienced, it can be demonstrated in good measure and again this says to the other, “This is part of my loving you.”

4. The Why of Caring

There is a level of caring that God calls us to learn in creating and living within the world of intimacy. It is a vicarious experiencing of what is going on in the other, why it may be there, and how best to respond to it. Learning how to enter the feelings and sorrows and pain of another does not come naturally. It is a supernatural experience. You are literally and figuratively entering into the feelings of the one loved. Supposing during the early years of your relating your partner loses a parent or family member. It is a time of deep sorrow for her. You know she is going to need time to process this and until she is able to do so life changes dramatically. You put your needs aside and you enter hers fully and freely. You are there for her. You give her the space she needs and you comfort and support her in every way possible. You love her and reassure her you are there for her. All other needs can be laid aside. This is what she needs most from you right now. This is what she can count on from you. You are together in the healing that is taking place. This is how true love operates.

5. Caring Together for Others

What caring does for us as a couple leads us to go beyond ourselves and to care for others. This begins between us but does not stop there. We learn to live beyond ourselves by putting the real needs of our family first, then to our extended family and with them all we meet along life’s roads. Just as God loves the world so we learn to love it with His love. We care about what is happening around the globe to people and to the Earth itself. As Christians we are salt and light, that is what we desire to live out. We seek to learn to love what God loves. As a couple we team together with others who care and to demonstrate that caring in concrete ways. The end result of all this is to glorify His Name. We cannot do everything that needs to be done but we can do a share and we can care about all others doing their share as well.

6. Caring for God’s Creation

We accept our mutual responsibility for creation and its well-being. This commits us to living frugally, using the world’s resources responsibly, by simplifying our wants to real needs, and not getting caught up in possessions as if they mark some sort of earthly success. We seek to live with eternal values in view. We recycle. Our Christian stewardship reflects itself in each aspect of our daily lives. We support causes that have creation’s interests at heart. We expect the world’s leadership to do the same. Our love for God and life as He intends it to be lived is binding on us and our lifestyles. We teach the same to our families by word and deed.

7. Caring About Life In God’s World

There are children and adults around this globe that are depending on help from us. Part of our Christian stewardship is to see that they have clean water, daily nourishment, liveable conditions, and a genuine sense of purpose and justice to the lives they lead. We care for the widows and orphans, the poor, the neglected and the disenfranchised. Since it is God’s world we expect His concerns for them to be fulfilled in and through us as His own. What we do for them we do as unto Him. We do it in His Name, in His way, and for His purposes. We pray for God to bless the whole world, no exceptions.

8. Caring to Go Beyond Ourselves

We are not here for anything but for Him. We owe Him our all. We would not even have life if it were not for Him and His grace toward us in His Son. He is our purpose for living and in our living we want to glorify Him. This means we are here to count for others. Our true purpose is to go beyond ourselves to live out with passion and compassion His love for all others. In living for others we go beyond ourselves and who we are. Our true identity is in the fact we are His. This calls us to extend ourselves on behalf of others. As a family we volunteer in soup kitchens, we give to worthwhile causes, we count in the lives of those less fortunate, and above all we share our Christian faith and witness. We are willing to engage in relieving the painful things that break the heart of God.

9. Christian Caring

This calls us to care for all that God cares about, and to do it in the ways Jesus has exampled for us. In His day it was prostitutes, tax collectors, and an assortment of sinners. In our day it also includes the addicts, abusers, and the abused. It means being a vital part of a growing spiritual faith community and serving with our Spiritual Gifts for its up-building. It means being knowledgeable and involved in missions around the world. It means to be a viable witness for Christ in our neighborhood and community. It means being known as a Christian by our love of neighbor and stranger. We are to live as extensions of His Incarnation. We are here to build His Kingdom, not our own. The heroes we seek to emulate are the heroes of faith, not the idols of the day. We are called to live The Jesus Way.

In Conclusion

We live in a culture committed to living for one’s self. Jesus calls us by command and example to live for others. Our decision as a Christian couple and family is to follow His example. We are here to live for others. Not only are we called to live for them but we are commanded as well to love them. This command prescribes how we are to live for them – as Jesus did. It is vicarious, redemptive, and ever caring.

If we learn to love them with His love, then their real needs will be met in good measure. We will count for Him with them. His Incarnation will service them through us. According to Romans 8 the world is dying to see and experience what life can be as Christ lives from within us. That is what we are here for. Instead of listening to the world that tells us “we can be anything we want to be,” the Holy Spirit is seeking to grow us up into the Person of Jesus Christ so we can become all He wants us to be. That’s what the world needs most from us.

Being His above all else is our calling. It is also our joy. And it will prove to be all our partners and families need of us as well. The Kingdom of God is more than the world can ever offer, and as living partners of His in that Kingdom, we are able to offer to His world the love that saves, the grace that forgives, the peace that satisfies, and the life that is eternal.

To care like that can get one crucified. But there is no hope for the world without it. As Mother Teresa once expressed it, “To live like that may get you crucified, but if it does, you’ll be in good company. Do it anyway.”

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:
C IS FOR CONFESSION AND CONTRITION

Introduction

Bumper Stickers sometimes bring us up short with their pointed messages. Here’s a good example of one. “My Wife Says I Never Listen. At Least That’s What I Think She Said.” Beneath the humor it reflects the number one problem in any close relationship: a lack of sound, meaningful, open communication. So one of the primary tasks of love is to learn how to communicate, to genuinely listen, then to practice it in good measure from a willing heart. And since we live in a culture of noise and distractions, learning how to communicate and listen is no easy matter. But if love is to happen and relationships are to be made need-satisfying in our relating, then communication and listening are a major key to making that happen. Love knows this and determines to make it a reality. It is what breathing is to the human body. We breathe to live. We cannot live long without it. Nor can a relationship apart from meaningful levels of communication. This is how it sustains itself. This is also the secret to its longevity, well-being, and wholeness. So, communicate, we must.

1. Communication is More than Talking

Talking can be a way of opening up to one another, helping us get beyond our fears of sharing our insides with another. Good relationships are built on intimacy and intimacy is built on getting to know one another. Talking, sharing is the key. Talking can also be a way of avoiding one another if all we do is talk, using it defensively, aggressively, or even passive-aggressively. This assures there will be no intimacy. We can use talking as a barrier-building mechanism. We can use it in hiding our true selves from the other, especially when we fear what that true self may be. Talking needs to be a wonderful beginning to what can be built between us, allowing things to go deeper and deeper until the two of us can feel comfortable in knowing one another. We are not talking just to talk. We are communicating one heart to that of the other.

2. Communication is More than Listening

Nothing is more frustrating than talking to one who is not listening. Listening is an art that has to be learned. But, we can listen only to get a wedge in with the other, leading to high levels of frustration in the relating. We can also use it as a way of just being polite to another when in reality we do not want to listen, especially when the other talks like a broken record with the same stuff over and over again. What we are really avoiding is intimacy. Many hope the other person is learning to listen so we can use talking as a way of controlling them and avoiding anything deeper. But what we need to grasp is the fact that without listening there can be no closeness or intimacy. Listening is a move toward and into intimacy that involves learning to listen with the heart. True intimacy is always a matter of the heart. The heart learns to listen and it can hear even what is being said within a message of silence. Active listening allows us the privilege to enter into the listener and for the listener to enter into us. When this entering is allowed to happen, then intimacy is real between us.

3. Communication is Self-Disclosing

We have an external self and an inward self and love takes place within the inner self manifesting in our actions and sharing with others. Sharing our self and our real needs lets the other know who we are, where we are at, and what makes us the unique person we are. It allows us to be known. We learn the same of them. We do this best by learning to use ‘I statements’ that share who we are as well as what we need and what we have to offer. Wanting the other to know where we are at and why leads to meaningful dialogue between us. Self-clarification and openness leads to being known, accepted and approved of as who we are. Any and every close relationship builds on self-disclosure. The more we are able to share this inner self with the other the sooner we come to recognize our own worth and discover the ability to live out that worth. This sharing is the basis of relationship building. It forces us to face our fears and move beyond them. Love does that. Wanting to be known to become close in need satisfying ways becomes its own reward. This is what makes two hearts into one and allows them to beat as one.

4. Communication is Understanding the Levels of Sharing

Casual, surface sharing: “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine, thank you…and how are you?” may serve us in greeting strangers, but it will never do in relationship building. Sharing to be able to control another is also self-defeating because it lacks honesty as well as honest feelings. Men are noted for brevity; women go for the details! She asks, “How did your day go?” He answers, “Fine,” or “Okay.” She asks for details and he has trouble providing them. When she is asked, she begins at the beginning and takes it to a meaningful conclusion. She may have lost him along the way but that’s his problem. Sharing is so important to building and maintain intimacy, and it cannot be achieved apart from it. There are no shortcuts. Critical in all this is the sharing of feelings. Share to know and be known by letting the other share feelings and concerns and hopes and fears, etc.. This is sharing at the deepest level of all. This is being intimate. For example, how do you feel about being the life’s partner to your mate? “This is how I feel about being one with you. It makes me feel like….” Such sharing leads to the deepest levels possible.

5. Communication is Understanding and Sharing

Without adequate and meaningful communication how is the other to come to know us and for us to know and understand them? Now comes the understanding that leads to my saying this is who you are to me based on your self-disclosure and now you can tell me who I am to you based on your understanding. Sharing leads to understanding and deeper understandings lead to more intense sharing. Now we are free to share with one another how this level makes us feel. Now I am understanding your insides and you mine. This is what being “us” means and this is what it means to me. “This is what I love about you and why.” “Let me tell you how this makes me feel.” Now look what has happened to our level of sharing. Now we can share: “This is what I hope our future will be and this is how I feel we are doing to achieve it. “ How do you feel about it; are we on the same page?” Now we know where to go from here. We are in it together. When we are able to complete each other’s statements and wishes and dreams, think of what this means to the depths of our relating.

6. Communication Leads to Awareness, Spontaneity and Intimacy

The enemies of any close relationship are the dangers involved in a lack of understanding of the other, where that person is at, the felt-need of having to be on your guard with that person and intimacy may be desired but so far is only spotty or brief, at best. The joys of any close relationship are knowing the other in growing stages of true intimacy, being able to act spontaneously with the other knowing you are accepted, affirmed and approved of, and the deep and abiding joys that true intimacy provide. This does not happen without intentionality, commitment and a real sharing in need satisfying ways on a dependable basis. That’s what love is; that’s how love operates. And true intimacy is its own reward. Through the years of a good marriage you learn to look back and see what the journey has meant to you. You will find you are not the person who began this journey however long ago. You have grown, matured, even changed. And you see the same in your partner. You have brought out the best in each other. This process will be unending as long as your sharing continues at these deeper levels. We call it “togetherness.” Being one. It is what God intended marriage to be. This is how it is to happen. We partner with Him in realizing this potential.

7. Communication is the Major Key to Togetherness

Two unknowns do not share well; their relating is governed by their fears. Instead of becoming lovers and sharers, they remain as takers and demanders and seldom become givers. They are in it for what they can get. How sad. More than that, how tragic. If they could only realize how it could be if…. 1 John points out that “love chases away all fear.” Togetherness teaches us the true meanings of love. We cannot learn to love without it. And such love leaves no room for fear. Togetherness is built on the art of becoming one. It is heavenly. It is a sharing together at the feeling level. Mastering the art of togetherness is what makes it work best. This achieves the most needed level of relating in need satisfying ways. It carries a couple through thick and thin, through want and plenty, and blesses them with the benediction of His abiding presence in all of their life together. This is how He leads us to realize its full potential. His Spirit enables us to achieve this in good measure. We live it out to the glory of God and to our own mutual joy.

In Conclusion

Learning how to go for the gold and learning how we feel about our journey together brings us into a togetherness that keeps us going the distance day by day no matter what may come our way. We know we do not face it alone. Not only do we have each other but more than that we have Him. This reality reassures us that the best is yet ahead of us. Every new day moves us more and more toward that goal. Our excitement about our relationship does not dim.

Being willing to pay the price of making this happen means an investing of ourselves in the relationship that is His gift to us and how we manage it is our gift to Him, to each other, and to ourselves. Its true meaning will give our family the example they will come to cherish in their own relating. They will seek to replicate it in their relationships. We are working at it as one seeking a true treasure. It feels so good and so satisfying. The treasure we find day by day is more than we could have ever anticipated at the beginning.

Along the way we will get the help we need to make it all it can be. It is too important to us to settle for anything less. Our reading resources enhance what we are building and achieving. Our discoveries enhance what we can add and will prove to be the guides we need. We see others around us who have settled for far less than God’s best. That is not going to be us. We want the relationship He has in store for us and we are determined to make it just that. Our love is our treasure to offer to Him and to His world.

Every couple can easily develop bad habits that threaten their relating and when these surface we are determined to work on them together. We know that when a marriage is allowed to coast it only moves forward when you coast downhill. And if we are to keep climbing we will have to work at it until He calls us Home.

Knowing we are not in this by ourselves we claim both His presence and His power to make it all it needs to be. Since every relationship is unique we can learn some lessons from observing others but in reality what we need most has to come from Him. We can never achieve what He has for us on our own. But at the same time He is partnering with us and we have to do our part in it as well. The Great Communicator is our Guide and Example.

To follow through on what needs to be and can be in place in your relating, let me encourage you to attend a Marriage Encounter. [www.marriageencounter.com.] You can go on line to find one that meets your need and reflects the faith community to which you belong. It is a weekend experience in heart to heart communication that leads to levels of dialoguing you might otherwise never achieve. They have groups for engaged couples, for newly marrieds, those along the way, and for older lovers. It will prove to be a life-changing weekend. Don’t think “But can we afford it?” You can’t afford not to! If in doubt check with your Pastor. When you get back, tell all you know what it has meant to you and your relationship. God is in it.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

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C IS FOR CARING