…And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–…-Ephesians 3:18-19

 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.-John 3:16

 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.-James 2:17

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.-Romans 5:8

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ‘This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’-Matthew 22:37-39

God’s Prayer’

When you meet a child of mine
Please offer love to him.
If he is unkind to you
Please don’t repeat his sin.
My child has a sinful nature
Often ruled by pain and fear.
But if looked upon with loving eyes
His true nature becomes clear.

My child is made in my image,
A true replica of Me.
But his nature was corrupted
By fruit from forbidden trees.
When his life was redeemed
I made him new from within
And because I have forgiven him
I no longer see his sin.

So, when you meet my child,
If by chance he is unkind,
Remember whose child he is
And with whom he is aligned.
Then, please seek my child’s nature
Through the same eyes that you seek me.
For, those same loving eyes
Will set his Godly nature free.

If you wonder just who to love.
Who are my children? How will you know?
I’m asking, please love all mankind,
Your family, friends, and foes.
For, they are all my children.
And in my eyes this much is true
There simply is no difference,
I love them as I love you.
©Linda Troxell, 1999

 

We say prayers to God all the time, asking him for everything from a parking space at the mall, to a cure our loved one’s cancer. But have you ever wondered what God would pray for if there were, indeed, anyone higher then himself to whom He could appeal? Well, given how much God loves us and how much he has sacrificed to allow us to have eternal life with Him, it would make sense to me that He might pray for His children to treat one another with love.

I can only imagine the scope of God loves for us. I don’t think we, in this life, can even begin to understand the enormity of His love. The closest I can come to understanding  is to compare my love for my child to His love for us as a Father. I love her so much that it cannot be conveyed in words.  And I know that God’s love is exponentially larger than mine could ever be. The Bible even says in Ephesians 3 that God’s love surpasses knowledge.    …may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–…-Ephesians 3:18-19.  

When we really love someone, we give their needs priority, often, even over our own. What might our world look like if we all prioritized the needs of others above our own? We would have no crime, no war, no lying or cheating or murder because no one needs those things. This is something else I really can’t imagine. But I would certainly like to try it. I wonder what would happen if we could get every Christian on the planet, or even just in the United States for a start, to agree to pray together at the same time, just one time a day, for the people of the earth to love God with all their being and love all their neighbors as themselves. That would be one powerful prayer. I know it seems unlikely it will ever happen, but I’m not going to give up hope.

I once tried to get just the people I personally know to pray together at the same time each day for peace and the invitation wasn’t accepted by many. And those who agreed drifted away after a few weeks. I wonder what it is about us humans that we can’t stay focused on anything for any length of time. I guess, truthfully, we can’t focus for long on anything that does not bring us personal pleasure. It must just be part of our sinful nature. Perhaps, because we are living in a fallen world, our love does not motivate us to give or sacrifice as God’s love does. It seems that our love is not even something we give to others. No, from our sinful nature we love to make ourselves feel good. And we’ve yet to understand that real love is not about how we feel, it’s about what we do. For example, what God did in response to His love for us. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.-John 3:16

I think this is the point that James was trying to make when he said faith without works is dead. Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.-James 2:17. This scripture is most often understood to be part of the debate over how we are saved, by grace or works. That is, are we saved by faith through grace alone, or do we need to do good works as well to be saved? That argument has been raging for more than 2000 years and I don’t think it will be settled soon, if ever. Meanwhile, as we argue in circles about how we are saved, we are missing the whole point of what James said.

I think the real argument is whether or not we’ve actually been saved if after our sin is washed clean by the blood of Christ we are still not motivated to do good works. Were we ever really saved if that enormous act of unselfish love does not give us the desire to pass that love on? Accepting Jesus as our savior is supposed to give us a new heart; a softer heart; a giving heart. So, if we claim to have been saved by grace through faith, but we don’t want to do good works, maybe we weren’t really saved at all.

When we decide to make Jesus our savior we give Him our entire lives. At the same, time most of us also fall in love with Him in a way we haven’t experienced love before. This is real love! Love that cares more about what it gives than about what it gets. Love that doesn’t think about its needs but only the needs of the other. This is not the kind of love that needs to feel adored. No, this love isn’t about feelings at all.  It’s about wanting to do whatever it takes to please Jesus and to help others to be saved.

When we are born again of water and the Spirit we should begin to realize what an immeasurable gift we have been given. And then we should see that as part of that gift we were also given a new heart, a softer heart. We take our focus off of ourselves and put it where it can do the most good, on those who need what we have. We realize this new heart loves differently. And we begin to want to love as God loves. God’s love is without conditions. He didn’t wait until we had conquered our sin to love us and bring us into His family. He loved us and brought us into His family so that we could conquer our sins. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.-Romans 5:8

Real love is transformative. I first learned of the power of real love’s ability to transform a broken person into a whole new person when I was an addictions counselor. Part of my job was to help the clients, adult alcoholics, to work a 12-Step program. I don’t know if you’re familiar with 12-Step programs but they all started with Alcoholics Anonymous (A. A.) a program of fellowship wherein alcoholics help each other to stay sober.

When an alcoholic is treated they are almost always required to attend a 12 Step program as part of that treatment. And they almost always object. Usually, the objections are the same two, the need to admit that they are alcoholics and the religious and/or Christian nature of the program. The first obstacle is really more about being required to give up alcohol than it is about admitting to alcoholism. It’s usually resolved after the client has attended a few meetings and finds out it is made up of a bunch of drunks just like them, only sober. The second objection takes a bit longer to resolve.

There is a reason that A.A. has a difficult time convincing alcoholics and the public it isn’t a religious program. The reason is that the program is based on Christian principles. Alcoholics Anonymous was patterned after a similar organization in England called The Oxford Program. I don’t know if that program still exists but it was alive and well in 1935 when the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous were themselves struggling with alcoholism. In their search for something that would help them and other alcoholics stay sober, they found only one program that had any lasting success.  It was the Oxford program. However, the Oxford program had two big drawbacks, it was located in England and it was unequivocally a Christian program.

The founders of A.A., Christians themselves, were looking for a program that would be beneficial to all alcoholics, not just those who identified as Christians. They knew, first hand, that newly sober, and not yet sober alcoholics, were living with tremendous shame, and, often, didn’t feel worthy of having much, if anything, to do with God.  Similar to those who want to turn their lives over to Jesus but can’t believe God would want anything to do with them. So, ultimately, they took the principals of the Oxford program and secularized them giving birth Alcoholics Anonymous. However, they did not take all mention of God out of the program.

Be that as it may, Alcoholics Anonymous really isn’t a religious program, more pointedly it isn’t a Christian program. While there is mention of God and even some suggested dependence on God in the 12 Steps, God is not the focus of the program as it would be if it was a religious program. And you will never hear Jesus mentioned. However, you might be surprised how many people don’t understand that worshiping Jesus as the son of God is what makes Christianity Christian. Therefore, if Jesus isn’t a part of a program it cannot be considered a Christian program.

A.A. presents itself as a program of attraction rather than promotion. The only thing one needs to qualify as a member is the desire to stop drinking. They keep no records of members and use only first names in meetings. All of this serves to keep the members anonymous and ease the fear of the stigma attached to being an alcoholic. Most Alcoholics come to A.A. not because they want to, but because they have run out of other options. Often, they have been ordered by the court to a certain number of meetings in lieu of punishment.

But even those who have not been ordered to attend are there because they have run out of options. Somewhere along the way, maybe alone in a seedy motel room, or waking up alone in some filthy ally, or often in a jail cell, they had a moment of clarity in which they felt the full force of their shame and self-hatred; the beginning of the understanding that their time was running out, they were at the end of their self-will, and no longer could they believe they could stop drinking no matter how badly they wanted to. Very similar to how many sinners come to Jesus when they have nowhere else to turn.

That’s why most alcoholics come. the reason they stay is the unconditional love and acceptance they experience in the rooms of A.A. Love and acceptance is one thing alcoholics believe they no longer deserve and don’t expect to experience ever again. Just like sinners believe they don’t deserve the love and acceptance of God. This, then, is the draw of the program. There is no need for promotion or advertising; no need for recruiting, or putting signs on bus benches. With the exception of the court, word of mouth is the only way alcoholics find A.A. Unlike God who will chase us down forever if necessary, A.A. never pressure alcoholics to stay. If a member is determined to leave they are encouraged to go on out there and drink until they are done. The experienced member knows they will be back if they don’t die first.

They know they will return because the real attraction of Alcoholics Anonymous is that the newly sober alcoholic sees people who had been just like him or her with new and respectable lives; happy and meaningful lives. Just as new Christians, the newly sober   A. A. member will look at those further along the path and decide that they want what they see. Alcoholics Anonymous, like the body of Christ, makes them believe, probably for the first time in a long time, that perhaps they too can have it. Attraction has worked for the 12 Step program for 80 years, and for Christianity for over 2000.

Time and time again, I saw hopeless men and women who had lost everything that defined them as human, come back to life through the love and acceptance of Alcoholics Anonymous. Just as, later in my life, I would see many, many hopeless men and women come back to life through the love and acceptance of Jesus and the family of Christ. Those transformations were the result of people walking two different paths, similar in some ways, and in other ways very different. But ultimately they were headed to the same destination, a life worth living.

Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not suggesting that Alcoholics Anonymous can take the place of the church or of God. But I’ve seen the two work together, be it one after another or concurrently, to create miracles. When the A.A. members I worked with found their way to, or back to, Christ, they became new creatures more quickly and more completely than did those who felt the need to keep their A.A program secular. But either way, together or separately, they create miracles because real love is transformative. A.A. is successful because it’s built upon the powerful Christian doctrines of inclusion and unconditional love and acceptance. When the love of Christ is added to that mix, it is very, very powerful.

Jesus has always known that love is transformative. That’s why He told His disciples that the most important commandments in the law is to love God with all our hearts, soul and minds and love our neighbors as ourselves.  Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’                Matthew 22:37-39. Because He knew then, as He knows now, that whether you are giving it, or receiving it, real love is always transformative.

 

Points to Ponder Pray and Perhaps Write About.

• How do you feel about doing good works?
• Do you feel differently about doing good works now than you felt before you were born again?
• If you do feel differently, did the change happen right away or did it happen more slowly over time?
• Have you or anyone you know had their life transformed by love?
• Who?
• When?
• How?
• What are your thoughts about A.A. and Christianity working together to help alcoholics stay sober?

 

Let’s Pray
Father, we are grateful for your love that is transformative regardless of where it is given or received.  We know that you have created all that is good and helpful in our world. Lord, we pray that those who have found A. A. and are using it successfully to stay sober and restore their dignity will also find Jesus whose love is the only thing that can transform their sin and make them a child of God. Because Lord, we know that even if   A. A. is sufficient for their sobriety, only you can offer them the rebirth they need for eternal life. So, Lord, we pray that we can all stay open to sharing our love and acceptance with all of those in need of Christ our savior. This we pray in the holy name of Jesus. Amen.