Choose Love (34 page)

Authors: Stormie Omartian

BOOK: Choose Love

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I knew this would take hours and it would be exhausting—and I am not a young person. But neither is she. And it was a longer drive for me than I wanted to make alone at night at that time in my life. My list of reasons for not doing it was long.

Before the encounter I had with God in the love chapter of the Bible and He convicted me about asking Him how He wanted me to show His love to others, I would not have even asked Him about this. My mind would have already been made up. But on this day I asked the Lord what I should do—because the commitments I had made to other people had to be considered as well—and the Holy Spirit impressed
clearly
upon my heart that the loving thing would be to help her. I asked God to give me the energy, stamina, and physical ability to do what I needed to do. When I headed out in my car, I felt God with me all the way. When I got to her house, my friend was overwhelmed by all that needed to be done, but because I was being assisted by the Holy Spirit, I had great clarity on how this project could be done quickly and efficiently. And God gave me strength and a clear mind that surprised me—a rare thing for me at that time of night.

Four hours later we finished what needed to be done. The most
amazing thing was that on my drive home I had more strength and energy than when I started. That was a miracle from God! I had chosen to show love according to His leading, and I felt His presence in greater measure than I had ever felt it before.

Olympic runner Eric Liddell would not run in the Olympics on a Sunday because he was a strong Christian, and he obeyed God by calling the Lord’s day holy—the Sabbath, a day of rest dedicated to God. In
Chariots of Fire,
a film about his life, he said of God, “When I run I feel His pleasure.” He felt God’s pleasure whenever he ran because he was doing God’s will, and his love for God was his priority.

I felt that same thing when I chose to show God’s love over my own convenience and help a lady move. I chose to ignore the cries of my flesh saying, “I can’t do this! I am too old, too tired, too pressed for time.” But I came out the better for it. I found strength from the Lord—strength I absolutely did not have without His enablement. And I gained a friend for life.

God enables us to do things we could never do without Him when we choose to do them in love—the love He puts in our heart for others
.

Don’t Assume You Know God’s Will in Every Situation

Showing love to others doesn’t mean we get to play God and try to meet every person’s needs. That’s dangerous and definitely not God’s will. My husband and I learned our lesson well about that when we were trying to help someone without the leading of the Holy Spirit. We thought,
It’s always good to help someone in need, right?
We cannot always make a judgment as to what a person’s actual need is without knowing the facts. And only God knows the whole story.

One time we helped out someone by giving him money to pay his mortgage that month because it was way overdue and he did not have the money. It turned out that we should have given the money to his wife because he used it to buy drugs. We didn’t even
know he was using drugs. But she did, and she would have told us if we had asked. But we didn’t seek God about it. We didn’t pray first. We didn’t ask questions. We
assumed
God would want us to do this. But we were
dead wrong
.

When his wife later told us what happened, we were shocked and grieved. That man later learned a hard lesson—a fall that needed to happen in order to bring him to his senses and get help—a fall we delayed for at least a month because we
enabled
him to keep his destructive lifestyle going.

We were
playing God
instead of
seeking God
.

Sometimes the most loving thing is the hardest to do. That’s because what may seem to you is the best thing may actually
not
be the best for that person at that time. The money we gave would have been better used to get that man some help. We absolutely must be led by the Holy Spirit in every situation.

God
decides
who. He
decides
when. He
decides
how.
We don’t. That’s why we need to ask Him for His leading. We are not supposed to try and be someone’s savior and rush in to meet their every need so that they never have to seek God for anything. When we do that, we rob them of knowing God as their Provider, Protector, and Deliverer.

We must always remain God’s instrument and remember that we work for His family business. We don’t run things. We don’t go off on our own trying to rescue and fix everyone. We cannot do that anyway. We don’t have supernatural power and unlimited resources without the Lord. And He only lets us partake of those according to
His will
and not our own.

In a nutshell, God loves us. But we
choose to open up to His love
in order to fully
receive
it. Those who do not acknowledge God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—all personifications of His love for us—cannot receive it. But once we do receive God’s love and walk with Him,
we become overwhelmed with our love for Him.
In our expressions of love for Him, He fills us with more of His divine nature.
The more we become partakers of His divine nature
, the more we sow seeds of His love into others,
according to His leading
. The rewards are great when we love others because then our path will be “like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 4:18).

Our love for others is not manifested in order to attract people to ourselves; it is to attract them to God. And that is where this ultimately should lead. You love people enough to care about where they spend eternity. You love them enough to not want them to spend eternity forever separated from God.

God warns us in His Word that the day of reckoning will come. And we see that all signs indicate the world is quickly headed in that direction now. The day and time have been extended to give people the opportunity to make the right choice as to what side they are on. We will either choose God or His enemy during our lifetime. And by not making any choice at all, we have chosen the enemy.

Going to heaven to dwell in eternity with the one true God is only secured by people who make the choice to receive the only One who has paid the price for us in order to secure our place in heaven and have our name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. We must love others enough to help them to make the right decision.

Paul said, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown” (1 Corinthians 9:24-25).

Run it to win it.

Showing love to another person means we are not to withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in our power to give it
(Proverbs 3:27). “Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come back, and tomorrow I will give it,’ when you have it with you” (Proverbs 3:28). It means we are to show love in every situation because
we
have it
. When the Lord opens up an opportunity to tell someone the reason for the hope within you, do it in love. Take the time to look that person in the eye and smile. Let them know you see them—and that they are not invisible to you, they are valuable. And you will reap blessings on earth and rewards in heaven that will last for eternity.

Prayer of Love

L
ORD
, I pursue love just as I pursue You. Fill my heart so full of Your love that it overflows to others. Enable me to show Your love in every situation. I depend on You for guidance with that. Lead me by Your Holy Spirit to make decisions regarding what is always pleasing to You. I don’t want to interfere with what You are doing in another’s life. I don’t want to move in the flesh, but instead be led by Your Spirit in all I do and say.

Teach me to not only love others with my words but also with my actions. When someone I know has experienced loss, help me to not only pray for them but do something to help them recover. I know there is a time for grief and we should not interfere with that, but when grief becomes prolonged to the point of physical and emotional paralysis, I pray You would enable me to help that person walk through it and get to the other side.

Teach me to love others with the love in my heart that comes from You. I know that “the mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom” and “the lips of the righteous know what is acceptable” (Proverbs 10:31-32). Help me to know words that are wise and acceptable all the time. I know that “in the multitude of words sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise,” so make my words to be valuable and edifying to others and never meaningless (Proverbs 10:19-20). I know that can only happen by Your Spirit of love working in and through me.

In Jesus’ name I pray.

Words of Love

May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.

2 T
HESSALONIANS
2:16-17

The ways of man are before the eyes of the L
ORD
, and He ponders all his paths.

P
ROVERBS
5:21

God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

2 T
IMOTHY
1:7

My love be with you all in Christ Jesus.

1 C
ORINTHIANS
16:24

Now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 C
ORINTHIANS
13:13