Half Way Marker

Yes, half way done with the race, it’s crazy. It’s gone by fast, but at the same time, feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen my backyard. I don’t necessarily have anything special for this post though, just a bit about what I’ve been thinking about recently… enjoy!

 

What is Love?

By far the biggest topic of prayer, thought, and deep conversation for me throughout Vietnam and now the first week of Cambodia is love. What is it actually, and how is it possible for God to command us to love others – especially our enemies? If you think about it, it’s really kinda a crazy command, and it implies by necessity that love is something more than a feeling.

There’s two areas I’ve been thinking about specifically in regards to this… first of all, believe it or not, when you’ve been living with and spending every moment of your life with the same group of guys for 5 months, sometimes it gets hard to be around them. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them my enemies (most of the time 😉 but it’s been a difficult yet promising journey of figuring out what it means to love people when you don’t necessarily feel warm fuzzy feelings toward them. And second of all, we all walk through those deserts in our relationship with the Lord. Those times when we don’t feel the motivation to get in the word or spend time in prayer, and if we do stick to the grind and do those things they feel worthless. In these times most of all, how can we “love God” as He commands us?

I’ve basically written an entire sermon on this at this point so I’ll spare you the lecture and just write a list of cool things I’ve either heard or written thinking about it:

 

A few thoughts on loving others:

• Philippians 2 talks about completing your joy in the Lord by considering others more significant than yourselves. Complete your joy by giving it up for someone else’s. Sounds backwards, but so does, “whoever gives up their life for my sake will find it.”
• You find true joy in your relationships when you learn mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice
• Love centers in the will. (I’m still thinking about this one, but at least it sounds cool)
• Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. – James 1:something

 

A few thoughts on loving God:

• We are the torch bearers. We don’t control the presence of the flame, but we’re there to carry it when it’s given to us
• We are temples of the Holy Spirit. Though we can’t control it, every now and then God grants us the grace of experiencing his presence.
• It is one thing for us to delight ourselves in the Lord and find joy in him – taking from his abundant blessings. This is the necessary first step of the Christian walk. But faith goes to another level when you seek to live a life worthy of Christ – one he will delight in – even when you feel you receive nothing in return.
• A quote I heard that’s an encouragement for me in the times I feel I’m running low on spiritual fuel: “Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for those moments when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor”
• If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. – 1 John 4:something

 

I could keep going for a while with more things along those lines, but hopefully you can see the idea throughout those points, and hopefully they’re an encouragement to you. Love is more than a feeling, though sometimes it will show itself through such. It doesn’t always feel good, and can often times be brutally painful… but the more fire it goes through, the more refined it becomes, the more beautiful and rewarding it is on the other side.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sun which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is et before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. – Hebrews 12:1-2

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself… and love them through and through

 

Maybe the most awkward transition ever…

I realized I didn’t talk hardly at all about Vietnam in this one, and that’s totally ok I realize (it’s my blog after all), but I also realized I never talked about the things we did for fun, so I’ll throw one last short list here at the bottom:

• Sam, Clay, me, and Nick spent some good time out on the waves tearin up some nar 🤙 (or getting absolutely wrecked…) By the time we left I think I was 20% surfer dude
• We biked roughly 50 miles in one day, down and back to this pretty touristy city south of Đà Nẵng. My bohoncus did not thank me after that
• It wouldn’t have been very exciting if we just watched the ball drop at noon on New Year’s Day, so we decided to do our own ball drop… in the form of a flaming watermelon off the roof of our hotel. Good times.

 

There’s the highlights.

Now to renew your mind, go read the first half of this blog over again.

 

In Christ,

Jackson

---

 

WhatsApp: 678-448-7943