Episode 8 - The Slower You Go, The Faster You’ll Get There

Analogy with cross-country…It is important to run the right course. Is there a “course” we are meant to run?

An important clue is here: 1 John 4:12. God’s love is incompletely expressed only from the perspective of the visible world. The world we live in needs love “with skin on.” It is our job to be the visible expression of God’s love. This is the race/course we are meant to run.

This has been our “job description” from the beginning. It’s what it means to “bear God’s image.” We were delegated to be His representatives in the visible cosmos. Adam failed and Israel failed, but Jesus showed us how. God wants us to be like Jesus. We are still destined to be God with skin on! This life is training camp for our future role.

I seriously doubt that God cares as much as we do about what college we attend, who we marry, what we do for a living or where we live. But what God really does care about is what kind of student we are, what kind of husband or wife we are, what kind of employee we are and regardless of where we live are we good neighbors? Are we fulfilling the primary responsibility of our job description - to love one another?

Ultimately…spiritual maturity is about looking like Jesus. He bore God’s image, so should we. To the extent we do…we have grown. To the extent we don’t…we haven’t. And the litmus test of whether or not we are bearing the image is whether or not we are loving one another. We make the invisible God visible only when we are loving one another. Only then do we become God with skin on!

How do we get better?

First, Let’s Pretend

“When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.” Lewis

When we act as if we love other people something in our hearts begins to change. We get a little closer to loving them in reality…being like God…with skin on.

Second, Let’s slow down.

We are faced with a paradox: In the race that God has given us to run, our progress will be inversely proportional to our speed. The slower we go the faster we will get there. Conversely, the faster we go the slower we will get there.

Love takes time and time is the one thing that hurried people don’t have. Ortberg “God walks slowly because he is love…Love has its speed…There is a reason people talk about walking with God, not ‘running.’” Comer/Koyama

We’re not going to get our bucket list finished but we can do what is most important…The greatest thing in the world.

When John lived in Ephesus to extreme old age, he could only with difficulty be carried to the church in the arms of his disciples. He was unable to give utterance to many words. He used to say no more at their meetings than this: ‘Little children, love one another.’ At length the disciples and fathers who were there, wearied with always hearing the same words, said: ‘Master, why do you always say this?’ His reply, ‘It is the Lord’s command, and if this alone is done, it is enough.

Notes:
John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity