We serve a BIG God. I typed that sentence while having the privilege of sitting looking out over a vast, roaring ocean. While waiting for God to move this blog post in a certain direction that He desires it to go, that was the only thing I could think about. I look out and see people sitting along the coast line, literally dwarfed by the trillions of gallons of water that serves as their background. We serve and more importantly are loved by a God who put the moon at just the right distance that gives us beautiful waves in the ocean, that make the ocean look like a living, breathing entity. Full of thousands of different species of fish that he all knows by name. It’s easy to sit here and dwell on the intricacies of truly how tiny we are in the grand scheme of all of life on this earth. That makes the fact that God is constantly, deeply knowing/loving me, us, and every other being on this planet all the more beautiful and amazing. Almost every other religion in the world features a deity that is distant, unreachable, and too grand to be amongst men. Thus, God humbling himself to give us Jesus, or Emmanuel meaning “God with us,” is what makes Him so amazing. We have a God who is relational. The Maker of Heaven and Earth wants to know us, are you freaking kidding me? What a love. The greatest love we will ever know, having the Holy Spirit, his presence, inside of us. Here’s the hard part, God calls each of us to replicate His love for us to everyone (John 13:34-35). I don’t know why, but for me it’s difficult to look past people’s fallacies and love wholeheartedly and unconditionally. It’s a daily struggle to look on people as Christ views them, both holy and unblemished (if saved), or someone in desperate need of a savior and experiencing the love of God (if not saved). Something that has greatly convicted me during my time in Honduras is that I am a direct reflection of God’s love to those who don’t know Him. In America it’s very easy to fade into the background, just live your life, do what you want to do and overall not many people really care. So going to Honduras and immediately realizing that wherever you go people stare at you, constantly watching, because that fallback of fading into the background is no longer there. Thus, as to be expected given my struggles, I was exposed under the spotlight. Then came the long process of coming to realize that I was being extremely selfish in not displaying the God I know, who loves me, to those around me. It was much easier for me to talk about His love, His greatness, His forgiveness, than to show it. Come to find out that love isn’t a noun, a thing to be talked about or discussed; rather it’s a verb, an ACTION word. It requires hard work, dedication, discipline, and patience on a daily basis. Its meeting people where they are at, showing them love the way that they need to see it, and using the love that they need to lift them up closer to Christ. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that any spiritual gifts given to us from God are meaningless without using it with/through/in love. In the NASB version says that without love we become like “a noisy gong or clanging symbol.” Have you ever heard someone just randomly bang away at a symbol not knowing what they were doing? If not let me tell you, it’s quite annoying. My family likes to tell a story about me that when I was 2 I went to my uncles wedding rehearsal dinner. We were all seated at this big table, everyone in the family just chatting. While I was seated in my high chair a saw a shiny metal object called a spoon. My infant mind thought it would be fun to take the spoon and begin to create my own “7th Symphony” with the noises that it could produce. My dad told me that I would bang away on the table with that spoon creating the most unpleasant noise; whenever they took it away I always managed to find another one laying around somewhere and commence the banging all over again. One of my uncles apparently couldn’t take it anymore and completely snapped at little 2 year old precious me. I imagine that us using our gifts without love metaphorically sounds like 2 year old me banging on the table with a spoon to those we are trying to use or gifts with or for. Every single thing we will ever do in this world hinges on how we love others in Christ’s name. In many ways love is the gospel in action. People can’t help but see love in other people and wonder where it is coming from. If we are accurately displaying love selflessly it can only point to Jesus, since His was the most selfless love of all. Isn’t that whole point of us being alive? - By Daniel Fox
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