Being Known for love... What happens when we look towards culture more than gospel truth

Philippians 1:12-18

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear. Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice.

I've seen the Facebook posts.

I've heard the conversations.

I've been silent.

I'm breaking that silence.

I have a very good friend who has truly shaped and formed a good deal of my understanding of walking out the essence of faith. What has caught me off guard more times than not is how much my friend truly knows and understands.  What am I saying?  My friend is really ok with process.  Where I want answers and solutions and what them yesterday.. He really is ok with the process of time and what comes in time and what is revealed in time.  It has taught me much.  It has prevented many a tower in my life and it has granted me life in places where on my own I would have unknowingly chosen death.

My friend loves the word of God and it is contagious.  His desire to lay what he teaches upon scriptural truth is powerful.

In this season of my life I hold culture and Christ in my hands and in my heart... I am holding my hands open toward the Father asking and seeking what for me it looks like.. Where does my heart align?  What is the essential truth of the Gospel?  What plow am I to stand behind?

So much discussion these days on important matters.  I'm not even going to call anything insignificant.  The reason there is great significance to conversations on lifestyle and culture are simple to me.  It isn't a cause or a rallying point.  There are people connected.  Each one... each one has great worth.

There is so much I could think about upon all these issues and so much that even sounds and reads good..

I am reminded of a time when I was all worked up about something in regards to how a worship leader was horribly treating a dance team, that I loved, during a Summer family camp.  My friend happened to be there.  One of the leaders of the dance team and I sought him out for his wisdom and council.  That moment which is over 13 years ago lives in my heart.

He brought everything down to the essence of what matters.  I was in such a tizzy.  But he was calm.  I was all concerned.  He was too.

In moments like those and in that moment I learned more from what my friend didn't say and do than necessarily from what he had.

But I learned that love meant seeing both the worship leader and the dance team.  Love meant looking at the situation from a whole other perspective. A kingdom one... a one that isn't the knee jerk reaction response for most of us.

I end up being more like the Pharisees at times wanting a simple right/wrong answer.  And the truest answer  comes in parabolic form and points the truest question at my own heart rather at the situation or person I would rather it would.

Earthly culture can't and won't ever teach us that...   Only Kingdom perspective will....

Am I more at home in a pew with a hymnal?
Am I more at home dancing and shouting and waving a flag?
Am I more at home on the streets on inner Philadelphia?
Am I more at home on the streets of suburbia?
Is the house wife standing in a 1.7 million dollar home less important to the heart beat of God than the woman prostituting herself on the street corner so that she can feed her toddler later that night? Do you know the heart of either women?  Where you there when God fashioned and formed them in their mother's wombs? Are you asking the right questions?  Are you holding your stones? Are you so quick to speak?
Are the people sitting in the more favorable seats more favorable?
Can we say to the hand we don't need you?
Can the rich young ruler get to Heaven?
Can the Pharisee? Can the publican?
Am I more at home with the Charismatics?
Am I more at home with the Lutherans?
Am I more at home with the Catholics?
Am I more at home with the elderly?
Am I more at home with the prisoner?
Am I more at home with the children?
Am I more at home with the Republicans?
Am I more at home with the Libertarians?
Am I more at home overseas?
Am I more at home upon the shores of my own country?
Am I more at home ministering to the new age?
Am I more at home ministering to the Madison Ave crowd? Do they deserve to be reached?  DO they need ministry?


If I am not called to poverty in the inner cities but called to a suburban neighbor? Are the people I am called to less?  If I am not called to the garbage dumps of India full of children but to the elementary school down the street are those children less?

I am more at home with the Great I Am... It is His ways that I long to exemplify. It is His heart beat that I want to walk out. Whether on city streets or where there are no streets... may every step I take bring me closer to Him and closer to love.  LOVE is not culturally driven or defined.  LOVE is not up for grabs.  Love is set by a standard that we have been given.

If I give away everything but have not love for my wealthy brother I have truly given anything away?

1 Corinthians 13

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, butrejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there isknowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The ONE issue that grieves my heart the most is 

whether rich or poor we are a body 

divided. I look forward to the days and times 

when the blessing of 

unity flows upon us... Rich or poor, urban or 

suburban... philiosophy of Furtick or Claiborne... at

 some point it would be good to be known for love