The Messy Painful Process (Love Week)

All week we have been wookin’ po nub on the blog because at Revolution Church we only do two things: We LOVE God and we LOVE people.

We talked about how we need to major in love and minor in truth.

We looked at masterpieces.

And we covered a platform.

Today the messy painful process.

If you want to reach those people you will have to have some patience and realize that it is always a painful process.

I think there are two angles to this idea. Our pain and their pain.

1 – OUR PAIN

Recently, I added a bunch of leg lifts and abdominal exercises to my workouts. I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted so I ramped things up in those areas. And those first few weeks it was PAINFUL. I was so sore. But I pushed through. And now I’m seeing HUGE results, especially in my mile split times in my marathon training.

The point is this: you will go through pain in life…it is a given. The pain and struggle are good because God can use our brokenness so that we become more compassionate to the broken. In the end, when we get to heaven, we will realize how much every ounce of pain was worth it!

I heard a pastor say one time “who can save a child from a burning house without the risk of getting burned.” Sometimes, we will get burned and it will be painful, but we’ve got to go through that process to love people.

2 – THEIR PAIN

I’ve been in ministry long enough now that I know we all develop these preferences for certain types of people we want to stay away from. We just prefer to keep them at a safe distance. Don’t lie, you do this too.

Its easy to fall into this pattern of ignoring the messy painful stuff in peoples’ lives and instead go for the neat, clean people. Its easy to gain a preference for “clean people” and “clean situations” and run from the messy stuff. Its easy to play it safe! But “clean” is actually not safe…”clean” is dangerous because clean kills our love for people and it makes us ineffective.

Jesus always ran head on into the messy and painful situations. He never played it safe.

After all if Jesus would have walked away from the pain and mess He had to face instead of hitting it head on at the cross, we would all perish.

Will you commit to love people even in your pain?

Will you commit to love people even in their pain?

Love does.