#bold love

oh, my love

you are what i run to

oh, my love

Will you? 👁

📖: letter to the bold

What is the CRUELEST way to treat another person? Let them continue to get away with their shit. That is not compassionate; that is not beneficial to anyone. Love CONFRONTS because love CARES.

A fool will resent correction. A heart with good soil will appreciate you for it. But the other person's reponse is not something you can control; your part is to speak the truth in real love. Not sugary beating around the bush.Lots of people are stuck in patterns that are failed strategies - setting themselves up for continued pain, ongoing frustration, extending their emptiness.

If you want to hate them, then VALIDATE their sinful state and lie to yoursefl that you're being "compassionate" and "understanding" and "non-judgemental." And you congratulate yourself on your violation of love? The reality is that you are heartless and opting for the hellish path of least resistance. Shame on you.

As I've written about multiple times, love is inherently disruptive. That is only because love is encountering that which opposes love, and that crusty and fillthy shell (lies, guilt, shame, pride, woundedness, vain imagination, selfish ambition, etc.) must be cracked OPEN so love can GET INSIDE the beloved's heart. The cracking open involved a process (short or long process) of EXPOSURE - including everything a heart fears is condemning towards it, and thus wants to deny, minimize or run from in its distortions. Love is GOOD and that disrupts evil (in every form). Love is REAL and that disrupts falseness (in every form). We live in a world system and also a local culture that embraces both evil and falseness. Thus, to LOVE is the most rebellious, scandalous and disruptive thing a person can possibly do. Love gets to the heart of the matter, in a world of posing and evasion. Pride is always a PROTECTIVE compensation for pain - pain such as a deep sense of inadequacy. Love deals with core issues, wounds, guilt, shame, etc. and that DISRUPTS ALL PRIDE that is keeping a person stuck (in false self-sufficiency) and thus never healing, never progressing, never coming into the Wholeness and Redemption that Jesus declared He came to provide -- most notably when, in his hometown synagogue of Nazareth, He read his Torah portion and declared that He is the Messiah and fulfillment OF that: Luke 4:16-21

Then Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. As was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath. And when He stood up to read, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him (the daily Torah reading for that day). Unrolling it, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then He rolled up the scroll, returned it to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on Him, and He began by saying, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” 

Jesus declared Himself to be the specific embodiment of every blessings God was trying to get into mankind! Jesus is the Love of God in the Flesh, yet without any sin that might distort divine love.

The surest way to be rejected by someone is to love them - meaning love them with God’s actual love. And yet, to fail to love them is actually the rejection of that person. Here we see on record that IMMEDIATELY AFTER declaring Himself as the ANSWER to all His Jewish brother's needs, to healing, fulfillment, deep freedom, true victory in life, etc. (we just read it), what happens?

A few verses later (and please ready the entire chapter) it says: (verses 28, 29)

On hearing this, all the people in the synagogue were enraged. They got up, drove Him out of the town, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw Him over the cliff. But Jesus passed through the crowd and went on His way.

Want to get kicked out of most churches? Show them the ACTUAL love of God. Speak pure truth to them in the love for God trying to break through to their hardened hearts. Want to end a relationship? Create uncomfortable distance through authentic caring for their highest and best? Then love them deeply and authentically, without pretense, shamelessly. You see, your REALNESS in this will call them to be real, and the loveless soul, the wounded soul, the inauthentic shell of pretense, will often double down on fear, rejecting love and rejecting you as the messenger of that love. Yet, the love Jesus described is PROACTIVE, even in the face of rejection and hate - for it GOES AFTER the lost, for the sake of possible healing and restoration (Matthew 18:12-14 and Luke 15)

Want to do the work of the Kingdom of God? Then love - being plugged into the Vine of Jesus, and the Living Water of the Spirit of God. Love is of God, and thus the most REACTIVE, most disruptive and most rejected thing in this fallen world. People talk cheap about love, but when REAL love shows up, they are disported - the go into flight or fight. They either run for the hills or try to attack. They fear exposure, fear truth, fear to face their wounds honestly. But these are the very things keeping them from the faith that would let God’s grace IN.