“Invest and invite.”
As the church, it’s how we participate in what God is doing in our world. I love Jesus, so that’s what I, this somewhat introverted, relationally-cautious person, am called to do. With help. Supernatural help.
It has been quite a ride. I may not have left my caution to the wind, but I am definetely dangling it out the window. My introversion means I make frequent stops at rest areas, but I eventually merge back into traffic. I want to be where Jesus is, and He’s where the people are, and as people we are all in motion, becoming either one thing or another. We are lousy with potential. Along the way, asking for it, I am becoming a people-nut. Like Jesus.
This is a miracle.
Having not arrived yet, there is also the potential to get waylaid. Bogged down. Off track. Over-invested.
This is a tension.
Recently, God put things together so that someone we’re getting to know came to our church. I won’t go into the whole morning, but it didn’t go well. It was pretty clear our new friend wasn’t going for the guest speaker, or his delivery. Truth, even as it was, I don’t think our friend heard the love. It was important he heard the love. Add to it that they came late, missed the music, and had to sit way in the back. Afterward there was a little chit-chat, they got the kids, and were gone.
I felt sick. Then I felt mad.
I felt I had valid points as to where God had not come through, and I got a good monologue going about it, to Him. I began to lose steam when it finally became obvious, from my own thoughts, what was really bugging me. It was like God was sitting back going, “Wait for it, wait for it, it’s coming to her…”
I was worried we had missed a good reputation-building opportunity in the neighborhood. Ummm… For the… Church. Okay. For us.
Ew.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, or are your ways My ways,” is what came to mind in my silence. His ways are high ways, they run on a supernatural plane, going places I simply cannot fathom. His ways are true, completely Other and Above. He has no temptation, not even the potential, to fall into graspy, invest-in-you-to-feel-(fill in the blank) about myself.
When it comes to me, there is always the question: who, exactly, am I hoping to lead others into a growing relationship with?
All the fire in my being all fired up is pride-fueled, not the “fervent love” for others the Bible calls me to.
I got home and looked up the “high ways” verse. In Isaiah 55, the context is about how God’s word “shall prosper in the thing for which (God) sends it,” and how He will lead His people out of spiritual exile into their homeland. The expected end of things will not be as I might imagine, but it will be, above all, “To the Lord, for a name of renown.”
So much for God needing me to worry about His reputation.
Once all the muck is cleared away by God’s word doing its job on me, a tension remains. The Greek word for “fervent”, used by Peter to describe how I’m called to care about people, can be translated, “an intense strain”. How do I love intensely without getting too intense? Are there limits to how much I care, even if what I care about really is that someone have a relationship with Jesus?
Maybe, if I have a limited view of love and God’s sovereignty. He is Higher, Supernatural, and He loves this friend, and all the others I invest in, beyond limit. He will have His way. The minute I lose sight of Him, I go my way, which is short-sighted, exhausting and void of any real love at all.
Maybe I need to spend less time imagining exactly how I expect God will carry out His ways, and just pray… For the person involved, for Him to channel His love through me,and for everything to be “to the Lord, for a name of renown.”
Maybe I need to let the emotions that are going to come with investing and inviting be something I lay out before God, asking Him to burn away the pride and the graspiness, leaving only a heart He can use.
Maybe, while out there, in motion, after Jesus, the tension— of keeping love one thing and not the other—will become part of the miracle. Could that be, after all, one of “His ways?”
In obedience to the truth I will purify my soul for a sincere love of my brothers and sisters, and love others fervently from the heart. 1 Peter 1:22
