Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Love - 4

Probably the main focus of love is giving. The direction of love is away from one's self. A person focuses on someone else. What are that person's needs and wants? What resource or service can I give away?

This is the prime challenge of sin. Our egos scream very loudly. Our needs and wants loom large before us. It is very difficult to see around them. It is very difficult to hear any other message.

In the US, the success of business is often tied to seeing a need and developing a way to fill it. This is probably the most altruistic prescription for commercial success. All too often, someone has an idea, attaches it to a need or desire -- legitimate, moral or otherwise -- and promotes it as the vehicle for fulfilling that need or desire.

People have a need for significance. So, they will proclaim a message that a person's possessions build a person's significance. I am not condemning a person's need for significance. I am not condemning a person's cleverness in designing, developing and persuading people concerning the postive aspects of a product. I am trying to point out that the success of the American economy rests on the success of businesses getting people to become consumed in themselves, their small corner of the world, and how different products and services can make that niche bigger, better, brighter, more healthy, more satisfying and more fun. That is, if it doesn't make them smarter, prettier, richer or more popular.

As we have mentioned before, God has placed love first. And as I have said before, God has designed us and has communicated that design to us. Since, love is first, people will function better if the place love first in their considerations.

It is almost as if this emphasis of society is a weapon used by the enemy to divert us from our design, our destiny and the proper functioning of our hearts.

To flow with God's grace, to be restored to our original intent and design, to live as we are meant to live, we must see around and through these attempts to get us to focus solely on ourselves. We need to see others. But more, we need to see and live in ways the give to others. We need to give within the family of God. We needto give ooutside the family of God. We need to give in our communities and neighborhoods. We need to give halfway around the world.

It must start with moving our egos out of the spotlight, and becoming awake, alert and aware of the lives around us, and of those we connect with every day.

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