For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. (Philemon 1:7 ESV)
Allow me to translate that for you: “the way you love people by encouraging them, makes me so elated!” How many of us love people in such a way that people who are only witnessing the love feel warm and bubbly on the inside? Better yet, how many of us love the people around us in a way that is refreshing, that is– not burdensome ad weary? So, if I’m correct, not many of us love people in a way that is not burdensome or at all weary. Most of you will email me saying that’s what being in love or having love really means and the reason I don’t get that is because I feel like other people’s love is burdensome and weary. If you agree to that, I’m going to say that you are the most burdensome types of loving people and that most people you “love” actually are so burdened by your need to find out if you burdened them or not that they’ll appease your need just so they can stop being weary of hurting your loving feelings. This brings me to say, we all need to stop loving in a burdensome and weary way. Likewise, we all need to help others love in a refreshing way. To do this we have to seek out models of refreshingly loving friends and be comforted and enjoy witnessing how they love and find a similarly refreshing approach in our own “loving.”
You hippies who think I am advocating a “let’s pretend to be somebody else so that other people will find me refreshing” need to stop making your faces ugly on your screens reading this. What I want you to do is learn how people can be refreshed and contrast that with how you are refreshed by others and use the hybrid to formulate a method to refresh others in your love. Paul was in prison writing about how he hears of the way Philemon was loving the other Christians. How all the storms of these people’s lives were being lifted and the burdens of said life storms were being quenched by Philemon’s refreshingly encouraging love to them. It made Paul joyful and brought him comfort through his own prison sentence. That is powerful love. That is the effect of refreshing love that comes from the heart of God. This is exactly the opposite of a selfish love which burdens others to reciprocate and acknowledge. The love Philemon had for people was godly and an example of what faith in Jesus leads people to do– giving to others without expecting or wanting a return. We return to the premise of today’s quiet time: are we faithfully becoming friends that are infectiously refreshing with our love toward others; or are we unfaithfully burdening our friends with so-called love?
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