The Four Letter Word (The Countdown: 4 Days)

One of the founding fathers of the Christian Union and subsequently the Church of God denomination is RG Spurling. While I was taking my Church of God history class, God brought me a book written by Spurling. The Lost Link begins with Spurling discussing what he believes to be the ultimate law, and that is a law of love. Love is the second root God placed on my heart.

This blog will probably be shorter than the others this week because love is such a vast topic. But when praying about the idea of love, God gave me three things to share. The first is Spurling's idea of a law of love. Spurling points out that the Bible expresses God's desire to write His law onto our hearts. Spurling then infers that the Christian law is not an outward law. Then he writes this "Thus the two tables of stone on which the ten commandments were written were a figure of God's writing the new law in our hearts and minds. Hear the blessed Redeemer saying, 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples' Here He makes love the great discerning law. Therefore we see that love is the law upon which the Church was based, written by the Holy Ghost."

Spurling goes on and calls out churches. "I now call upon all churches to know if you can show me the law of love as a discerning law, that is do they know and fellowship each other by the law of love? Do they do unto others as they would have them do unto them? Has every member equal rights and privileges to read and understand and practice God's word as they see it?" Spurling continues to state that we must make sure that the things we practice do not violate the teachings of the New Testament. Spurling rounds out the chapter with a fantastic model of the law of love in the form of a railroad metaphor. I highly recommend that you go and read this and allow God to speak to you through it.

Love should be our motivation in everything. Many of the issues in Church, jobs, family situations, and all other aspects of life would be avoided if we listened to what Jesus described as the 2 most important commandments. Many times in Jesus' preaching, he reflected questions back to the heart of the issue and made those around him evaluate how to live. But here, Jesus answers directly.

The second aspect of love that I want to share is that worship is love expressed. We know that faith and works go hand in hand. We must have both. It works the same way with love. We must not only feel it, we must also express it. Our love for God can be expressed in worship through many different ways. Even this blog could be seen as an expression of my love for God. The important thing to remember is that we must have a way to release our feelings of love for God. Without an expression of love, both the recipient and the lover forget about love. So I urge you to find how to express your love for God. Even evangelism falls into this category. One of our motivations to share what God has done is our love for Him.

The third and final aspect is prayer. Prayer is love utilized and spoken. Prayer can be joyful, difficult, dowsed in tears, or spoken with laughter; but we must remember that prayer is always motivated by love, even if this love if for ourselves (which is not always a bad thing). When love motivates our words, God looks at our heart and knows what words cannot express.

The law cannot exist without love.

We cannot worship without love.

We cannot pray without love.

Love is the central part of all of this and it is our duty to take time to understand what love is. But we must start with the 2 commandments that Jesus spoke and allow these commandments to be our motivation.