Empty Love. The Conflict.

I recently had the topic of love and the conflict of it brought up within the span of a few days.

Prior to Valentines Day

I had spent a week preparing a talk and presented it at youth group on 1 John 4:7-21. The main point is that God is love. The passage backs up this big idea is that; 1) love is his nature, 2) he demonstrates his love through his Son Jesus, 3) and we love because he first loved us. The absense/rejection of God means that it is impossible to love (complete love).

The Eve of Valentines Day (night after youth group)

An event occured when an unloving act/words came from me towards my mum. And it was only 2-3 sentences I said to her about an email she brought up! It made me think, was I teaching the young people at youth group empty words as I urged them to sort out their issues with their brothers and sisters in Christ so that they can love one another and also be more effective for Christ because conflict is resolved?

Valentines Day

I prayfully considered that I needed to apologise for my words towards my mum and did it that evening as I helped her prepare for Chinese New Year Dinner (combined with sis and my birthday dinner). This may seem insignificant but for me to verbally apologise is rare within our immediate family. Our family is not very verbal, and when it comes to resolving issues, we just know it in the back of our heads and hearts that whatever happened it happened and we can go on with life. However I thought, true unity communicates and solves conflict in all forms. This stemmed from another talk I had prepared for youth group the week before that we are united because our Identity is in Christ Jesus.

The resolution was great because I think it did lead us to become more effective for Christ as we continued our conversation about ministry. Communication lines were opening!

Love is also empty if we do 'good' things, humanitarian work, service for others without God, or we do it out of obligation as the world watches and judges what a Christian should be like. I read that recently from a random blog when I clicked "next blog" for kicks.

The experience I had was brought up in a conversation with a friend of mine (Angela). Later she brought up an incident that had happened to her that very weekend of Valentines. It was similar to mine but different.

It was great to see that we both experienced LOVE (imagine me saying it in a rough voice) than the "love" (this time the sound of an angelic voice) many couples world wide may have spent their weekends. Disclaimer: not saying the love of couples were not genuine, I believe those under God, were experiencing and acting out in true love. Love is tough and I think those experiences are the most beneficial for real growth in relationships. We can surely concur with the love of God, demonstrated at the cross.

Thank God for his Holy Spirit who works so powerfully in us to love one another!

Broken Cigarette and a Sniper

Woke up from a dream today. I don't normally dream much nowadays. I was being chased. The dream was located in the present time because the sniper was shooting from a very long distance away and the gun technology was recent.

In the dream I was located in a place mixed between NTE 2010 AFES accommodation, and dorms that had similar windows to the Serpentine Baptist Campsite. However once you escape out of the accommodation area its a bit jungly/rural/not so built up.

Last night I was hanging out with school friends and some brought up dreams. Some of them in the room were Buddhists, an "atheist" interested to look into Buddhism, a couple of Agnostics and one other Christian. Someone mentioned that people only make dreams into something because they make something out of it. Where as if you don't make anything out of it, it means nothing.

Either way all I appreciated is that where I live now as a Christian, it's so easy to carry the message of the gospel because our persecution is nothing compared to those who are chased all the time, where their lives are literally at danger to the point of physical death. Paul the apostle if you read in Acts 9 during his early years of ministry was lowered out of a hole in the wall in Damascus because people were plotting to kill him. There were a lot more troubles than that, and close to the end of the written account about him in Acts, he was placed in jail all because of a misunderstanding!

However I don't think my dream had primarily to do with being persecuted for my faith because all I recall about being put in that situation was I was holding a cigarette that was falling apart and we were locating a room related to these goods. Only read into it in the first place because of the location of the dream. I guess you can't read too much into dreams and also I don't really read into it. All I know is that the feeling of being chased by people with experience in weapons is scary. Thanks to God he's got greater control since we now no longer fear death.

Not all advice is advice..

Have you read this before? Are you finding that the advice Candice is giving is a bit one sided and suited for particular type of girls? I read this a while back but something triggered me to ask another opinion...

I find it hard to nod to 100% to what she's advising. There are agreeable stuff, then she taints that good stuff with stuff like part of an answer to Q3, "It's his job to lead and if you jump the gun, assuming this role, you'll be establishing an unsettling pattern."

As if a girl can never tell a guy she likes him and then leave the ball in his court....besides no one is leading anyone considering there is nothing to lead when there is no BGR (boy girl relationship) yet. Also from a biblical perspective no where does it say in the bible, a woman cannot ask a man out. Sure most girls (myself included) would prefer that the guy initiates it...however imagine a couple dating for 6 years and the girl is thinking..what's going on, is she to wait for him (possible another few years...) to 'take the lead' and ask her hand in marriage or does she make it clear (jump the gun) and if he doesn't act then...goodbye, since they are wasting each other's time. Oops did she just lead by leaving him?

There's some good articles on that website, but seriously that QnA page doesn't serve the site justice.

Thoughts?