Romans 12:9a NASB

I just hate it sumtimes when God speaks to me so bluntly…a conviction in my heart and soul about a truth, all the while during a time of confusion, bitterness, unhappiness, trying-to-figure-it-out, lost, angry, mad…

The title of this post is supposed to get you to read the verse in the NASB, the most literal modern english translation there is.  I’d suggest reading the whole verse 12, but the point i’m trying to make, that God’s been making clear to me is this: hypocrisy.  We gotta get rid of it completely.  “Let love be without hypocrisy.”  Or as the ESV puts it more elegantly–”Let love be genuine.”  I don’t mean to judge anybody, except myself.  That such a big part of my worship in song is hypocrisy, that my life worship doesn’t even come close to it.  Seeing this in myself opened my eyes to those close and dear to me who also struggle in this lack of genuine, sincere, honest worship. 

And all this is really shaping my theology for this year’s Campus Challenge worship.  I’m just sick and tired of singing all this great amazing songs of worship, and yet our lives do not reflect what we sing.  I’m just disappointed at what effect it will be to plan all these great sets of songs of praise, if we do not express and confess to our God what we truly feel and live.  It’s just all about being real, u know!?  These songs, this soundtrack that plays…it’s useless futile and meaningless unless there’s a movie, a story, something going on in life that brings true substance and weight to what we say and sing to God, what we do with our hands and feet.

On the way back home, I was listening to an old sermon by Louie G, “Lovers of the King” from the Passion on the Hill 2002 series…and this passage just hit me hard:  1 John 4:7-21

God Is Love

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Self explanatory….but i’ve bolded/italicized/underlined some things that really woke me up.. just awakened me to the liars we have been at times, hypocrites of being a so-called Christian.

Sighs~ God is love. “Beloved”–as in, “IAMloved”. Thus God loved…He loved us first, and to be known as His, we are simply to love one another. Without this, or if we do this hypocritically, the world will not see His hand at work in our lives, our witnessing will be ineffective to say the least.

anywayz..need to study.