Category Archives: Living the Word

Brief Thoughts of Love

Bible Talk, Family Life, Living the Word, Married Life, , , , , , ,

My Young Friend,

Love has been tragically misrepresented and misunderstood. Love both requires of you and insists that you require of yourself; it is both a proper noun and a verb. It requires of itself what is best for another and gives it without reservation. Love demands sacrifice and sacrifice usually stings a bit.  Often it is genuinely painful, at times even debilitating.  Any one who has truly loved has felt both the joy and the bite of it. The idea that love is all pleasant and ever delightful is a gross adulteration.

I hear a great deal these days about fear of commitment, about lack of commitment, and inability to commit. I listen to tales of lack of intimacy and emotional distance in family relationships and in marriage. I am often told of loneliness, and the death of community. I believe these things are symptoms of a lack of love, and I do not believe it is commitment we are so afraid of, rather it is sacrifice that we fear.

Most of us have felt the confusion resulting from a person’s declaration of love for us followed by an expression of our sexuality, only to realize rejection at a later date. Some of us have felt the terrible vexation that comes when a parent who has claimed love for us has then neglected or abused us (or our other parent or sibling) and maybe even abandoned us or left the home. Each of us has been puzzled at one point or another by the expression of love and insult from the same mouth. Each of us has brandished both affection and grief with one tongue.

People are imperfect. We are incapable of either loving or hating perfectly. This is why we are taught to strive always to become perfect in love and to avoid hate altogether. We’re instructed to leave the hating to God. We are taught to learn of repentance and forgiveness and to become experts at both, and there is a Way.

Another method by which love has been horribly distorted is by the idea that love and sexuality can be one in the same. The two are never one. Human sexuality is and has always been one way in a million of expressing love. Obviously, it is often used in a perverse manner to express things that do not resemble love in the slightest.

For many reasons, one being to set the relationship above and apart from all others, and some that are mysterious and still known only to God Himself, we are told that His system is designed to function optimally for us (for all of us individually and as a corporate whole) when each of us limit the expression of our sexuality to one relationship with one person of the opposite sex (gender) for the entirity of our lives. Yet, we are encouraged by God to express our LOVE for everyone all the time!

My third and final offering concerning the misrepresentation of love is this: God is love, but love is not God.  According to His Word, God is many things and love is ever a part of Him; His perfect Love motivating him continually.  Love is only itself.  Love is one of the many attributes of God and is nonetheless the epitome of holiness and the greatest thing.  Love is perfect. God Himself is love, but love is not God. Therefore, we in our love are not God.  God is bigger.

Lastly, in love I offer this truth from God’s Word.   It is an expression of my love for you. May it allow you some clarity and grant you a bit of peace on earth.

An Old Friend

(Please see 1 John 3:16, John 13,  1 Corinthians 13: 1-13)

Copyright 2016, L.L. Shelton

Get Well Soon

Living the Word, Poetry

Muslims are not the problem.
Jews are not the problem.
Christians are not the problem.

Republicans are not the problem.
Democrats are not the problem.
Capitalism is not the problem
Nor is communism the problem.

Blacks are not the problem.
Whites are not the problem.
Yellows are not the problem.
Neither Reds
Nor Browns are the problem.

Women are not the problem.
Men are not the problem.
Gays are not the problem.
Zombies are not the problem.

Foolishness is the problem.
Dishonesty is the problem.
Self-centeredness is the problem.
Pride is the problem.
Both greed and vanity,
The problems.

Complacency is the problem.
Apathy is the problem.
Disregard for life is the problem.

Desire for death is the problem.
Godlessness and idolatry,
The problems.

Lack of Love is the problem.

Those are the problems.
They are big problems.
They are real problems. 
They are our problems.

The struggle is our own. 
The battle is for each of us, 
And the war belongs to all.

The problems are
Crouching at the door 
Waiting to have us; 
Each of us, 
And all of us.

My human family,
It is past time 
To get well.

Copyright, 2016. L.L. Shelton

How Bad Do Ya’ Want It?

Church Culture, Education, Family Life, Living the Word, Married Life, , , , ,

As a Biblical counselor, I hear these and other words of the same meaning quite often:  The church is suffering from lack of community.  Our marriage is in trouble due to lack of intimacy.  My response: How bad do ya’ want it?

Community and intimacy are alike in that they are the result of a cyclical pass through vulnerability. Most of us prefer anywhere to there. Community and intimacy are the continual culmination of transparency, and accountability. These things require the practice of genuine love and authentic faith. These things mandate that our love be abundantly evident that we may expose ourselves without fear, and that we will welcome critical examination in our effort to be the best we can be for the other- and doing anything without fear requires faith.

What is faith? It is the evidence of things hoped for and the belief in things not yet realized.  Do we have it? Faith in God? Faith in ourselves, with God? Faith in one another? Do we believe that all things are possible with God? Do we believe that we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength? Do we believe that we can trust God to make out of each of us, fallen as we are, something beautiful? Something resembling Himself? Can we patiently suffer one another- forgiving, seeking forgiveness, receiving grace, offering grace, guiding, allowing ourselves to be guided, being consistent as well as realistic in our expectations of one another as we wait for Him to do this in His time and in His way, both individually and in a corporate sense?

May I submit to you that this is what must be if we desire community with others, if we yearn for intimacy with another? It will not be easy. It will be difficult to achieve and to maintain- and it will be the place where our joy may be made complete.  Therefore, absolutely without a doubt, worth it.

How bad do ya’ want it?

Copyright, 2015, L. L. Shelton

Bride On Fire

Church Culture, Living the Word, Politics, , , , ,

The strangely fluid and beautiful creature leaps and bounds in bright colorful array engulfing the structure that is the object of its appetite.  A crowd gathers, for a moment stunned by the apparent freedom of this gaily frolicking entity.  Then, as if shaking off a kind of stupor, someone screams to be saved.

In answer to the plea, a courageous number of that fantastic fraternity formed to fight this very devil, soon arrive and begin their bold work. The flames are doused and the remaining folks gathered at the scene, staring at the remnants of the edifice as it smolders amid the ashes, observe as the next skilled team arrives and begins the important work of inspection that will ultimately, hopefully, determine the origin of the monster.

The Church is on my mind, and having lived more than a half century now, it is my estimation that the road to perdition begins with one’s elevated view of oneself.

In  America, no more than 2% of our total population is gay, and approximately .8% of the 2% are involved in a same sex relationship, and fewer still are legally married.  Clearly, we have a much greater problem with other sexual sins in this country, such as fornication and adultery.  Of course, even the criminal sexual sins of child molestation and rape occur more frequently among us than does the sin of practicing homosexuality.

The sanctity of marriage is intended to be built upon a foundation of sexual purity which applies to all people.  The foundation has been under attack since humanity began.  Most of the twentieth century saw the institution of marriage, an institution necessarily established by God for our protection and to increase our joy, being questioned and demeaned by American society in general.  Yes, even we, the organized church felt it necessary to debate many issues surrounding the sanctity of marriage and family long before beginning to argue its very definition.  I submit to you that we, as a church, failed to properly defend marriage against those relatively minor attacks, thus we now stand perilously close to losing the war.

However, while It may be too late for us, as a nation, to raise the stakes- it is never too late for us to up the ante as the church.  Jesus did.

Jesus said, “Let’s begin with understanding lust as a sexual activity sinfully equal to adultery.  Let’s begin by demanding of ourselves a clean heart.” 

If we, the American population of the church, begin cleaning at the level that Our LORD mandated we may be able to effect the kind of change in our nation that is seen as nothing short of miraculous. 

Copyright 2015, L.L. Shelton

Come Away

Living the Word, Poetry

He calls

Each star by name

Yet all the while,

Reaches forth His hand

And claims, “My child!”

In him

To whom all space

And time belong,

Author of Eternity

Has sown

A hunger

Satisfied

In Him alone.

Seek me! Find me!

In You will I dwell!

Stir your passion;

Your Will fashion

There until,

No trace of rebel found,

In me fulfill

Promise granted

In the garden,

Now made real.

Crush his head!

He’ll merely strike your heel.

Faith and Reason

Be but brothers,

I propose,

As you study Master,

He’ll disclose

To you His mind,

Tis likely though

You’ll differ none

From one

Who long ago

Would witness

But His back and even so,

Did come away

Skin burned,

Hair white as snow.

Come away

To take your place

Among the stones,

Sweet memorial to Him

And Him alone.

Copyright 2014, L.L. Shelton

Postmodern and Organized

Church Culture, Living the Word, , ,

imagePostmodern and Organized

Surely, you must know that in today’s society, particularly today’s western society, it must not be assumed that Christianity is the organized church and that the church is organized Christianity. Today’s christian church may be organized around any number of ridiculous ideas about God, many of which are devoid of Truth or are pulled from The Body of God’s Work and twisted until they are nearly unrecognizable to the man of Faith.

Today’s organized church has gone the way of today’s organized marriage or has it been the other way around? Today’s church may be representative of absolutely nothing even remotely resembling Truth; or it may illustrate a bit of truth here and there, often just enough to be tantalizingly near to accurate.

Therefore, one must never assume that because he has entered the church building he is standing on Holy Ground. The one who has entered the building of a church has entered a building labeled a church for the purpose of communicating myriad messages about who knows what. (2 Corinthians 11:3-4, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, The Letter of Jude)

However, some of today’s organized churches are a vehicle to allow both the True Church of Christ and the unsaved to meet together with the purpose of the unsaved being taught The Gospel in the case that they are elect and would like to receive Christ. While the true and yet imperfect believers are gathered in the church building they profess Jesus Christ as The Only Begotten Son of The One True and Living God and express their collective faith and thanksgiving by the avenues of worship of God The Father through prayer, song, and the whole study of His Living Word.

Even so, do not enter the building of any organized church with the expectation that everyone that you meet there is a Christian or even that everyone in a position of leadership there is a Christian; and do not expect that you yourself have become a Christian because you have taken up the habit of meeting there with this particular group of people, even should you mimic their ways. (Matthew 7:15-23, John 5:21-23, John 6:65, John 8:42-43, 1 John 4:5)

You may be attending a church simply because you enjoy the atmosphere which is for the most part kinder and gentler than the environment outside of it, or because you are in need of social connection and you find the group pleasant or helpful. Maybe you are attending because your mother and father attended as did their parents before them and it is simply all that you know. There may be as many reasons for an unbeliever attending church as there are for a Believer attending the circus!

Then again, maybe you are attending because unbeknownst to you, you are elect and are searching for your true father. If you are searching for your true father, you must search in those places where He is to be found. Look not for the building labeled church or even christian, but rather for the one or ones who are reading and studying the whole of His Holy Word, and search for evidence of The Faith in the lives of those gathered around His Word which is The Holy Bible; not for sinlessness in them but for an obvious desire to be perfect as defined by God, to be perfect in Love. These people may be found in any type of building anywhere, conversely unbelievers may be found in church buildings and christian universities, colleges, and seminaries all over the western world. (Matthew 5:43-48, John 14:15-21, 1 John 3:16-24, 4:17-18)

This makes the search for your father a bit more complicated than you may have imagined, but if He is your father you have nothing to fear, only believe that in the form of Jesus Christ your Father’s heart did beat for you and it is guaranteed that you will not remain lost or separated from Him forever. He has planned to bring you home and He never fails to do as He has promised.

Copyright 2014 L.L. Shelton