Faith requires action. We act on our faith. In what do you believe and trust? What is the source of your well-being? What provides your standard for living your life? Within what do you "live and move and have (your) being"?
My faith is in Jesus and His Good News as a better way in which to live in THIS PART of God's Kingdom, here and now. I believe it is God's Will for humanity. I believe living Jesus' taught, commanded and modeled Agape Love is that Good News because it transforms lives and the life of community and ultimately humanity.
Agape Love is active commitment/committed action on behalf of the OTHER, even stranger or enemy (see Luke 10:25-37) and especially the most vulnerable (see Matthew 25:31-46). It is not about feeling, but about DOING. Jesus, fulfiller of the Law and Prophets commands us to live this love for God in active unconditional, self-sacrificing love for Neighbor. We will live Agape Love in the world around us if we believe in Jesus and His Way of Agape Love and trust that it is God's Will for us.
Prayer changes us. It acknowledges our relationship with the one who is immanent but transcendant. It holds us accountable in that relationship and with our neighbors. It transforms our hearts and leads us to actively live Agape Love in the world around us. Prayer is action.
Worship changes us. It centers us in the things of God with our neighbors. It informs, inspires and illuminates our faith. It compels us to go out and live Agape Love in the world around us (if it is true worship). Worship is action.
Study changes us. When it is focused on what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us in the Good News, the Word calls, compels and challenges us to lay down those things that have kept us from living in Jesus' Way (thinking, attitudes, prejudices, practices) so that we may live differently in the world around us.
Stewardship is the action of using what God has provided us in Agape Loving ways - our time, our abilities and our possessions selflessly used to exhibit Agape Love and change lives around us in the world.
Agape Love is our Faith in action.
Faith is Agape Love in action.
We will never live in Jesus' Way in the world around us if we do not believe that it is God's Will or trust that it is a better way for us and for those in the world around us.
If we believe that Jesus' is the fulfiller of the Law and Prophets and that Jesus' Good News is a better way for us to live, then we will trust that living that way will benefit ourselves and those around us in the world because it will provide for all Shalom (well-being, completeness, wholeness) and thus peace in the world. Believing that requires that we actively live the Agape Love that Jesus taught, commanded and modeled as we have that in Jesus' Good News for the world, the Gospel witnesses.
It is not about the HAVING of Agape Love, but to the LIVING of Agape Love that we must commit as people of faith in Jesus. Having faith means living it in Agape Love, which is not a feeling but action in commitment to God and Neighbor.
Through the living of Agape Love in Faith lives are transformed. The life of the individual, the lives of those around them, life in community and ultimately life as humanity.
You are putting something out in the world around you. Is it an expression Agape Love?
If you claim to be a person of faith in Jesus, are you putting what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us out in the world around you as we have that witnessed in the Gospels?
I somewhat agree with James and the idea that "faith, if it has no works is dead." I believe that faith in Jesus without actions of Agape Love is no faith at all.
Agape Love is Faith in Action.
Faith in Jesus is Agape Love in Action.
We are human beings. Be fully human. Live fully with the other humans around you as an act of Faith out of Agape Love for God.
We are spiritual beings. Be fully spiritual. Apply your faith in God to how you live Agape Love in the world around you.
As people of faith in Jesus, our way of being in the world is the active commitment to the well-being of the other, even stranger and enemy and especially the most vulnerable.
Act accordingly.
Striving with you,
Pastor Jamie
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