Category: Love

Posted in Faith, Love

Do You Get As Good As You Give?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

   The old saying, “give as good as you get,” isn’t exactly a Christian one.  It implies taking retribution into our own hands, not allowing God to be the one who metes out justice.  Secondly, it is the complete opposite of the Golden Rule, totally denying the thing that matters most, which is love.  “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love,” Paul tells us.  “But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

But I was reminded today not only of the importance of giving love to others, but of being a good receiver of love as well.  For some of us, it is harder to be a receiver than a giver.  Whether we are like Martha, so caught up in the details of the thing that we forget the main reason we gathered in the first place, or are just so addicted to control that we don’t think anything can be done right unless we are on top of it, we fail to open our arms and release that control long enough to receive the help or encouragement or compliments that other people are trying to give us.

My reminder today came in the form of taking  the time to actually stick around after my exercise class to talk to the other people who had come to class.  Before class, I had had an up and down day.  By the time class came around, I was mostly on the down side of things.  When class was over, I was my usual tired, sweaty self.  But, then the magic began to happen.

First, I saw a person who used to be on the same workout schedule as me but that I had not seen for some time.  When she asked how I had been, I decided to share a little more than just the usual, “OK.”  Then, another classmate took up the conversation with me and asked me to sit down.  I started to listen more than talk as this person filled me in on some of the challenges she had faced throughout her life, recurring dental problems that were really crazy.  As I continued to listen more than I talked, I was impressed by her upbeat attitude despite her extraordinary challenges.  By the time I left the workout center, I was feeling more upbeat just because I had had the chance to listen to what this woman had had to say and how positive she was about the challenges she was facing.

The only thing I wish I had done was take a moment to thank my workout “friend” for sharing.  I hope that she received as much from giving as I did from receiving.

God has so much He is willing to give to us.  How often do we fail to receive, even from Him?  David is a perfect example of one who understood the importance of being a good receiver.  Over and over in his psalms, he implores God to bless him with forgiveness, escape from his enemies, or just peace.  He thanks God in advance for the gifts David is sure God will give, even to those who don’t deserve it, especially since none of us deserve it.  And David is bountiful in his praise of God, exhalting God’s goodness and power and love for us.

If we could only see ourselves through God’s eyes, the bare truth of all our sin and all the love He has for us anyway, how much better would we be at extending love to everyone else around us?  None of us are free of mistakes.  We all deserve the same chance to repent, to build our faith, to give and receive love that we give ourselves all the time.  Why can’t we just extend it to everyone else?

Maybe it begins with being more open to receiving the love that is offered to us, especially the love that God offers.  The better we are at receiving, the better we’re going to get at giving love, not just to God, but especially to those around us.  What a wonderful way to shine His light!

Posted in Christian Living, Faith, Living, Love

A New Meaning For Carpe Diem

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

He may be one of our greatest Christian writers ever, but I have to admit that I am late to the game when it comes to reading C.S. Lewis. Maybe that’s just God’s timing so that my Spirit and mind are actually prepared for the depths of what Lewis has to say.

At any rate, I have just begun “The Screwtape Letters,” a collection of correspondence between Screwtape, an Undersecretary of the Devil, and his nephew, Wormwood, who also happens to be new to the job of making sure the people he’s been assigned stay on the devil’s side instead of God’s.

Early on in the correspondence, Screwtape reminds Wormwood that “He [God] wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

At first glance, the two parts of this statement may not seem that different, but actually they are worlds apart. If I am worried about what will happen to me, several bad consequences occur. First, I am centered on myself instead of paying attention to other people. Even if my worries about my future are about other people, making me think I am being altruistic, they are ultimately self-centered.

When I concentrate on future what-ifs, I am wasting my time as well as God’s. Didn’t Jesus tell us to concern ourselves only with this day, as it has enough problems of its own? Did He not also tell us not to worry because God takes care of us?

Thinking about what will happen to us usually also makes us focus on more materialistic things. Worry traps us into what we can see, feel and touch. The more we are drawn to the things of this world, the further away we are from God. “Where your treasure is,” Christ told us, “there will your heart be also.”

On the flipside, if we are concerned about what we do, we are smack dab in the middle of the only thing we truly have, which is this moment. To seize the day in this way, by thinking about our current actions, means we can be free to think outward.

Thinking outside ourselves means seeing the real needs of others and doing something about it. It means realizing the immediate effects of our actions. It means we have the opportunity to stop ourselves from sinning before we get caught up in it.

Doing instead of fretting is an even bigger challenge in our modern world. With telephones, television and the internet, we can go for ages without physically interacting with anyone. We can go our whole lives without meeting our neighbors face-to-face. And what we don’t actually see in person is very easy to push aside. Hasn’t watching television news footage our whole lives desensitized us to what we see on the screen, making it seem somehow not real?

In the moment, doing and interacting with our fellow wanderers, these are the times when we are on the same page with God. When we concentrate on what we are doing instead of worrying about what might be, we come the closest to loving others as God loves us.

Now, if I can just carpe diem God’s way every time I catch myself fretting instead of paying attention to what I am doing, I will already have learned a wonderful lesson from “The Screwtape Letters,” even though I’ve only just begun reading them.

Posted in Christian Living, Living, Love, Uncategorized

Can You Be A Christian If You Aren’t A Conservationist?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Sundance at SunsetPeople like to point to the Bible a lot to claim dominion over just about anything–other peoples, their own actions, other countries–but one of the favorite things people like to claim dominion over is the planet itself: the grass that grows, the animals that graze, the seas that churn.

True, in Genesis, God puts the things He created into the care of the “ultimate” thing that He created, the thing closest to Himself because it was in His image, that is man. But when God placed something He took the time and care and JOY to create in our hands, do you really think He intended for us to look after it as if it were something we were to dominate instead of treat lovingly and tenderly?

How, after all, does God treat His ultimate creation? Does He do what He can to make our lives miserable, see that we’re unhealthy, put us last on His to-do list? The answer to these questions is a resounding NO. The evil that happens to man in this world is a result of evil having entered into it when we partook of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden. God is with us when bad things happen to help us, but He doesn’t bring them down upon our heads. Isn’t it in Timothy that we are told that, in fact, God is incapable of doing evil?

More importantly, if you doubt how God really treats what He has created, take a few moments to consider how much He loved us. He sent Christ, His only son, to live among us, experience our pain in person, and die a miserable, horrible death for us, because we are evil, not because of anything that Jesus Himself had done.

In Psalm 6:4, the psalmist cries out, “Turn, O Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love.” Notice, the psalmist doesn’t claim any reason or value in and of him/herself to be due salvation, rather the psalmist knows that only because God loves him/her enough will the psalmist have a chance of being saved.

So, when God opened his arms and gave us the fruits of His labors, does anyone really think He wanted us to then abuse what He created? Or did He want us to treat what He put under our care the same way He has treated us, taken care of us? Shouldn’t true Christians strive to be good to everything God created and gave us “dominion” over because of the unfailing love we have learned from Christ, just as our only hope of salvation comes from Christ’s unfailing love for us?

Sometimes, when we are caught up in trying to help the poor and hurting among us, we forget about the living things around us that have no voice at all unless we give it to them. The Earth is the greatest gift we’ve been given next to our own salvation. If we each just do our part every day, those small gifts back will add up to a big difference.

20120428-092545.jpg

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Living, Love

Tiny Steps Make Great Feats

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

I have a friend who shares my proclivity to demand perfection of ourselves and the grand ability to beat ourselves up when we fall far short of the over-reaching goals we have set for ourselves. Lately, our conversations have circled around the concept of “magnificence.” In other words, we are trying to make it OK for ourselves that we are not going to be “magnificent.”
Then, I have to stop us. Whenever we make statements like this, we are shortchanging ourselves in so many ways. First, we are denying the truth behind what we define as magnificent. Of course, our definition is much too tied to the ways of this world. Because we haven’t made millions or written the country’s greatest novel, we are failures in our own eyes. That definition, in itself, though, is a failure in the eyes of God, who even when He came to earth in the form of man, did not seek stardom, even shunning the crowds that thronged toward Him as much as possible at times, asking those He had healed to keep the event to themselves.
This is when we are better served to remind ourselves that God’s version of magnificence is a tiny mustard seed, which, once planted, can be nurtured by the Spirit into a truly wonderful plant. Our actions aren’t the thing that make the end result, however. God is interested in the mustard seed size actions we take that, culminating together, create the final, magnificent result.
Maybe our small actions are simple things like holding open a door, smiling to those we meet, or stopping to help someone change a flat tire. Perhaps they are actions that are a little more involved like making a meal for someone who is ill, or cleaning house for someone who cannot do the job him/herself. Maybe the action is being privileged enough to be the first person to share her gospel experience with a person who has never had the opportunity to know Jesus.
When I look out my back window and watch the robins and cardinals and squirrels scampering in my backyard, a plethora of color and motion that reminds me what it means to be peacefully human, I sometimes think about the ways that God speaks to us in just as tiny a motion as the mustard seed He also requires. Hasn’t He more often been a whisper in the wind than earth-shattering thunder?
It’s hard to re-define success in a world surrounded by capitalistic ideals, but my friend and I keep on trying, holding each other accountable for the moments when we berate our mustard seed actions and long for superhero status. The prideful will be humbled, God warns us. We do our best each day to humble ourselves before we need to be humbled. Paying attention to our mustard seed actions is a good way to stay on the right side of humility. I’m getting older, and my knees can’t take another fall.

Posted in Christian Living, Love, Self-Help

Pitfalls of Perfectionism

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Others may find perfectionists hard to live with, but we are no harder to live with for others than we are to live with ourselves. Nothing is ever good enough. No compliment is ever really deserved. Peace of mind is an ever-elusive state, just out of reach of a mind that can always find something else that needs to be done, or edited, or tweaked. Who can rest when there exists some problem that still needs solved, or when one never feels to have found one’s purpose, much less fulfilled it?
Add to this self-incrimination, the endless onslaught of perfectionism applied to a flawed world, and you wind up with a very busy mind indeed. Perfectionists can always find things wrong with the way other people choose to live their lives, even when those lives are none of the perfectionists’ business. We can solve problems all day long for people who haven’t asked for it, barely curbing out tongues as we have learned from years of rejected advice that when someone wants to hear our opinion, they’ll ask for it.
But we still think it. All the time, our minds repeating like a CD in our car stereo, and burning just as hot.
“Judge not that ye be not judged” may be the most important verse for we perfectionists to take to heart if we ever hope to kick the “perfection habit.” If we can truly quit judging others and ourselves, just think about how much time we will free to do the true work of Christ, which is to love ourself and others, not judge them.
When God, who is the only true Judge, looks into our souls, He does so from an all-knowing place of perfect righteousness. He alone can read our hearts, knows our motives and can offer grace. God’s judgment is pure, healing and meant to bring us into closer relationship with Him.
When we, who have flawed hearts, judge others, we are not looking into their souls at all. In the moment that we judge, we stop loving them, if we ever cared for them at all. We are incapable of proper judgment. Did Jesus not say to remove the beam from our own eye before trying to extricate the splinter from the eye of another?
Just because we shouldn’t be judging doesn’t mean that we don’t have an accounting to make of ourselves each day in the face of God’s code of ethics. But, we need to make sure that what we are calling God’s ethics are truly His and not our own dressed up to look like Godly righteousness. Is what I am chastising myself for really a sin I need to confess before God? Then confess it and stop the action. If it isn’t a sin in the eyes of God, then why am I torturing myself with chastisement?
If I can only learn to be perfect in love, God’s greatest commandment, then perhaps I can reduce my obsession with judgments about myself and others and sever my ties with perfectionism once and for all.
In the end, the forever elusive “perfection” just isn’t worth its pitfalls.

Posted in Christianity, Faith, Love

The Importance of Choice

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Even a beautiful flower can blossom among the weeds  Even beautiful flowers can have blemishes, and they often grow amongst what we consider “weeds.”  Still, flowers in the wild can be a good, visual reminder to the rest of us of how we can be beautiful anywhere.  How do we do it?

First, we have to realize that our emotions are not us.  We choose the emotions we allow ourselves to feel.  Sometimes, that backfires on us, like when we swallow our discomfort with a situation instead of expressing our thoughts (in a gentle way–remember Paul’s admonition to proceed always first in gentleness), leading eventually to so much internalized angst that we become physically ill.

But what if we instead chose each day to feel good feelings?  If Christ, God-incarnate, could take the beatings He received from the Roman soldiers without calling out a legion of angels to save Himself, then shouldn’t we, as Christians, work to follow His example by sloughing off the “slings and arrows” of this world and choosing to feel the love and peace that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit offers?

The Christmas season seems like the best time of year to get into the habit of choosing good feelings.  When you wake up to start each new day, begin by thanking God that you are here to see it.  Smile at your bedraggled self in the mirror.  Feel empathy for the frazzled driver in front of you who just cut you off and don’t seethe with an anger that can ruin your day.  After all, we all have been guilty of at least one near-miss in a car that could have led to an accident that would have been our fault.  If Christ could give His life for us, what are an extra two minutes at a light to us because the driver ahead was driving a bit slow?

Of course, to those for whom the holiday season is generally a sad time, full of bittersweet memories or genuine sorrow, the idea that we are in control of the choices we make concerning our emotions probably sounds trite and maybe even unfeeling.  But God understands our hearts.  He created them, nurtures them, and heals.  Going to God about helping you choose your feelings is the best path anyone could take.  If you doubt it, re-read your Psalms.  In these prayers and hymns from various writers, we see the true gamut of emotions and ideas between the created and their Creator.  The psalmists praise God, can’t live without Him, and downright hate Him.

But they always come back to Him.  And He is always ready to receive them.  Choose love this Christmas, and make it your New Year’s Resolution to truly choose the feelings each day that will serve God best.

That’s what I plan to do in 2012.  I pray you plan to join me.

Posted in Christianity, Faith, Love

Giving thanks through thankful giving

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

What seems like just a simple play on words could actually be a fundamental shift in one’s life. Giving thanks can be done without much effort. Some of us have said the same prayer over a meal so many times that it has become more of a mantra than a communication with God. There are also daily situations in which we say “thanks” with as much thought as we give to the standard “hello,” or “how are you doing”–not expecting or even listening to the responses we actually get, which are usually equally perfunctory or non-existent.
But just making the attempt to really mean what we say when we give thanks just doesn’t seem like enough in a world where so many bad things happen. If we have the guts to turn on the news, we are bombarded by images of war or protests or economic hardship. The tent cities that most of us have only read about in textbook sections on the Depression have sprung up in our own backyards, haunting reminders of what we too might become but for the grace of God.
If we give of ourselves thankfully, as God intended, we give with intention and love, not to rid ourselves of guilt over having too much, but because we truly care about others and are happy that we have been put in a position where we can be of help.
“No good deed goes unpunished” gives thankful giving a bad name. Even if I suffer a bit because I choose to help, I will never truly suffer if I approach all that I do with the thankfulness of my ability to give that I should have.
As a recovering over-achiever, I find just now that writing about this concept helps me realize that when I think that I am failing just because I haven’t made myself a “big wig” in the present world, driven by capitalism, I should instead be thankful for the opportunities I have had to use the talents God has given me to share and hopefully help others, even if those others count only in a handful, not a multitude. Remember the parable where the shepherd leaves the safe flock to save the one lost sheep? When I am not thankful for what I am able to give–forget about what I achieve from the “real world’s” point of view–I do a disservice to myself and, more importantly, to the gifts that God has given me to share with others, not hoard. I thank Him most when I give away what I have been given, not just bow my head and say “thanks.”
I hope my actions during this holiday season can be those of thankful giving, especially when I am tempted to become too tired or too busy to think about others. And I hope I can give the gift to myself of being thankful for what I am able to do each day instead of getting discouraged or bored with what is required or needed from me.

Posted in Christianity, Faith, Love

Two of God’s Most Important Concepts

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Faith and Love.  Without the first, we cannot begin our journey with God, and if we do not live according to the latter, then we are failing in our walk with Christ.  Have you ever thought about how many steps there are between these two principles?   In 2nd Peter, the apostle contemplates the diligence it takes to become “partakers of the divine nature,” in other words, closer to God.  If you study 2nd Peter 1:5-7, you’ll discover just how many steps we must go through in order to grow from faith to Godly love.

These are the steps from faith to love:

  • Faith
  • Moral excellence
  • Knowledge
  • Self-control
  • Perseverance
  • Godliness
  • Brotherly Kindness
  • Love

Even a quick glance at this list shows us how one step builds on another, and also how much more difficult each next step would be if we had not first worked on mastering the one before it.  “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing,” Peter concludes, “they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v.8).

We should contemplate these steps if we truly want to grow in Christ.  By faith, we believe and are motivated to do what is pleasing and right to God.  When we approach His word for knowledge with the goal of knowing God’s morals better, not as a way to justify what we want to do, we increase our moral excellence.  Only when we have a growing knowledge of God’s word and His will, can we begin to practice the self-control that keeps us from judging other people or giving in to our own worldly desires.  Having to be of the world but not in it requires perseverance, and only when we are strong in our ability to hold out against the pull of this world and its desires do we reach any level of Godliness.  When we can learn not to give in to the desires of the flesh, we are better able to practice the brotherly kindness which is the beginning of Godly love.

Obviously, this isn’t a simple or quick process, but a life-long journey.  It helps me not to beat up on myself quite so much when I stumble considering the complexity of a life lived like Christ.  I am also reminded anew how grateful I am that it is the grace of God that saves us and not our works, even though my faith in God leads me to want to do good, fruitful works.

Posted in Christianity, Faith, Love

Perfection Versus Good Enough

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

This week, I am particularly working on picking my battles when it comes to my overwhelming compulsion to be a perfectionist. First of all, perfectionism doesn’t exist. All I can do, in the end, is my best. In addition, my best is further actually qualified by the parameters of the current task, the deadline I face, my current state of health, etc. Finally, I often work too hard at being better in areas that are good enough, thereby leaving areas in my life that could actually use more effort dangling in the wind.
The most important point about perfectionism, however, is that no matter how good I am at anything, I don’t have to be in order to achieve the most important thing of all–the mercy of God. God gives me salvation through the grace of my faith in Jesus, whether I am perfect at the latest thing I am working on or not.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not completely off the hook. Because of my acceptance of God’s love, I have become, as Paul tells us, “a new creation.” I want to do what is good and right and loving, extending the grace that has been offered me to others as well.
So, if I am going to worry about perfection in anything, it should be in my walk outside the life of sin. Being dead to sin, I should wake up each day trying to be perfect in Christ, forgiving and loving others and myself when I stumble, being open in my communication with God, from whom there is no secrets, so that I might be forgiven my mistakes and start the next day anew, His mercies surrounding me to help me do better this next day I have been given.
And I don’t exceed in anything that is truly important to God if I get caught up in the day-to-day spiral of trying to bring to perfection that which only requires good enough, especially when love should truly be the greatest goal of all.

Posted in Christianity, Love

Living the Fruit of the Spirit

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

As I sat in Bible class on Sunday morning, listening as others were picking out what they had found of note in the previous week’s reading of Galatians, a couple of pretty powerful conclusions came to me.
The first began as I looked at the footnote in my NASB for the phrase “the righteous man will live by faith,” which said that what was meant here was actually closer to the word “faithfulness.”
Now, faith and faithfulness, I believe, are two entirely different animals. In our venacular, we tend to equate the word faith with belief, which implies just believing that Christ is risen is sufficient for salvation. But faithfulness means something beyond mere belief. Faithfulness
is more like believing by doing. Aha. Now, we have a problem. If I must believe by doing in order to be redeemed, then do my actions and not grace save me? Perhaps a better definition of faithfulness might be belief through being.
Let me explain.
The second grand conclusion I discovered Sunday was the fact that the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23 are actually the “fruit” of the Spirit. Singular, not plural, implying a crop or harvest of something. Once redeemed, the one who lives in faithfulness is seeking to be one who embodies all of the characteristics of Galatians 5:22-23. This is a state of being, fostered by the indwelling Spirit, redeemed upon inevitable failure by the grace of Christ.
Which brings us to the question of legalism. When Christ said his yoke was light, I believe he meant in comparison to the yoke of fulfillment which constituted Jewish religion at that time. The Talmud (as opposed to the Torah, upon which our modern OT cannon is based), which elaborated on the items of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, had grown to include so many items, that I am sure living up to its mandates would be something like living in the mind of a person with OCD. Wash hands so many times before touching this, step on a crack, break your mother’s back. That sort of thing.
When Christ proposed to lift the yoke of this kind of living, He could not have meant that living
would suddenly be easier. How is it a lighter yoke to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, meek and in control of the self–all the time? It is lighter, perhaps, in that instead of following a distinct set of rules, the freedom of salvation means the freedom to be, not do. The actions that happen as a result of being are much lighter than actions required from a list of doing.
I think the Western mind may have a problem with this concept that believing still requires doing because we do not wrap our minds around the concept of dualities. There’s a little bit of the feminine in the masculine and vice versa. We all have good and evil. Being is more than just believing, even though our actions, ultimately, are not what save us. When Christ, and subsequently Paul, smashed the legalistic requirements of salvation, they opened the door to a way of life that embodied more than any written law. Living the law of Christ is very different from living the Talmud. It is much more challenging, but it is also freeing because, as the Nicole Nordemann song reminds us–“His mercies are new every morning.” No matter how often we fall, as long as we sincerely repent, Christ helps us rise to begin again.