For love's sake...

As I write this piece, I'm reminded of a phrase - "for God's sake" - I heard a lot while growing up - not so much these days. I know it is an idiomatic expression and some people may feel it was an "idiotic" expression...especially when it sounded like taking God's name in vain just to emphasize something. Well, I'm not going to spend time there as that's not where I'm headed.

As I look back to last year, I can pinpoint a number of things I did only for love's sake. Not just because of my deep love for my husband but my love for our children and our church too.

I then decided to challenge myself this year to do more for love's sake. I can't forget this definition of love I heard several years ago: "Love is acting in the other person's best interest."
Back then, it was used in the context of discouraging pre-marital sex - since that is not and will never be a sign of love - ask Amnon* if you can. However, the same definition applies in our everyday life, more so in ministry because I know from experience that "just because" is not a good enough reason for doing the things I want/need/have to in and for the ministry.

As Mrs Pastor, I constantly remind myself that "love" - love for God and Godly love - must always be my driving force. Now that is not to say that everyone will always be pleased with me or with what I do...and personally it doesn't matter to me. What matters for and to me is that I do what is right (in love and for love's sake), not what is nice - because sometimes what is right,** e.g. disciplining your child(ren) or someone else's, may not seem nice at the time.

With 360 days to go in the year, I encourage my fellow Mrs Pastors to (continue) to do what and all they do for love's*** sake. 1 Thess 2:4 and Gal 1:10 respectively, give us the reasons why:

For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. (NLT)

Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God.

If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant. (NLT)

Wishing you, your husband, family and church a Spectacular year ahead! Happy New Year!

References:
2 Sam 13: 4 & 15 (New Living Translation)
⁴ One day Jonadab said to Amnon, “What’s the trouble? Why should the son of a king look so dejected morning after morning?” So Amnon told him, “I am in love with Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister.”
¹⁵ Then suddenly Amnon’s love turned to hate, and he hated her even more than he had loved her. “Get out of here!” he snarled at her.
** Heb 12: 6- 11 - ⁶ The Lord disciplines everyone he loves; he punishes everyone he accepts as a child.”  ⁷ So accept sufferings like a father’s discipline. God does these things to you like a father correcting his children. You know that all children are disciplined by their fathers. ⁸ So, if you never receive the discipline that every child must have, you are not true children and don’t really belong to God. ⁹ We have all had fathers here on earth who corrected us with discipline. And we respected them. So it is even more important that we accept discipline from the Father of our spirits. If we do this, we will have life. ¹⁰ Our fathers on earth disciplined us for a short time in the way they thought was best. But God disciplines us to help us so that we can be holy like him. ¹¹ We don’t enjoy discipline when we get it. It is painful. But later, after we have learned our lesson from it, we will enjoy the peace that comes from doing what is right. (Easy-to-Read Version - emphasis mine)
*** Notice that I didn't capitalize the "L" in "love's" because if I did, I'd be referring to God since "God is Love."