Freeing Words

I met with my Youth Pastor in training today.  She spoke, as she often does about her love for the girls she has been privileged to lead.  While talking she seemed a bit overwhelmed.  She has such love and compassion for the girls.  While talking I felt like God was telling me to tell her, "God didn't call us to fix them, He called us to love them."  Her face showed that it was exactly what she needed to hear in that moment.  We talked a bit about how freeing of a thought it was.
As I drove home from the coffee shop I began to think that it is an excellent word for all of us.

I think that there are times we feel overwhelmed by the world's need for Jesus.  We see the need but we often feel unqualified to meet it.  News flash of the day, we are unqualified.  But here's the really cool part, we know the One who is.  When we realize that God hasn't called us to fix them but to just love them everything changes.  Some times we feel unprepared.  Maybe we don't have the Bible memorized.  We might not be able to quote scripture at a moment's notice.  Or we might be inexperienced.  That's fine!  We are simply called to love them.  This means that the best way to be prepared, equipped, and ready is by growing in our relationship with God.  When we learn what His love is, we learn how to love like He does.  His love is perfect.
As I wrote this I was reminded of this passage:

1 Corinthians 13 New Living Translation (NLT)

Love Is the Greatest

13 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages[b] and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.

11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

I pray this word blesses you.

Jimmy