Walk in Love

Hey Jonathan, I recently did a short devotion for our church family on love for a 15-day devotional series we produced as a church staff. Our head pastor had the idea back in January to couple a devotional series with our church families 15 days of fasting. It went so well we did again as a follow up to Easter. Here is my Easter devotional on WALKING IN LOVE.



WALK IN LOVE
Nathan Headley
Pastor of Student Ministries

I John 4:9-10 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love – not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Love is a choice. Not a feeling, or an emotion, or a mystical entity that we can move in and out of as if it were a fog that comes and goes. It is choice. We learn this principle whenever we go through pre-marital counseling. The idea that love is not a feeling that can go away, but it is a life-long decision we make to prefer our spouse above ourselves, for the rest of our lives. To put the well-being, dreams, and desires of another person before our own. This is love. In I John 4:10 above we see here that God, (who is the creator, author and fulfillment of love) sent his son to die for our sins, not when we chose to love him, but when he loved us.

A lot of us have the same view of love as we have of respect. “You respect me and I will respect you in return.” “You show love towards me, and I will show it back to you.” We often expect someone else to take the first step, or we desire to mutually step together. This is not what happened when love came and died for us. Jesus took the first step. He loved us, whether we choose to give it back to him or not. He still took our punishment because of the love he had for us.

So to say “walk in love”, we must make the choice to take the first step and love others. Whether they choose to return it or not, we will love others. This means when we are eating dinner with our family, buying groceries, shopping for shoes, eating at a restaurant, working at the office, in the midst of a confrontation or picking our kids up from school, we show love to others. Instead of us just telling others about the love of Christ, I believe it is time for us to SHOW the love of Christ to others. Not because they love us, because we love them.

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My Hero just Died

I just left the hospital room of Paul Hanson, one of my life heroes. I am still in shock.

Mr. Hanson wasn't your typical hero, he wasn't famous, he didn't have super powers. He didn't save anyone from burning building. He became my hero slowly, over time.

It started when I was a kid. Mr. Hanson led the boys program at our church. I remember he would start each class out by leading us in the pledge to the Christian Flag and the U.S. flag. Then we would sing from hymn books and we would usually end with, "Onward Christian Soldier". He was old-school. We would spend the rest of class working on our achievements (medals, patches) and sometimes he would take us outside and teach us to march (left, right, about face). To this day that does not sound very exciting but I loved it, he made it fun.

Then in High School I attended Valley Christian High School and he was my principal. He and his wife (Mrs. Hanson) were actually the founders of the school (Two ex-hippies who moved to Brownsville to do missionary work, founded a small Christian HS that was affordable to everyone). In addition to being the principal he was the Science Teacher, Bible Teacher, History Teacher, P.E. Coach, and Janitor. The last one is one of the reasons he's one of my heroes. You see Mr. Hanson had a Masters Degree and he was one of the best teachers I have ever had. He could have taught anywhere and he would have made a very good living. Instead he took a salary below poverty level to serve teens, some of whom could care less. I remember the first time I saw him cleaning the restroom and taking out the garbage. I already respected him so much but to see him serve us like that it really affected me. (It's probably the closest I will ever be to understanding how the disciples felt when Jesus washed their feet)

I remember the chapel that he shaved off half his mustache to show us how God wanted to make us a new person. Mrs. Hanson had never seen him without a mustache. I remember the day we had crazy hat day and he wore a cage on his head with his cat in it. I just remember how calm he always was, and his dry sense of humor. He had this sly smile, laugh combination thing. My cousin told me about a time in class where one of the sarcastic kids in class gave yet another sarcastic wrong answer, instead of getting mad he just stood up, started clapping softly (think golf clap), and said, "He tried, He tried". Everyone just cracked up, including the kid. (Classic Mr. Hanson)

Mr. Hanson will always be one of my heroes because he gave his all to what God called him to do. For more than 30 years he taught teens but more than that he lived his life as an example to us. Without ever saying it his life said, "This is what it looks like to live for God".

There is so much I could say about this great man...
Mr. Hanson I love you, respect you, and I am so thankful for all you gave. I just spoke to you last night and I don't understand why this happened. I will continue to follow your example and serve kids in your honor.

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