Loving Well Session 4

Our last session of Loving Well was Wednesday night.  What a great night to our ending session.

Our give-away winners were Linda Coen who won the Loving Well tote bag and Heather Wright who won the dark chocolate bar.  

Thanks to all the Girlfriend's who attended the Bible studies for the Spring session.  I'm currently looking into our Fall studies.

Notes From Loving Well Session 4

Beth started out this session with a question:

What if you're married to testy?

Beth stated that baggage attracts baggage. We have to ask ourselves what attracts us to such unhealthy people. Her answer was that there is something unhealthy in us if we are attracted to unhealthy people continually.

But she said, "God really does transform lives", speaking of her own marriage.

Two things if you're married to testy:

• You pray like crazy.  Since God looks at the married couple as one flesh, Beth believes you have the capacity to pray over your spouse unlike anybody else.
• Pray for God to make you loving and to not let you answer testy with testy.

Persevere and believe God because He does want you to have a strong marriage.  His specialty is raising the dead.  He can raise up a dead marriage.

The last difficult person to love is "Far" - the stranger.

We will never be more Christ-like than when we love people who do not love us.  The person who does not love us has given us an opportunity of our life.  It's our opportunity to shine in this selfish world.

She read Matthew 25:34-40 and said this was our Biblical mandate across the globe and not just in our personal world.

The person who would not even appear on our radar unless we allowed God to give us that awareness.

The question asked was "who is out of our world?"

God will challenge us to love people beyond our small world and take on a global perspective.

She challenged us to be people who have a heart for the world, for people in need, for people who will never come to us but we will have to go to them.

It is dangerous to live a spirit-filled life, she said, because we will do things we didn't intend to do when God is filling us and overwhelming us with His Spirit.

Strangers take all sorts of shapes and sizes.  We are called to love afar, a stranger.

There are two reasons for this:

• It is an opportunity to love with no strings attached, with nothing we can get back in return from them.  We were encouraged to pour out our life into another.  Until we are pouring out our life like a drink offering, we will never be happy.  We need to keep dipping into the loving well and pouring out.
• Loving from afar relieves us of the burden of self-absorption. We need to pour out our life completely into other people so we can be healed.  We need to help someone who cannot help us and love someone who cannot love us back.

Beth finished with Revelation 19:6-7 stating that "God is all about ministering to people, still about the people. The beauty of it is this: when it's all said and done, and we're all in heaven together, it's going to be good."

"Then a voice came from the throne saying: 'Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, both great and small!"  Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: "Hallelujah! For the Lord God Almighty reigns.  Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made has made herself ready."

The word "glad" in the NIV is not a passive word.  In the Greek it is "Agalliao" meaning ecstatic joy.  The New Testament word, Beth said, for joy is mostly Chara.  Agalliao is when Chara gets physical.

The dictionary meaning is this: to exalt, rejoice with exuberance, show ones joy by leaping, skipping or dancing.

"Let's do the hard thing and get out there and love.  We have no higher calling than that" - Beth Moore

The four-part series has ended, but as long as we live on planet earth, our challenges to love will not end.

We can't give up on loving our:

• Joy
• Testy
• Foe
• Far

Keep on loving well!

This summer, join a summer Online Bible study (OBS).  Many have been posted on the Girlfriend's of Faith Facebook page.  You can also host a Bible study of your choosing in your home as well.