For much of my adult life, I’ve reflected on Jesus’ words that he spoke to his disciples at the Last Supper, as we find in John 14:15: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” As we can all testify, we don’t obey the way we’d like. As believers in Jesus, we are eternally grateful for God’s saving grace in our weaknesses and failures as we repent. It’s comforting to read 1 Peter 4:8 where Peter writes, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” Time and time again, this verse has reminded me to love people when I was tempted to hate.
Love is the motivating factor that covers wrongs and re-establishes relationships. Love motivates people and provides the passion to pray for and bring the Good News to those without access to it.
Actively loving God and others is how we can effectively obey Jesus’ commands and participate in his mission to this world. Being obedient to Jesus’ commands requires a heart open to correction, transformation, and the Spirit’s guidance.
It requires some risk-taking, having faith that God is more than able to accomplish things through us when we don’t feel capable of doing so ourselves. Obedience to God’s commands means that we are willing to go where he’s leading us and do what he calls us to do (see Matthew 28:19).
Many of these characteristics were found in those who established WMPL over 85 years ago. World Mission Prayer League was established by people who loved the LORD, who gathered together and passionately prayed that the gospel would reach those with little or no access to the Good News.
Their love for the LORD fueled their obedience. We pray for that transforming love in our lives as we continue to carry the proverbial torch.
Our calling as an organization is to mobilize people in prayer and send them out to disciple others. We do this so that the world will experience Jesus’ love, know him, and have an opportunity to accept Jesus’ invitation and enter the kingdom of God. So, what does this kingdom of God that we are supposed to be making known look like?
The Apostle Paul, in Romans 14:17-18, describes the kingdom of God when he says, “The kingdom It requires some risk-taking… of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (ESV)
Lois and I saw this righteousness, peace, and joy in a Central Asian couple we met last spring. Their story was a powerful example of former Muslims, a former Imam no less, recognizing who Jesus was and the transformation he brings. Their faces radiated with peace and joy even though they were in hiding and caught between worlds.
As we walk in loving obedience to the LORD’s commands, we will find ourselves in situations that could tempt us to be unloving toward God and our neighbor. Satan’s work is to discourage, distract, and destroy us. We need to “be ready in and out of season,” as the Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:2. Loving our enemies and taking the opposite spirit when wronged takes Satan’s power away and allows God’s Spirit to move powerfully.
In Matthew 22, Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees who were thinking according to the ways of men and not of God. They didn’t care about their responsibility to free their people from their bondage while they were alive. Jesus’ commandment to go into all the world and lead others to Christ is for all of us today, so everyone has an opportunity to live eternally with him. Squabbling over petty differences, even if they seem necessary, is a distraction and a tactic that Satan uses to strangle our witness.
How do we overcome our tendency to be unloving? We must choose to obey and use our precious time on this earth to love God and people according to the greatest commandment of all and one like it: “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and your neighbor as yourself,” to paraphrase Matthew 22:37-39. Jesus calls us to join him every day in his work to free people around us from bondage.
Being lovingly (not grudgingly) obedient to these commands of Jesus, as we work them out daily, gives us the passion for the lost that compels us to pray and share the message of salvation with those who are perishing.