The call to live in love is not a call for peace keeping, it’s a call for peace making. This isn’t a standard we must strive to achieve, it’s an identity we have been given to freely receive.
Transcript
Today, we are going to take a “Posture of Peace” by receiving and I mean, by fully embracing the identity of love.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you God is with you in everything. Together, we’re going to be emboldened to take a daily Posture of perfect peace.
Okay before we dive into today’s episode, I wanna give a quick family announcement and I’m sharing this here, just in case you’re not on my email list and you may have missed announcement that went out yesterday. So March is birth month for baby girl Van Zyl. It’s hard to believe she’s gonna be here in four-ish weeks and as I prepare for maternity leave, Posture is going to be moving to one weekly episode, starting Monday, March 1st. So starting next week, new episodes will be released every Monday and coming soon, you are going to get to meet some awesome kingdom messengers, who I’ve invited to guest host some future Posture episodes. Now I wanna tell you, I have been personally emboldened by these kingdom messengers and their incredible messages and I cannot wait to introduce them to you, so only exciting things ahead for us. By the way, the best way to stay in touch with me to be the first to know about updates like these, Posture news, upcoming kingdom messenger workshops that we are wanting to run in the summer, all you have to do is go to posture.today to join my email list. Super simple, super easy and that’s the best way to kind of be the first to know about these types of announcements.
Okay, so let’s dive into today’s episode. So we have been talking about love for a long time now and here’s the thing about love because I, again we can become so familiar with the world’s imperfect demonstrations and definitions of love and I think that sometimes we can become jaded and cynical, maybe tempted at times to think that love is fragile or weak, not really practical, doesn’t really get results. Maybe you think that I’m proposing that we live a life of passivity towards the hard issues in this world, but we have to remember this, God is love and God has none of those things. He’s not fragile. He’s not weak. He’s not passive. The Bible says God is all powerful. So I wanna encourage you to never become cynical about the power of love. The call to live and love is not a call for peacekeeping. It’s a call for peace making. Jesus is our peace maker. Because of Jesus, we have peace with God, the Bible says and we have a kingdom identity that is rooted in love, that empowers us to walk in peace and be peacemakers in this world.
Now, I wanna take you to a moment in scripture where I just think it illustrates so profoundly what an identity of love looks like. So in John 13:3, it says, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside His outer garments and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. And He began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them from the towel that was wrapped around Him.” When Jesus, fully knowing who He was, the power and the fullness of His kingdom identity, what did He do with that realization? He didn’t burn with rage. He didn’t become passive. He didn’t exalt himself or demand that He be seen or served. He washed feet, a servants task. This by the way, happened on the night that Jesus would be betrayed, denied and led to the cross.
On that night, Jesus says, and still in chapter 13, in verses 34 and 35. He tells His disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” He knew He would be betrayed by Judas. A friend and a follower. He knew Peter was going to deny him, not once, not twice, but three times. He knew He was going to be unjustly murdered. He knew who He was in the kingdom of God. And what does He do? He washes feet. He serves communion and He gives of Himself. He says, “Love one another, just as much as I have loved you.” And He knew that by giving us Himself, we would receive an identity where we would be empowered to do what He said. Now remembered 1 John 4. I now we spend a lot of time there. 1 John 4 it says, so we have, in verse 16. “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and whoever abides, lives in love, abides in God and God abides in Him, by this love is perfected with us so that we may have competence for the day of judgment because as He is, so are we in this world.”
This is such good news. This is freeing news because this isn’t a standard that we must strive to achieve. This is an identity that we have been given to freely receive. This is who you are full of love Himself. So no matter what comes across your day, your weekend, your month, your year, I want you to remember, you are empowered to live in radical love.