Love, the kind Jesus talks about, is not a feeling.

Love, according to the One Who Loved Enough to Prove it on the Cross, is action in a lifestyle.

For example, I have actually seen people who call themselves Christians brutalize a child of God, drive them into poverty, take away their ministry, lie about them and more, and then say they do it all in love. What!?

Jesus taught, “I’m giving you a new commandment: Love each other in the same way that I have loved you. Everyone will know that you are my disciples because of your love for each other” (John 13:34-35 God’s Word). Now if gossiping a minister to ruin is love, it isn’t the kind Jesus talks about.

So what do people see in you and your congregation?

I heard of a congregation which had the reputation of fighting among themselves. I thought it an exaggeration until I saw how well-developped their internal warfare had become. The reputation was well-deserved and true. They were not known for their love of each other, their service for Jesus or their Spirit-led lives of purity, but by the quality of their immoral abuse.

Now this does not mean if we love the world in Jesus’ name that everyone will say nice things about us or to us. The more we serve the Holy One the more the devil will fight us. Nevertheless, as I have experienced it when I was being attacked viciously, I was never accused of something I did wrong, but some invented flaw for which no evidence (except gossip and false witness) could be mustered. I still lost out, but I knew within myself, in the presence of Paraclete, that I was innocent of the accusations. So I have peace, even if I don’t have a ministry job with a paycheque or a spiritual part in my denomination.

I keep saying that when I stand before the Great Judge I will not be asked about what people did to me, but what I did with my faith and how I responded to the daily doses of God’s great kindness we also call grace.

That doesn’t make me super-holy, perfect or finished. It shows only my Friend and Leader loves me enough to look after me.

The peace doesn’t make sense if one’s motivation is revenge, but I have peace anyway.

And that’s the truth about the way I see life – in Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).