Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Love: Keep Calm

Week 5



Day 1

Love: Keep Calm

Love is not provoked (NASB), is not easily angered (NIV), is not irritable (ESV).  The Greek word translated here as not easily angered has carried over into modern English.  The word is paroxyno and the noun form, paroxysmos, has been morphed into the English word paroxysm.  A paroxysm is a “sudden and uncontrollable expression of emotion.”  A visit to a thesaurus lists the synonyms for paroxysm as “spasm, fit, burst, outburst, explosion, eruption.” 
We could phrase it in any of the following ways: Love is not spastic.  Love does not throw fits.  Love avoids outbursts.  Love doesn’t erupt.  Love is not touchy.  That’s why we’ve titled this week’s emphasis, Love: keep calm. 
Concerning the indispensible importance of this quality of love, Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond offers very helpful commentary in his classic message “The Greatest Thing In the World.”
No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianise society than evil temper.  For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence stands alone. 

Wow!  Drummond certainly makes very valid points concerning the destructive nature of unloving “eruptions.”  If you have been walking through these daily devotionals with us for a while, you may already be thinking that this will make for a very painful reflective question at the end of this devotional.  Indeed.  J 
Last week we looked at the previous phrase, “love is not self-seeking.”  This is an important key to living out this week’s emphasis.  One reason we can be easily angered, irritable, erupt, etc., is that we are absorbed in ourselves, our own interests, our own goals, reputation, etc.  When somebody else interferes with our self-seeking goals or interests, we “erupt.”  Author Neil Anderson writes that anger signals a blocked goal.  He tells the following story.
Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine what we believe and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish these beliefs.  My daughter Heidi helped me with this process one Sunday morning while I was trying to hustle my family out the door for church.  I had been waiting in the car for several minutes before I stomped back into the house and shouted angrily, “We should have left for church 15 minutes ago!”
All was silent for a moment, then Heidi’s soft voice floated around the corner from her bedroom: “What’s the matter, dad, did somebody block your goal?”  That’s the question you need to hear when you start to steam because something isn’t going the way you planned. [1]
Let’s pick up tomorrow with looking beneath the surface at what causes our outbursts, which contradict the growth of God’s Higher Love in our lives.  When love is set free in us it empowers us to “keep calm.” 

Questions for Reflection
Here is the painful question:  Where have you suffered from the painful results of unloving eruptions?  First, consider when you have been on the receiving end of somebody’s anger.  How has this left a negative impact on your life?
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Now consider how you have reacted angrily and left a negative carbon footprint in somebody else’s life? 
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Part Three of painful question:  Where do you still struggle with this issue, whether on the receiving or giving end?  How is this impacting your key relationships?
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How did Neil Anderson’s real-life example help describe the process of allowing love to check our reactions and keep calm?  _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Which of your “blocked goals” are most likely to provoke an angry outburst on those around you?  Why is this? 
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[1] From Victory Over the Darkness, pgs. 122-27.  

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