Excerpts from the video, easily adapted to Czech reality
You say, we are to love people, let me ask you this question: ‘Does love require consent?’
Because our culture says yes, love requires approval. If you want to love me, you have to agree with everything I want to do. But is it really love? Parents, if you agree with everything your child wants to do, do you love them? No, you don’t love him! If you’re not in the way of evil, you don’t love. To love people, you have to defend evil. even the evils they want to do, and for which they will hate you because you will oppose them. If we don’t defend evil, we don’t love.
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Comment: Now we look at part of one of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible and I want you to pay special attention to whether – in God’s word – love is ever described as an emotion.
1st Corinthians 13
Even if I knew all the languages of the world and the languages of angels, without love it is just like the creaking of a rusty door. Even if I knew how to prophesy, understood all the mysteries and mysteries, knew everything and knew everything, and had such a great faith that I could carry mountains – provided I do not act In love, I’m nothing. And if I gave away everything I own and went to the brink of burnout, but I wouldn’t do it out of love, it would be useless.
Love is patient, kind, does not envy, boasts, nor exalts itself; She is not rude, does not seek her benefit (and does not insist on her own), is not hot-tempered, (irritated, neither easily provoked), does not count wrongs (and is not offensive). She is not malicious, but she always rejoices in the truth. She can handle everything, and her faith, hope and perseverance are inexhaustible. Love never fails (it won’t fail or end). …now we are left with faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.
Did you find true love here described as an emotion?
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No, we won’t find any feeling here! Love is not a feeling. Love is a decision, That I will try to do the best for the other person!
If love was a feeling, how could you love your enemies? When you feel no good for your enemies.
If love was a feeling, how would you make a vow at the wedding altar? Can you promise to feel a certain way for the rest of your life? Of course not! You can’t stand there and promise to feel the same for the rest of your life. It’s like you’re promising that you’ll never feel hungry again, that you’ll never be afraid again, that you’ll never feel anger again, or that you’ll never be tired again! We cannot promise feelings, we can only promise actions. And by the way, if you always felt only good things about your partner, you wouldn’t need a promise. We don’t need promises when we only feel warm and pleasant feelings for our loved ones. We only need a promise when we know that we will still not feel such feelings.
And sometimes, in order to really love someone, we have to stand against what they do or what they demand of us. Therefore, in the 1st letter to the Corinthians 13, Paul says: Love always protects. Love rejoices in the truth. Love always endures. unabledAnd that’s why we should speak up!
Have you noticed that people who claim to be fighting for inclusion, tolerance and diversity are actually the most intolerant, least inclusive and least diversionary people?
This led me to the question: Does love require approval? – Can I love someone even if I don’t agree with them? – Because that’s what’s really behind it. People think that if we love someone, we have to agree with what they are doing.
Today we will talk:
1. Why do people think love requires approval.
the 2. Should we follow our heart? Shouldn’t we follow our heart?
Because that’s what it’s really about. They say we must follow our hearts. And if someone follows their heart and you disagree with them, you are wrong by that opinion.
3. What questions We can give those who think that love requires acceptance.
1. Why do people think love requires approval
There are three ways, three currents of thought to find in life hope and identity. You may looking at other people and draw inspiration from them, you can look into or you can looking up at God.
In ancient culture, people often looked at others. In other words, followed their family. If your father was a blacksmith, you became a blacksmith, if your father was a potter, you were a potter, if you were a woman, you took care of the household. That’s just the way it was. People followed their families, at least in terms of occupation.
But in today’s modern culture, we don’t get our identity by following our family, at least not in the West. We get our identity by following our hearts. You are to follow your heart. You have to look inside and find out what your true deepest desires are, and then you have to ‘get over all the obstacles, swim across all the oceans, conquer all the mountains.’ – Is it from some Disney movie? …And don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t follow your heart. Whatever your heart tells you, you must follow it. And anyone who tells you it’s better not to do it is some kind of phobic.
Religious culture says, ‘No, follow the rules. Look up to God and do whatever God tells you.’ In fact, technically it is not even a Christian way, we are not just to follow the rules, We are to follow Jesus. And because of what Jesus did for you, out of gratitude you keep his commandments. So it is not a legalistic matter. We do not deserve our way to God. He deserved the way to you. He came to you and gave you forgiveness by accepting your punishment on the cross. And out of gratitude for what he did for me, I want to follow him. It’s not a legalistic thing, it’s based on love, it’s based on gratitude.
I want to focus on that part – should we follow our heart? – Because that’s what our culture tells us to do. They say we must follow our hearts. And why do people think that love requires approval? Because they think that if you have any thought or desire in your heart, then that thought or desire is you. Therefore, if you say, for example, that the behavior of persons of the same sex is immoral, the person who thus identifies himself does not think that you are only criticizing the behavior, but that you are criticizing him. He thinks it’s his identity and that you’re attacking him. The opinion of many people is: ‘This person just follows his heart, how can you be, so cruel that you don’t approve of it?!’
Unfortunately, it also got into the church. There are churches that think that everything that is on someone’s heart needs to be followed. therefore tragically too many churches are now more concerned with Jalogie than theology (theo=god, logos=word). unabled Whatever I want, God wants it too! If this is what you think, you have created God in your own image!
Sometimes someone says to me: ‘I don’t believe in God.’ And I ask them, ‘What God do you not believe in?’ And they will tell me and I will answer: ‘I don’t believe in such a God either!’ have created God in their own image. So we must make sure that we follow the true God, and not the one we wish to have.
I have also noticed that some people call themselves Christians, even though they do not agree with Jesus. Why would anyone call themselves a Christian if they disagree with Jesus?! It would be as if we were all on Mount Sinai, and Moses descended with the Ten Commandments and said: ‘These are the commandments from the Lord, your God Yahweh’. And we will look at them and say: ‘Moses, we do not like these commandments, we have our own!’ Should we call ourselves followers of Yahweh? No! We do not follow Yahweh. We are followers of ourselves.
In modern culture, we must try to show people that what is in their hearts is not necessarily their identity. You are not your thoughts or your desires!
If our identity were what we think, most men would be women and most women would be chocolate! 😅
So why do some people think that love requires acceptance? Because they confuse their identity with their thoughts or desires.
What is our identity in Jesus?
My identity in Jesus is A permanent and unchanging identity, I am a child of God.
It is defined by God, not worldly standards, such as my past, performance or culture.
It means that we are chosen, we are forgiven, we are loved, and in God’s eyes we are a new creation whose value is based on his grace, not on our own successes. This new identity is accepted through faith in Jesus and is based on that, who we are According to God’s word.
Key aspects of our identity in Christ:
• The Child of God: We are accepted (adopted) into the family of God and have an intimate relationship with them.
• The Chosen and Loved: God has chosen us and loves us unconditionally, regardless of our shortcomings or failures.
• New creation: Through Christ our old self has disappeared and we have been created new, as ‘new creation’.
• Forgived: Our sins are forgiven.
• God’s masterpiece: We are uniquely created by God for a specific purpose And we are a valuable part of his plan.
• Part of something important: we are part of Christ’s body, the church (of all believers), and I am a unique member with certain gifts (everyone has different).
• More than a winner: I have the strength and power through Jesus to overcome the challenges. And I am more than a winner through the one who loves me.
• Holy: Because I am separated and sanctified in Jesus. (According to the Bible, all believers are saints, not just those who have died.)
How to live your identity in Christ: Read regularly what God’s word says about who you are.
Shouldn’t you follow your heart?
There are no verses in the Bible. The division into verses was made only 500 years ago. So when you read a biblical verse, you usually have to read the surrounding text as well to understand what it’s all about. You can’t just pluck one verse and say, ‘Ah, I know what it means!’ However, there is an exception, and that is proverbs, because proverbs are only one-sentence and you can usually understand their meaning even without context.
Here is a proverb that I consider to be the second most important verse in the Bible. – The most important thing would be anything related to the Gospel, but this is the second most important verse in the Bible for our culture. it is Proverbs 4:23 Above all, guard and protect your heart, it is from it that all life originates.
Note that it is not said ‘follow your heart’ but ‘guard your heart’. Why? Because if you start following your heart without moral restrictions, you end up injured, addicted, lonely and probably dead prematurely. You simply cannot follow every whim or every impulse, every desire that comes to your mind, that comes into your heart. This is the recipe for disaster, that’s why the Bible says: ‘Wist your heart.’
So we cannot follow our hearts without moral limitations, for at least three reasons.
a) You can’t follow your heart because Your heart is treacherous and selfish. The human heart is the most treacherous of all, it is desperately evil. (Jeremiah 17:9, B21 and KJV)
b) Your heart is Sometimes divided. Do you have two hearts in one thing that your heart will follow?
c) your heart they change, especially when you’re young. Your heart changes quickly. And so for anyone who suggests that a 15- or 17-year-old should make a lifelong decision, especially when it comes to his genitals, he’s actually talking about child abuse. We should let the baby grow up first!
Now let’s go through each for the three reasons. Let’s start with the first one:
a) Your heart is treacherous and selfish
I will give an example here why I know it is true, even without the Bible. – Imagine how you prepare in the bathroom in the morning, look in the mirror and find out in horror that you have a screen on your forehead! And this screen in capital letters shows your every thought. It can’t be turned off, it can’t be covered. Wherever you go now, this display will constantly show everyone what you think. If this happened to you this morning, would you come out of the house? I wouldn’t leave the bathroom! Why? Because your thoughts and mine are bad, in fact often They condemn.
Studies show that we are judging who we meet for the first time within the first four seconds. We make judgments. That’s why you can’t remember names when you meet someone, because you think, ‘Yeah, that’s probably the ugliest shirt I’ve ever seen!’ Or: ‘Where did you get your hair cut, in Lidl?’
Your thoughts are bad, so are mine. We judge and judge. We ask ourselves, ‘Do I even want to know this person? What can he do for me?’ That’s what goes through our heads. And the Bible describes this essence of ours in many places. Jeremiah says it like this: The human heart is the most treacherous of all, it is desperately evil. (Jeremiah 17:9)
Whoever says human hearts are basically good never cared for a two year old. Does a two-year-old have to be taught to say, ‘mine’? – No! A two-year-old already knows. We must learn to share things because We are prone to selfishness! We are prone to evil. It’s easy to be bad, it’s hard to be good.
We know that relationships and marriages are difficult. Why? Because if we put together two broken people, there will be problems. We all tend to be selfish. We don’t want to serve the other, we want to be served.
Rodney Dangerfield once uttered the famous line: ‘My wife and I were happy for 20 years …and then we met!’ 😅
Relationships are difficult. The problem is that in many cases a free life is even more difficult. My wife is looking at me as a A consecration machine (cleaning)! Ha! That’s a good attitude, isn’t it? – ‘You’re annoying me, and I really don’t want to be nice to you, but I’ll be nice because I know I’m as selfish as you are.’ We are all selfish. And that is why we cannot follow our selfish hearts. If we follow them, then we will not resemble the image of Jesus – which is God’s goal for us – on the contrary, we will be more like Satan.
So, our hearts are treacherous and therefore we cannot follow them. Even a study by ‘Babylon Bee’ found that 100% of men would eat any fruit given to them by a naked woman! 😅 Do you think that if you were Adam, you would not have sinned? No way, you would do the same!
b) Your heart is Sometimes divided
The second reason why you cannot follow your heart without moral limitations is that your heart is sometimes torn. You can have two hearts about one matter. – For example, you want to feel good and be in shape, but you also like donuts with topping. Why is your heart torn because you can’t have both! Maybe you want to settle down and start a family, but on the other hand, maybe you want to have more partners. You can’t have both, either one or the other, if you get married, you can’t have more partners. I don’t know about you, but when I got married, it threw a lid on my dating.
You can have two hearts in anything. Like, you want to have the new beautiful thing, but on the other hand, you have a second heart – I don’t want to go into debt, I don’t want to feel the pressure of debt every month. – Which heart will you follow? You may have a heart that says it wants to follow Jesus, and on the other hand, you want to be accepted by culture, society and surroundings. You want people to like you. -Which heart you will decide Follow? You have to decide, you can’t follow both.
Do you know what James says in the Bible about those who try to follow both? They are indecisive! unabled Anyone who doubts is like a wave of sea, driven and tossed by a gale. Let such a person not think that he will receive something from the Lord; He is a man torn, unstable in everything he does. James 1:6-8 (ČEP)
You have to decide. And if you want you to prosper, if you want to be happy, you cannot follow only your heart, your thoughts and desires.
C.S. Lewis actually pointed out that All happiness requires self-control. He said: ‘When you succumb to all your desires, it obviously leads to illnesses, jealousy, lies, secrecy, and everything that is the opposite of health, good mood and sincerity. For any happiness, even in this world, considerable self-control is needed.’ – Significant self-control!
I don’t know if you’ve seen those studies that show that Being able to put aside self-satisfaction is necessary for success in life. If you can postpone self-satisfaction or immediate satisfaction, chances are you will be successful. If you can’t, you won’t.
In one study, they left the child in the room for 5 minutes, put Lentilka on the table and told him that if he didn’t eat it, they would come and give him another five. The study showed that there are three types of children: one child eats it right away, the other child waits and gets another in five minutes, the middle child puts his head on the table, sticks out his tongue and tries to lick it a little. When they conducted a long-term study, they found that the children who were able to wait were then much more successful in life.
we cannot follow our every desire, we must be able to put aside our satisfaction if we want to be successful, that’s what Lewis says.
Freedom doesn’t mean I can do what I want, when I want and with whom I want. Freedom means being able to do what I know I should do. That’s freedom. Pastor John Mark in Portland, Oregon, expresses it as follows: ‘To succumb to the desires of our body does not lead us to freedom and life, as many people think, but on the contrary To slavery. And in the worst case to addiction, which is prolonged suicide caused by fun and pleasure.’ If you are addicted to pornography, this is prolonged suicide through pleasure. If you are addicted to drugs, it is again prolonged suicide through pleasure. If you are addicted to alcohol or recognition or anything else, money etc., it is still an extended suicide through ‘joy’, Because you are not free when you are a slave of something. That’s why Paul talks about it so much in the book Romans 6:18 So you were freed from sin and became servants of righteousness.
Do not be slaves to sin, rather be the slaves of Christ, because When you are addicted, you are not free. We cannot follow only our hearts because it is the most treacherous and contradictory. You know that people who are addicted will rob you to satisfy their addiction. They don’t want to do it, so they apologize and say, ‘I’ll never do it again.’ And then they do it again. Their hearts are contradictory aren’t they? They try to do both. They can’t maintain good relationships because they don’t care about their health.
