Faith Journey | Loving the Church

Posted on Friday, October 3, 2025 by Rebecca

Another blast from the past, 20 years ago:

When Saul was confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus, Jesus did not say, “Saul, why are you persecuting my followers?” He did not say, “Saul, why are you persecuting the people under my command?” He said, “Saul, why do you persecute Me?”

When someone hits us, we say, “Don’t hit me!” We don’t say, “Do not hit the arm under my command.” We feel hit; we feel pain. We do not sense ourselves as separate from our bodies.

When we persecute the Body of Christ, we persecute Christ. When we tear down the Body of Christ, we do this to Christ as well. He has chosen to be united with His church, to be the Head of the Body.

I’m a preacher’s kid. I’ve seen the dark underbelly of the church. I have the battle scars to prove that we as Christians shoot our wounded. I’ve fired more than a few rounds myself. I have good reason to be wary of fellow Christians, to be reluctant to fully commit myself to a local expression of the Body of Christ. My problem is not with Jesus; it’s with some of His followers.

Or so I tell myself.

The sad truth is that I do not love the Body of Christ as I should. And there is only one possible explanation for this coldness in my heart. It is because I do not have enough love for the Head. God forgive me.

May I love Jesus more. May I love all of Him, with all of my heart, mind, soul, strength. May I love Him passionately and zealously. May I love Him with a broken and contrite heart. May I love Him in purity and holiness. And then I will love His Body as I should.

My understanding of ecclesiology has gone through a number of changes in these past 20 years. But these words I wrote back then still challenge and convict me.

May I love Jesus more.

How not to evangelize

Posted on Friday, September 22, 2023 by Rebecca

It happened one day when I was in college, minding my own business, deeply engrossed in reading something posted on one of the campus bulletin boards near Bruin Walk. Suddenly some guy rushed up to me and, without warning, shouted something like, “Did you know you’re going to hell?”

Huh? We were complete strangers, and he had startled me.

“You’re going to hell!” he sounded even more worked up.

“You don’t even know me,” I retorted. “Leave me alone.” And I hurried away, not bothering to tell him that, if he’d actually engaged in conversation rather than accosting me rudely, maybe he wouldn’t have been as convinced of my eternal damnation. As I walked off, he was shouting some abbreviated version of what he thought was the gospel.

I wish I could say that this young, misguided zealot was the only person I’ve ever encountered who thought one should abandon all manners, decorum, and any hint of pleasantness in order to share the gospel. He may have been an extreme case, but I’ve since run across all sorts of people who seem to think “witnessing” requires rudeness, confrontation, argumentativeness, accusations, a judgmental attitude, and a lack of integrity.

Years ago, my brother described someone he knew as a “used car salesman for God”. That person wasn’t actually a used car salesman; instead, his entire witnessing spiel was reminiscent of the worst stereotype of a used car salesman — someone who didn’t care about the person or the car, but just wanted to close the sale.

“But I don’t want anyone to go to hell!” the overly zealous ones are apt to say. So they pretend to take fake surveys as an excuse to get people to talk to them…
…or they shout at strangers…
…or they keep talking to someone sitting next to them on a plane, even after that person has asked them to please let them sleep…
…or they ask nosy, probing — and even creepy — questions of someone whose name they haven’t bothered to ask…
…or they refer to people using derogatory terms…
…or they interrupt conversations…
…or they insult people’s intelligence, religious beliefs, and character…
…or they insist that their “target” is being deceived by Satan..
…or they insist on debating whoever it is that they just randomly accosted on the street…

I’ve heard the argument that, if the building caught on fire, good manners should be dispensed with, in order to alert everyone to the danger about to consume them. But Christians I’ve known who minister to those on their deathbeds have never felt the need to present the gospel with anything but the utmost charity.

Recently I heard someone make the comment, “Apologetics doesn’t convert people; love does.” The rude, confrontational, argumentative people who have tried to witness to me certainly didn’t give me any reason to believe that they were motivated by love. Often, instead, I felt as if they were motivated by anything but love.

But isn’t it better to share the gospel awkwardly, even rudely, than not to share it at all?

The same year that the rude guy accosted me on campus, shouting that I was going to hell, I was sitting quietly in a chapel near campus, grieving over a loss. There was a young man praying nearby. He finally came over, excused himself, offered me a kleenex, and shyly and semi-awkwardly asked if he could pray for me. It was the sweetest thing. I don’t remember his name or even how he looked… just that I felt his compassion and, because of that, I saw Jesus in him.

…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence… 1 Peter 3:15

Edited to add this addendum:

Years ago at work, a new coworker came into my office with a question, first thing on a Monday morning. I made some joking comment about “How can you be so cheerful on a Monday?” She quipped something humorous in reply and went on her way.

Maybe ten minutes later, she was back. She asked if she could give me a more serious answer to my question, and then she briefly told me that she had attended a Christian conference that had changed her life.

It was such a wonderful example of 1 Peter 3:15.

Sign of a loving heart

Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2019 by Rebecca

The true sign of a loving heart is that it does not give up even if treated as unworthy of any love in return. The sign of a loving heart is that it continues undaunted despite its expressions of love being ignored, rejected, resented, misunderstood, criticized, or maligned. No matter how love is perceived or received, it persists, not in weakness but in strength.

Love does not beg for scraps of affection, for morsels of approval, or for token acts of kindness in return. Love does not grovel, nor is it masochistic. Instead, love lifts up its head, squares its shoulders, and acts with dignity.

Love never fails.

The signs of a loving heart are patience, kindness — in other words, the virtues of Jesus, the embodiment of God’s love. The true sign of a loving heart is that it realizes it is incapable of such holy love, and thus it asks to be a conduit of our Savior’s love. We may fail and fall way short in our bumbling attempts to love well; we may love out of wrong motives; we may offend the very ones we are attempting to love; we may be tempted to give up and retreat to safety; we may find the task of loving our enemies to be a near impossibility; but Christ’s love does not and cannot fail.

Beholding Beauty | Fashionless Friday

Posted on Friday, February 8, 2019 by Rebecca

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

For years those words haunted me: am I only beautiful if someone else considers me to be so? And, as someone who has never met our society’s conventional beauty standards, why couldn’t I just accept this fact — why was I so hung up about wanting someone to find me beautiful?

As a young teenager, I used to fantasize that there was a boy somewhere on this earth who would look at me — in all my skinny scrawny shapelessness, with my frizzy unruly hair, buck teeth, acne, freckles, and weird-looking bony knees and feet — and somehow find me beautiful. And, since I was fantasizing, I imagined him as a nice, sweet, wholesome, kind, sane boy rather than as a desperate, lunatic boy with low self-image and poor taste. Finally, that fantasy seemed too ridiculously improbable, even for me, so I began dreaming of a boy who would overlook my outward appearance and even my misfit personality, and would somehow manage to fall in love with a hidden inner beauty that hitherto no one — not even me — had ever managed to discern.

I was thinking about all that recently, as I had the enormous privilege to kneel — and I mean this as literally as possible — at someone’s beautiful feet. As I rubbed these dear, sweet, painful, elderly feet with soothing lotion, I thought of the verse, “How lovely are the feet of those who bring good news!” My mother has truly announced “good news of happiness” to many. Her feet are beyond beautiful.

All that has made me think, yet again, about my notions of beauty and my desire to be found beautiful. I’ve written about it before, about three and a half years ago.

That post was about, among other things, purposing to cling to “my other-worldly notions of beauty, and of what makes someone attractive to me”. I ended by stating:

After all, the thought of hearing the words “my good and faithful servant” means far more to me than even the most flattering words and opinions of mere mortals.

What does that have to do with beauty being in the eye of the beholder? I realized, as I knelt at my mother’s feet recently, that God has been changing my eyes — not my physical eyes, but the ways in which I see and appreciate beauty. There is so much more to loveliness than most of us can recognize, especially if our eyes and hearts have been trained by societal norms.

One of my favorite people to pray with has hands I find absolutely beautiful. She sees hands damaged by hard work and arthritis; I see hands that have served Jesus oh so very well, hands that have soothed the dying, hands that have brought me flowers she lovingly tended in her garden, hands that continue to bless everyone she touches. I see hands so beautiful that they have moved me to tears.

Back when I was that young teenager, facing constant mocking and bullying at school, desperately dreaming up fantasies of sweet boys who would find me beautiful rather than ugly, I began looking at myself through the wrong set of eyes. The people who truly loved me never considered me ugly — not even when my actions and attitudes were. It has taken me decades to be able to look at pictures of young teenage me and not feel embarrassment and humiliation… and self-loathing.

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’?” (‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭45:9‬ ‭ESV‬‬)

Ouch. That’s what I was doing. I was telling my Creator that He did a lousy job when He knit me together in my mother’s womb. I was accusing Him of shoddy workmanship… just because some people, including myself, were looking at me through the wrong eyes.

Love sees beauty even when others don’t.

That’s the kind of eyes I want, so that I might be a beholder of beauty, whether it’s mine or someone else’s. I want to have beauty in my eyes, so that I might see beauty wherever it is to be found.

I don’t love Jesus enough

Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2016 by Rebecca

During this past Holy Week, as I contemplated the enormity and necessity of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf, I was struck again with a painful realization: I do not love Him nearly enough. I don’t love others enough either. This sad truth comes as no surprise to me nor to anyone who knows me. In fact, those who apply love as the litmus test for followers of Jesus — “By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you love one another” — no doubt could find reason to fear for the state of my soul. All too often, I am a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.

Even as I admit the sorry state of my pitifully stingy heart, defensiveness rises up in me. But, but, but…! I’m not as bad as some other people! It’s not as if I don’t love Jesus at all! Besides, I used to be much worse — look how much I’ve changed!

It is painful and difficult to admit is that I continually fail at the two greatest commandments we have as Christians: I don’t love God with every fiber of my being, and I don’t love others as much as I love myself. In fact, all too often my life is pretty much all about me, even when I am attempting to be at my most selfless, even when I am attempting to love sacrificially. No one who has met me would ever mistake me for Mother Teresa, and they certainly wouldn’t mistake me for Jesus.

I could trot out excuses. I love to the best of my ability, in my own way. I’m broken. Let me tell you about my past. I’m a trauma survivor. Introverts show love differently. And I do love — after all, I’ve raised six wonderful children and I’ve even been to Thailand twice.

Someday I will stand before Jesus, and all my excuses and “sinsplaining” will become like ash in my mouth. I will be without excuse.

As Protestants, we all too often want to jump quickly past confession and repentance straight to grace and forgiveness. But the Catholic liturgy contains a penitential prayer that says in part: “I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…” I encountered this prayer on Saturday night and felt so overwhelmed by grief and sorrow that I understood why many in the past, when confronted by God’s holiness, felt compelled to repent in sackcloth and ashes.

The gospel does not make sense until we confess our sins and truly repent…and not just via a one time “sinners’ prayer” either. I am becoming increasingly convinced that repentance is an ongoing lifestyle in which we renounce our sinful, selfish ways and acknowledge that, while there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus, we are in desperate need of Him daily… hourly… constantly.

It’s not just that I don’t love as I should, it’s that I can’t — hence my overwhelming need for transformation, for more of Jesus, for the constant indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I want to love what He loves and, in order to do that, I need to get to know Him a lot more than I already do. I need the constant presence of Jesus in my life so that, the more time I spend with Him, the more I become like Him.

The good news is that He rewards those who seek Him…and in His presence is fullness of joy.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

– ‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭13:4-7‬ ‭ESV‬‬

May I learn, more and more, to love like Jesus. May my hard heart be continually and forever broken until I can truly love like I should.

Updated to add:

The other good news is that He is truly wonderful beyond words and, the more we know Him, the more He captivates our hearts. That in turn makes all the difference in the world.