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The Missing Ingredient

My wife’s banana pudding is my favorite. And Dawn’s such a great cook, she’s even adapted her recipe to my low-carb diet. She now makes her world-class pudding, but with Splenda! And I promise, you cannot taste the difference.

Evidently, there are some ingredients you can substitute and still end up with a delicious dessert. But I caution you: leave the bananas out of the banana pudding and Uncle Dave is not going to touch it!

For some ingredients, there is no substitute.

But there’s a missing ingredient in too many Christian’s lives today. And the diabolical thing is those believers have absolutely no idea it’s gone. In fact, they’d fight you if you told them.

And that’s part of the problem: the fighting is the proof that essential ingredient is gone. So what’s the missing “secret sauce”?

Quite simply, they’re missing love.

No, not a mushy sentimental love, but the world-changing love the early church exhibited in abundance. And too many of us are just fake “banana pudding”: all fluff and vanilla wafers, but NO FRUIT!

You see, I’m grieved right now at the hatefulness I’m witnessing from professing Christians toward each other. In church after church, I hear about fighting, backstabbing, and power struggles. Some even threaten legal action against each other, all done in the name of Jesus!

Meanwhile, unbelievers are laughing as they watch those “loving Christians” rip each other apart.

All these people think they’re fighting for “what’s right”. But more accurately, many are really just fighting for “their rights”. And with all their arguments trying to prove who’s right and who’s wrong, they completely miss the destruction it’s causing to the body of Christ.

When Paul is rebuking the Corinthian church for its infighting, he brings up a convicting question:

“Why not just accept the injustice and leave it at that? Why not let yourselves be cheated?” – 1 Corinthians 6:7

Paul goes further to say that by their very actions, they’re already defeated as Christians. Their testimony is destroyed and the name of Christ is tarnished because of it. Shameful!

I know many of us think “love” is somehow a remedial part of the Christian life we’ve long since moved past. We’re interested in the “deeper things” like doctrine and theological puzzles. But love is not remedial for any Christian – you never move past it. It is an essential qualifying element to Christianity, without which all our doctrine and good works are disqualified.

Without love, we’re nothing better than the Pharisees. We have all the right answers, even some right actions, but the wrong heart. 

People without a heart filled with God’s love get so disoriented in the fight that they forget what they’re really fighting for. And Paul warns just by their willingness to fight with believers, they’re already losers in God’s eyes.

When did we start thinking that anything about a believer’s life on this earth was supposed to be about “winning”? Aren’t we the ones who are here as “strangers in a strange land”? Aren’t we of another Kingdom where the “first” of this world will be counted as “last” in the next?

Paul points out that the winning strategy for Christians is to actually give up our rights. It’s better to “be cheated” as Paul encourages than to fight each other and become some atheist’s “cautionary tale” about what Christians are really like.

By fighting for our rights, we’re actually disproving the greatest evidence for the Gospel: God’s miraculous love working in us!

I don’t bring this up causally as someone without a “dog in the fight”. I’ve learned personally how hard it is to turn the other cheek. I know the sting of betrayal by a Christian brother, to be taken advantage of, to be used. In fact, it’s happened recently enough to me that I’m still a bit raw from it.

When you’ve been abused, you want to shout the name of your abuser to the mountaintops. Or more effectively, on your Facebook page and on every social media outlet imaginable. And that’s exactly what some people do.

Scrolled through any Christian leaders’ Twitter accounts recently? You’ll be amazed at how viciously Christians can attack each other.

It’s taken a supernatural love for me not to retaliate. That love is in fact Christ’s love for His church working through me. While I could easily get revenge with just a few emails or social media posts, it would do immeasurable harm to the church.

By the way, I’m not saying when innocent children are abused we should stay silent. We must always protect the weak and stand against the bullies of this world. But as a grown adult believer, my God is all the Defender I need without exacting any “pay back”.

This is how Christians should be known:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:34-35

That supernatural love was so evident in the early church even their enemies couldn’t deny it. Early church father Tertullian quoted a pagan non-believing official as saying, “Look at how much they love each other!” when observing the Christians of his day.

Tell me, would non-believers in your city say that about your church?

More personally, would people in your workplace or neighborhood say that about you?

I’m afraid some of us take “love” for granted, like some sappy Hallmark Channel movie. Some more legalistic believers almost consider it to be a weakness. They think our good works or church attendance speak best to our Christian commitment. Somehow they forget love is only real evidence that we are even “in Christ” in the first place! Love is indeed the qualifier without which our Christian works have no validation.

“If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” – 1 Corinthians 13:3

So love is the one ingredient that qualifies our service to Christ. Without love, our good works are vain and will burn up in the fire. Without love, there’s nothing to distinguish us from other religions. Without love, we destroy people in the name of the God who loves them.

In fact, without love, there’s really no proof you’re a Christian at all. 

In a world that prides itself on its “victim status”, wouldn’t it be great if we refused to retaliate against our abusers? In a world that’s forgotten how to forgive, what if we let our debtors go free? What if we decided our own pain is nothing compared to what Christ endured because of our offenses?

Without that kind of love, no one’s going to believe there’s anything special about our Jesus. And who could blame them?

So fight all you want, but you’re making your pudding without the most important ingredient. And if you’re trying to be a Christian without love, you’re missing some important spiritual fruit.

In fact, I hate to say it but…you’re just bananas.

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1 Comment

  • Sherrie
    Posted February 13, 2020 at 9:37 pm

    Wow 😳 I sure needed that thanks 🙏 for your words of wisdom … blessings to you and your family 🥰

    0Likes Reply

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Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.