How Faith and Love are Like Rain and Water

Years ago I got tired of being the neighbor with a sad lawn. So, I spent a ton of time, effort, and money on getting everything I would need to prevent us from being the sore eye of the cul-de-sac. I bought a rake to break up the soil, poison to kill off the pesky weeds, grass seed to sure up those rough spots, insecticide to get rid of all the ant hills... but what I found I was most in need of was not something I could buy at the store. It was steady and consistent rainfall.

Rain is only a bummer when you don't have seed in ground. Farmers, gardeners, and wanna-be-lawn enthusiasts like myself, love it. Rain causes whatever is planted to grow. That's why James tells us that we must "humbly accept the Word planted in us" whenever life's trials and storms come. If the Word is planted in you, the rain will bring it out of you. For this reason faith and trials are inseparable.

FAITH'S BEST FRIENDS

Faith has a lot of cousins it can't seem to do without. Let's me name a few:

Trials. Without trials faith doesn't grow. It's through trials that James tell us our faith is made mature and we are made complete

Works. Faith without works is dead. Faith is the fuel, works are the car. Where there is true faith, there will be action to accompany it.

Hope. Faith requires us to trust what is unseen and know what has not yet become obvious to our worldly nature. Where there is faith in God, there is hope for what is to come.

Lastly, love. Which leads us to this week's scripture:

THE WORD

We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. -2 Thessalonians 1:3

Did you catch the correlation between faith and love? Paul is commending the believer in Thessalonica for growing in their faith (by way of some tough persecution, no doubt) and he notes that as they have done so, they have also grown in their love for one another.

Catch the revelation: as our faith in God increases, so does our love for one another. Faith and love can't grow opposite of each other. When one increases, so does the other. Faith is the rain that's falling and love is the water that rises as a result.

I may be a little too obsessed with my lawn, but my evolution into "FULL DAD" is still not complete, as I have yet to go out and buy a rain meter to stick in my yard. That's silly... but it could be nice to have... ok, snapping out of it.

Here's my drawn out point: rain is measured in INCHES, not in velocity (how fast it falls), time (how long it falls), or style (how well it falls - there are no judges holding up score cards). We measure rain in inches because what falls down results in a build up. When water levels rise, floods happen and that's why we keep our eyes on the rain meters... at least my dad does any way.

So catch the metaphor: faith falls, and can look messy as it does, causing difficulty in our lives but ultimately growing for our good, and love builds, building in our hearts and overflowing towards others.

THE INVERSE IS ALSO TRUE

If it's true that as our faith in God increases so does our love for others, then it must also stand to reason that the pair also decrease in correlation with each other as well.

In Matthew 24 Jesus speaks of the last days saying, "Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved." (V. 12-13) It appears that wickedness and numbness of heart are also cousins.

Practicing sin will always result in treating others unkindly. Why? Because when we sin, we not only hurt God, we hurt ourselves, and we will only love others to the degree that we love ourselves. That's why we're commanded to love our neighbor AS we love ourselves. Cyclical and habitual sin is self-harm.

Practicing faith means loving God AND loving others. As tough as it may be to swallow, the reality is our lack of love towards others is directly connected to a lack of faith in God who IS love.

FAITH IT TIL YOU WAKE IT

One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes is found in his book Mere Christianity. It comes in his attempt to answer the question, what do we do with those who are hard to love? His response:

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”

To love is one of the Bible's most often repeated commands. That means love cannot solely be an emotion because we cannot be made to feel a certain way. That love is commanded means it is lived out in our actions which are the result of our faith. Love is the WORK that faith produces.

What C.S. Lewis is challenging us to do in seasons where love does not come so naturally is to love by way of faith, rooting our actions in our beliefs, rather than our feelings. This is how we break the cycle of a starved faith and a weak capacity to love. We choose to love how God loves us and in doing so we will be doing the rain dance, that brings the faith!

CONCLUSION

Our lawn looks pretty good these days. It's not the best in the neighborhood but you can certainly tell it's been given some tender, love, and care. I want people to say the same about the way I love others. May it be evident that we've spent time in the rain so we can swim in the deep waters of God's love.