The Passion of a Bold Love

by Larry Crabb
from the Forward to Bold Love by Dan Allender

We’ll never get it quite right until we’re home.  Only then will we be safe from damaging assault, uncorrupted by false values, and entirely free to live by design.  But until then, God has made provision for our joy in the middle of adversity.  He quietly stirs up a hunger for purity that is stronger than lust; and He empowers us to pursue other people, even ones who mistreat us, in the strength of forgiveness and restorative grace.

But supernatural joy, deep purity, and passionate love (the kind that survives abusive treatment) are in short supply in our Christian communities.  We’re better at singing about joy than sensing its reality when adversity hits.  We’re more inclined to resign ourselves to conceal impurities than to honestly confront our defeat.  And we like to measure our spirituality in terms that never require us to face the deadness in our souls, which takes the passion out of our relationships.

There are sings, however, that God is on the move.  Two trends in particular encourage me to think that an awakening may be on the way.  They give me hope as I continue on in a shallow, wicked world where nothing works the way it should…

…One hopeful trend is the renewed courage in many quarters to believe that God exists, imminently, that He might do something discernible and deep, that prayer provides a literal connection with Him — just as telephone wires reach another mere mortal — and that a unity among similarly connected people could weaken sectarianism without compromising distinctive convictions.

Call this trend a recovery of the supernatural, or of the reality of a relationship with God.  And then realize that it has the potential to make us passionate about the right things.  Can you imagine debating our differences candidly with legitimate zeal, without losing a burning passion for Christ that keeps us holding hands?  Recovery of contact with the supernatural could promote the unity for which the Lord Jesus prayed just before He died.

The second trend involves a willingness to be done with pretense.  For too long, we have maintained a confidence in the power of God’s Word by pretending that things aren’t as bad as they are and that God’s call to love means something less than He intended.  If we find the power to keep our relationships pleasant and our personal lives disciplined, then we congratulate ourselves for our maturity.

I’ve often wondered if the popularity of big churches, where the Sunday morning event is more important than everyday community, reflects a disillusionment with relationships more than a love for worship.  And I’ve wondered, too, if exciting conferences, where speakers perform after reciting the stock disclaimer, “I’ve come here to minister, not perform,” give us any more than a temporary rush without equipping us to move toward God through our private agony and failure.

But good things are happening.  Big churches and exciting conferences are more often addressing the real problems of life and are encouraging ongoing community as the proper context for working through our heartbreak, rage, and doubt.  We’re coming to realize that a relationship with Christ is not intended to cover up the dark side of life, but rather to illuminate a path through it.  And a few are seeing that true Christianity does not offer God as a higher power who solves our problems, but rather it exalts God as reason enough to persevere with purpose, hope, and joy.

This second trend — call it the courage to struggle — complements the first.  It calls us into a battle where we will either be killed or put in touch with God.  It calls us to engage God’s enemy.  And it reminds us that if we battle a different foe, we go it alone.  When we take on merely those forces that work against our immediate comfort, and fail to engage the diabolical enemy who longs to rob God of glory, then God never becomes a reality — because He is waging war on a different front, where the battle is far more intense.

God’s consuming preoccupation is to destroy evil through the power of sheer goodness made known through His perfectly righteous love.  And, as every Christian knows, that take some doing.  God is relentlessly determined to erase every suspicion that He is not good and to bow every knee in confession that there is no glory greater than His.

Until He returns in full revelation of the power of His uncompromising love, He commands His followers to enter the reality of life (and to be bloodied by contact with evil).  We are to be armed for battle with a higher purpose than present enjoyment, a determined confidence that God is good no matter what happens, and the passion of a love bold enough to take on the real enemy.

The courage to struggle against evil with the weapon of bold love needs to be encouraged.  Its development will expose the lie of a moralism that tells us to insulate ourselves from the human heart by focusing on conformity to external standards.  It will shatter the pretense of a legalism that reduces life to an orderly system where doing right things preserves us from having to walk through deep valleys of confusion, doubt, and pain.  Coupled with the first trend — the recovery of the supernatural — this second one could unite us for battle against a common enemy and get us moving onward with the courage of supernaturally equipped soldiers.

Life is not easy.  It can be good, but it is not easy.  Bigger churches were we can hide and more exciting conferences that pump us full of adrenaline are not the answer.  We must discover God’s power to care about others when our heart is breaking; we must find god’s love to reach out to lost people even though our pain continues.  We must learn to live well in a community of people who are sometimes wonderful, too often unspeakably evil, and usually somewhere in between…