85 - Maintaining a Loving Heart

Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

Love is the key to longevity, and longevity is the key to much fruit. That means that in order to bear much fruit we have to stay in relationship with people for a long time, and to do that we have to love them. If love declines, we withdraw, we become judgmental, we cease to pray for that person and stop serving them. And when those activities stop our positive influence comes to an end. We cease to be part of God’s solution and become part of the problem. So, if you and I are going to bear much fruit, as Jesus has asked us to do, we must learn how to maintain a loving heart. We can’t allow ourselves to grow sour. We can’t permit offenses to accumulate. We can’t let self-pity or impatience steal away our love. Yet the pressures of life wear heavily on all of us. Our physical health can vary. People can hurt us or disappoint us, and when they do we grow tired of them and just want to be alone.

When Jesus speaks about “bearing fruit” He’s saying that He wants you and me to help others become His disciples, and for that to happen we have to have healthy relationships with them. So learning to tend our hearts becomes a skill each of us must master. We must learn to monitor the condition of our love on a day to day basis. Has our love declined? Have people become a burden rather than a joy? Has offense taken hold and begun to strangle our affection? If so, those wrong attitudes must be pulled out like weeds must be removed from a garden. The love within us needs to be refreshed by drawing close to Jesus. We need to remember His commands and let them confront the wrong attitudes that have begun to grow. And above all, we must again and again make that decision to put the needs of others ahead of our own. I realize that there are people who end up in unhealthy, co-dependent relationships, but that’s not what Jesus was talking about when He told us to love one another as He has loved us. He was telling us to keep things in perspective, to remember how important each human being is to God. He loved us like that, and He wants us to lay down our lives so that others can live too.

It was late in the evening on that final Passover night, somewhere just outside the city of Jerusalem. Jesus was preparing His disciples for the new season that lay ahead of them. Their years of walking beside Him as He ministered throughout Israel were over. In only a few hours He would be arrested and executed. Then He would rise from the dead and ascend to heaven, so they were the ones who must carry on what He had begun. He told them, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain….” He assured them that they would have great authority in prayer, and then He said this, “These things I command you so that you may love one another” (literal) (v17).

Because maintaining a loving heart is the key to bearing fruit, let’s sit with those eleven men and let Jesus teach us how to love one another for a long time.