The song is "Will You Love Jesus More"
I realize more and more as I grow in my walk with Christ and as I travel this narrow path that I must decrease and Christ must increase. It is always nice to know that people like you. It is wonderful to know that people love you, especially when those people are your spouse and children and family and friends.
However, if I lived my life and all I have managed to gain is my husband and children loving me... and everyone liking me, then I have failed.
My purpose is to lead my family and all those I know and meet to love Christ more, not me.
How easy it would be to give my children all they want and never expect anything from them. To build myself up in their eyes and try to earn the #1 Mommy of the World Award and convince them that no one could ever love them like I do... but this would be a lie.
There is someone who loves them more than me. Someone who loves them with a love so intense that I cannot even wrap my mind around it in order to even begin to attempt to explain it.
My husband and I have always told our children that we love them more than they will ever understand (at least until they have children of their own) and then we end this with a "but there is Someone who loves you even more than us and His name is Jesus"
You see we have learned that if we leave our children with us alone as their highest definition and picture of love, if we are their litmus of what so great love is... oh my that scares me. We are not as good as it gets. We are flesh. We will have times that we overreact to situations because we are tired or hurt. We will make mistakes in our attempt to love our children the way God desires us to.
We are here to love them to Christ. We are here to teach them to rest and find security in His love for them, because He is unchanging and His love is unchanging.
"You will give truth to Jacob
And unchanging love to Abraham,
Which You swore to our forefathers
From the days of old."
Micah 7:20
My goal as a mother is for God to use me to help my children to leave our home loving Jesus more.
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As a wife, if I look at my husband and tell him that no one will ever love him as much as me, then that is a lie. There is someone who loves him more deeply than I ever will be able to conceive. If my love is the litmus for my husband's worth then I will fail him.
There will be times that I hurt him out of my own hurt and out of my own overwhelment of life. I will misinterpret his words and respond out of a break in communication. I will misread his intentions and will fail to meet needs that I don't even know exist. I will never be enough to fill his every longing and secure him in every way.
But there is One that will never lash out at him, or snap at him, or fail him in any way. There is One that will always accurately define his worth and secure him. I am to always point my husband to Christ and draw his eyes to Him and not myself. For Christ alone loves him with an everlasting love.
As a wife, I am to allow God to use me to draw my husband ever closer to Him. If in my death I leave this earth before my husband, I pray that my husband will be able to say that I helped him love Jesus more.
"The LORD appeared to him from afar,
saying,
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness."
Jeremiah 31:3
My goal as a wife is for God to use me to help my husband to love Jesus more.
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As a teacher my goal is not for people to enjoy my class. It is not for them to love my style or even my excitement for what I teach. I teach that they might love Jesus more. If they leave my class only loving me, then I have failed.
My purpose is not to get them to like me and enjoy my company.
My purpose is to so glorify and magnify the awesomeness of my Christ that they do not even see me at all, only Him. I had rather they never even remember my name as long as they leave my class unabashedly and incorruptibly in love with the name that is above all names, Jesus.
"Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love."
Ephesians 6:24
My goal as a teacher is for God to use me to help you love Jesus more.
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My goal as a friend, or even as someone met only once and never seen again, is that somehow God has used me to help them love Jesus more....
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If I myself can remember this, then the enemy cannot shoot his darts of self worthlessness and hit his target.
If I myself can remember this, then I can defeat the desire to receive approval from man, whether that man be my husband, my children, my family, my friends, those who might attend my class, or people I am meeting for the first time.
If I myself can remember that the goal and purpose of my life is for those I come in contact with to love Jesus more then I am free of me...
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