Naked Love: Week 3

As the Naked Love series comes to a close, senior pastor Jim White reveals how the naked love we receive from and offer to God can be demonstrated and shared with one another – in a Christian manner, so let’s try to keep the “that’s what she said” jokes to a minimum.

God directly commands us in Leviticus 19:18 (NIV), “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” That is a very weighted order. Loving someone else just as much as we love ourselves may be harder than committing not to lie, steal or murder. Especially murder, if you’ve ever shopped at the Concord Mills Outlets anytime during the week before Christmas. Nonetheless, this is the direction we are given. In order to love God, we are to love people.

Pastor White describes three steps to loving God by loving people: seeing, feeling and acting. Feeling and acting are essential steps and it is impossible to learn how to love God and people without experiencing these, but seeing is absolutely critical. One must first recognize the least and the lost by seeing pain and sorrow before they can respond through feeling and acting. In order to truly love people, we must not see them through our human eyes, but through God’s eyes of grace and mercy.

Seeing people through His eyes requires us to put on special God-Goggles. These goggles don’t see the guy you get stuck with in the elevator as a misogynistic jerk who needs to be admonished for his cheeky comments, but as a young man needing the love of Christ demonstrated in such a way that makes him realize his disrespectful remarks are offensive. God-Goggles don’t show the girl living next you who has a different guy sneaking out of her dorm room every morning before class as a whore, they allow you to see her as a beautiful young woman crying out for affection because she has been tainted by the distorted views of love society has presented her.

The act of seeing also requires us to observe evil as it truly exists and stand against it. In a world where everything sinister is viewed as commonplace and nearly acceptable, it is easy to become desensitized. With crime and indifference taking precedence over benevolence and compassion, it is important to realize that seeing isn’t everything. We can’t just see and wait for others to act. Once we see, it is our responsibility to make a difference. Reflecting on this principle brings to mind the lyrics from Israel Houghton’s song “Love God Love People,”


We look around and see
All of the humanity
Waiting on someone
That someone is you and me
You can't give it
Til you live it
Now that your heart is opened
Just reach out and love 

A great starting point to seeing people as God sees them is to take the advice given to us in Colossians 3:16 (NLT): “Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.”

And sing them so loud and so often that the jerk and the whore hear them and want to learn the words so they can sing along with you.