Chapter 16 – The Ultimate Buzz

Summary

The Christian life is not just about receiving. It’s also about giving. You have to receive first, which is why that has been the emphasis of this book, but I wanted to talk about how the receiving will affect our relationships with others as well. We’ll need to be able to forgive others, which can be a very difficult thing. Sometimes we’ll also need to forgive ourselves and even God in our own minds. The key to be able to do this is to see things from God’s perspective and how He is able to love. Abiding in His love will not only bring much freedom to our own lives but also free us up to love others as well. 

Outline – The Ultimate Buzz

• The Ultimate Buzz is speaking about feeling God’s love for others and seeing Him work through you
• Example of me being in search of the perfect buzz – we don’t want to experience the buzz by ourselves
•  In terms of God’s perfect buzz (His love for us), He doesn’t want to experience this by Himself either. He wants someone to share in this “buzz” with Him. He wants to talk about how we and others make Him feel. He wants to talk about His experiences, thoughts, emotions, etc. We are the ones that “do it” for Him and He loves when we share in this “buzz” with Him.
• Forgiveness is huge for relationships and experiencing this buzz – the “only love those who love me” attitude is a very weak position to operate from. You are giving others control over your life. 
• Most of the pain we feel is not from our actual interactions with people, but the judgments we make about what they are doing or saying to us. This is where the problem lies.
• Crooked Car Parking Example – many times we only see others for where they are and not what caused them to get there. Many times we take people’s actions against us so personally when it’s actually something that is a result of us living in a fallen world. 
• A revelation of God’s forgiveness frees you up to love others regardless of how they treat you
• Jesus forgiving on the cross – that kind of life can be born in us as well.

Scriptures

• John 15:12
• Col. 3:13
• James 3:17

Questions

1. What does the word Elohim mean? How does this show us the relational aspect of God?
2. How would you describe the ultimate buzz discussed in this chapter? Can you relate to it? 
3. What is the source of most of the pain we feel in relationships?
4. Think about the crooked car parking story. Discuss some instances where you may have a hard time forgiving someone. Do you think their interactions with you may have been based on something that happened to them in the past?
5. What do you think Jesus’ thoughts were on the cross? Who did He forgive? How was He able to forgive? Is this only possible for Jesus or can we find this kind of life born in us too?
6. What is the key to forgiveness talked about in this chapter?
7. How do you feel about your ability to forgive others? Share with the group your experiences
8. What kind of position does the “only love those who love me” belief lead to? Have you ever found yourself in that position? 
9. Does God demand love from us or supply love to us? What effect does this have on our lives?
10. What are some practical things you can do to abide in the love of God?

Chapter 15 -The Ultimate Buzz

The focus of this book has been to aid in strengthening your relationship with God. I want to touch on how that affects your relationship with others and offer something additional to look forward to.The following is a blog post I titled “The Ultimate Buzz” as part of my Family Life series. 

After laying the foundation and importance of our relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now we can take a look at how that translates to our relationships with others. This “family life” is not exclusive to only members of your literal family or even your church family. This type of life is something that can be applied to everybody you encounter and all your relationships. In God’s eyes we are all “in the family” and that is how he wants everyone to be treated.

I’ll be the first to tell you I’m not a relationship expert, but I have been learning a lot. I like learning about relationships because they do play a big role in us being able to enjoy our lives. I also see that relationship is what God is all about. Elohim is a word frequently used in the Hebrew Bible for God. It speaks to the plural form of God, the divine ones and His triune nature. Since we were made in His image, and the Godhead is a relational being, it tells me that we were meant to have relationships. I’ll be discussing the dynamics of these relationships in the rest of this post and how it leads to what I refer to as the ultimate buzz. Enjoy!

In my previous post in this series “breaking bread together”, I talked about the table we have a seat at, and the bread of life served at it, which is Jesus. If there was some wine at that table, metaphorically speaking it would be the love of God. That you can feel the same thing in your heart that God feels. That you can experience the love of God coming out of you for others. This is what can give you a kind of buzz.

Speaking of a buzz, I’ve mentioned my background and party days in high school and college. In those days I was always in search of the perfect buzz. I’m a very task-oriented person, so my list for each day would look something like this; go to work and make money, finish any schoolwork I had to do, go out and get a buzz, rinse repeat. This was a continuous cycle I was in particularly my last two years in college. I worked a full-time retail job in which I worked every weekend, went to school on my off days, went to the gym 3 days a week and managed to maintain a social life. During these two years the only days I had off were Easter and Christmas. My life was a blur.

But anyways, getting back to the search for the buzz, when we were in search for this “perfect buzz”, we never wanted to experience it ourselves. We wanted to be around other people, especially our friends and talk about how great the buzz is. We wanted to elaborate about all the details. How it makes us feel, etc. In terms of God’s perfect buzz (His love for us), He doesn’t want to experience this by Himself either. He wants someone to share in this “buzz” with Him. He wants to talk about how we and others make Him feel. He wants to talk about His experiences, thoughts, emotions, etc. We are the ones that “do it” for Him and He loves when we share in this “buzz” with Him.

Relationship Restoration

In order to be able to participate in this “ultimate buzz”, we need to be able to forgive people and see our relationships restored. Freedom from offense and the root cause of the pain we feel in our relationships are keys in this area. Most of the pain we feel is not from our actual interactions with people, but the judgments we make about what they are doing or saying to us. This is where the problem lies.

Consider this example. Let’s say you’re looking for a parking spot. The only one you see available is one that is between two cars who parked crooked, so it forces you to park crooked in order to fit in the spot. Now let’s say that the cars parked next to you leave before you do. People who see your car after that might look at your car and think you parked like a jerk, but that’s only because they aren’t aware that you were forced to park like that because of how the other cars were parked when you came in. See how people can make judgements only based on what they see without understanding the big picture? We make those same type of judgments about others as well. We think they are interacting with us based on how they think about us and those thoughts make it very hard for us to forgive them, when in reality many times they are interacting with us in a certain way because of something that has happened to them in the past. Most times it’s not personal, but even if it is, we need to be able to forgive them and move on. 

Jesus had the worst things happen to him that could possibly happen to anyone, yet his thoughts on the cross were still leading to the fruit of the spirit (i.e. – forgive them for they know not what they do). How is it that we can find that type of life born in us? Is it even possible? First of all, yes, it is possible. The scriptures tell us we have been given the mind of Christ. Jesus never looked at himself and said the reason they don’t receive from me is because I’m not beautiful or not good enough. He saw there was another dynamic going on in them completely apart from Him. It’s what was going on in them that brought forth these actions. That is wisdom from God.

Jesus was able to separate the sin from the sinner. He could see that their actions were a result of some false belief they had, not because they were just a bad person who wanted to do him harm. I know it’s hard for us to believe but many who persecuted Christ and many who persecute His followers today actually think they are doing the right thing. They believe in their mind they are doing those things “in the name of God”. Now most of us aren’t going to face anywhere near this level of persecution, but we still encounter many situations which bring us pain. The question to ask ourselves at the time is who told us what we are believing about them or the situation? Did God tell us that or is that a conclusion we came to on our own? For us to be able to continue to love others, we must be able to forgive them and see others as God sees them.

Effortless Forgiveness

You may think it sounds crazy to be able to or even have a desire for effortless forgiveness, but this is the way Jesus did it and this is the way we are designed to forgive. We are human beings, not human doings. We are created to be, not to do. There is a specific way to forgive that doesn’t make it to be such a hard work. When you get a revelation of what forgiveness is talking about it, you are set free and love and compassion for people comes forth. We all offend and are offensive to each other at times, so forgiveness needs to be an ongoing thing in our lives. If it is so laborious for us to forgive, it will be very hard to continually do it.

Here’s an example that will hopefully give you a better idea of what happens when people offend you. Imagine somebody is holding a gun to your best friend’s head and says that unless your best friend kills you, they will kill them. Will you be mad at your friend for the situation they are in? Wouldn’t you be able to see that it is their situation that is causing them to act the way they are towards you and not that they inherently want to kill you? If somehow you both got out of that situation alive, would you hold a grudge on that person?

In the past, my belief was to treat others as they treated me. This is a very powerless position to be in because you are at the mercy of how others treat you and many out there aren’t living their life with God. Jesus said in Luke 6:32 “If you only love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them”. This speaks to the necessity of God’s help for us to be able to love those who don’t love us. We can love those who love us easily in our own ability, but if we’re going to love those who don’t love us, it’s going to take God’s help.

This “only love those who love me” type of belief opens the door for our whole existence to be shaped by some offense that has been committed against us. Many people are living this way and don’t even realize that their life has been defined by that offense. Very few people live from the platform of who they really are but rather enslaved by an offense which shapes the life they now experience.

I remember hearing Greg Henry talk about a dog his in-laws had. This dog was a rescue dog and apparently had been abused in the past because of the way it would treat people. Greg said his wife is like the biggest dog lover in the universe. His wife would treat this dog so good and love on it all the time, but the dog would still bark at her and bite her on the nose when she came to kiss it. Her parents could’ve easily just given the dog away when they became aware of its issues, but they didn’t. They continued to love the dog anyways and a very interesting thing happened. The dog began to act according to how it’s new owners saw it. He changed from being a mean and nasty dog to a nice and loving dog. That all happened because the dog’s perception of himself changed. He was influenced by his owners unto love because of the perception his owner had of him. See how powerful it is to be free from offense? See how life changing it can be when one can perceive how loved they are? This is the same thing that can happen to us as a result of a healthy relationship with God and the same thing that can happen in our relationship with others when we treat them as if they are the beloved of God regardless of their actions. 

The key to effortless forgiveness is to understand that it’s not the person who is sinning against us but the law system they are under that is causing them to act that way. Now you are free to separate the sin from the sinner and be able to forgive them. You are free from living your life from the platform of the pain and offense people commit against you.

How to Love Like God

Once you are free from unforgiveness and can see people how God sees them, you are in position to see the love of God manifest in your life. This is the whole point of ministry; to immerse people in the love of God. There is so much focus on the love though and not how it is that this love will come about. We should consider how it is that God loves and how it applies to our lives.

Since we are made in His image and likeness, the same way that God loves is the same way love comes forth in us. So how does God love? God doesn’t love us because He must love us. He doesn’t love us because He is commanded to. Some might say, well he does command us to love in John 15. I’ll break this down in the next paragraph but let me just say, the command does not demand love, but it supplies love. If Jesus was not persuaded of the Father’s heart towards him, we would have never seen love manifesting out of him. Let’s look at John 15 some more.

John 15:12 & John 15:17 are the verses that talk about the commandment to love. Let’s look at these verses in a couple different versions:

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. John 15:12 NIV

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. John 15:12 KJV

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. John 15:12 ESV

This is my command: Love each other. John 15:17 NIV

These things I command you, that ye love one another. John 15:17 KJV

These things I command you, so that you will love one another. John 15:17 ESV

You might look at these verses and say, see clearly it says we are commanded to love. However if you look at the last verse, John 15:17 in the ESV version, I bolded the text that says SO THAT you will love one another. If you look at the word “that” in these verses it is the Greek word hina. It’s definition is; in order that, so that and for the purpose that. The ESV is the only one that translated this correctly and it makes a BIG difference. That begs the question, if the commandment is not to love but love is what results from the commandment; what is the commandment then? Well if you look earlier in the chapter, Jesus is talking about abiding in the vine. Here is a quote from Greg Henry about abiding:

“When Jesus said he abided in the Father’s commandment, he is saying he abided in the Father’s heart towards Him and others. The father taught Jesus concerning what he thought about him and all people. Jesus dwelled in that teaching, and in that He dwelled in that, it was unto the manifestation of the Father’s love for all people being born in his heart.” 

That is how Jesus loved. He remained in the Father’s love for Him and all people. A commandment in Hebrew talks about a teaching or instruction, not an order. The commandment Jesus is referring to in John 15 is talking about the teaching and instruction of what is in the Father’s heart. Again, God has something in His heart about Jesus and all people and because Jesus dwelled in that, He was able to love. That’s how God loves and that’s how we can love all people as well. It starts from the inside out. From changing our beliefs, which then lead to the actions. If you’re only concerned with the actions, you are missing the whole point of how real love occurs. If you’re only concerned with the actions, you are trying to love people in your own strength, wisdom and ability. Remember, in that same John 15 chapter, Jesus says apart from me you can do nothing. Why would he then be commanding us to do the hardest thing of all (love others) in our own ability? He’s not. Think about it.

Practical Steps for Abiding

Since the emphasis is on abiding in God’s love for us and others, I thought I would mention a few things that would help us with that. Here are some tips compiled from ex-Navy Seals regarding mental toughness:

– Eat the elephant – how do you eat an elephant? One bit at a time. This concept helps us when we come against daunting tasks. Regarding abiding in God’s love, if you’re not accustomed to this, it may seem impossible to always do this. If that is the case, then you might want to break your day down into different segments. This is just an idea. Of course, the main thing to do would be to pray about it and ask God. He will lead you.

– Visualize Success – I’m a big believer in visualization. It’s something I’ve been taught to do in sports, and I know it works. In a study about basketball players shooting free throws, they found that players who practiced visually improved by 23% and those who practiced shooting free throws improved by 24%. That’s only a 1% difference. There is a famous story about a guy who was a prisoner of war. While he was imprisoned, he envisioned himself playing a round of golf every day to help keep his sanity. When he finally got out and played a round of golf, he improved his score by like 20 strokes. All this to say, visualization and mediation is very powerful. Visualize yourself abiding in God’s love. Be specific about the details. Meditate on the benefits.

– 4 by 4 for 4 – in times of great stress, the Seals are taught to breathe in for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds and repeat this for 4 minutes. Try this the next time you feel stressed and/or temptation to get out of the place of rest God has provided for you.

– Embrace Thankfulness – sometimes we may go through periods of time where we are frustrated with our situation. In these times it can be very helpful to remember the times in the past when God has come through for us and all the things, we are thankful for.

Here is an acronym Natalie Hochstatter came up with. She developed this to help us in spending quality time with others and God.

I – Initiate Conversation

N – Notice things about them

T – Talk about their interests

E – Engage in them

N – Note what they are saying

T – Take turns talking

I – Identify Opportunities

O – Observe Body Language 

N – Never Interrupt

A – Ask Questions

L – Laugh Together

I hope this helps you in living your life Christian life and enjoying your relationship with God and others. I have provided some additional scriptures below relevant to this topic.

Additional Scriptures

Col. 3:13 – Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Philippians 2:12 – Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. NIV – Fyi, the word trembling in this verse is translated from the Greek word tromo which is used to describe the anxiety of one who distrusts his ability completely to meet all requirements.

James 1:20 – because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Col. 4:6 – Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Prov. 16:24 – Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

Prov. 15:28 – The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil.

James 3:17- But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

Genesis 2:18 – The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

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