So this is my command: Love each other deeply, as much as I have loved you. For the greatest love of all is a love that sacrifices all. And this great love is demonstrated when a person sacrifices his life for his friends. “You show that you are my intimate friends when you obey all that I command you. I have never called you ‘servants,’ because a master doesn’t confide in his servants, and servants don’t always understand what the master is doing. But I call you my most intimate and cherished friends, for I reveal to you everything that I’ve heard from my Father. You didn’t choose me, but I’ve chosen and commissioned you to go into the world to bear fruit. And your fruit will last, because whatever you ask of my Father, for my sake, he will give it to you! So this is my parting command: Love one another deeply! John 15:12-17
Independent From God Is NOT Good
We can’t love others as we love ourselves independent from God. We can’t guard each other’s hearts within the context of a deplorable human condition. It is not that we don’t have love, we have it poured into us by God. The problem we have is called sin. We all sin, we all fall short of the glory of God. We sin when we don’t love others well, we do not love others as we love ourselves. Sometimes our lives are not wholly-holy aligned with God, therefore we devalue other people, we hurt other people because we are not dependent upon the Holy Spirit, Who could love through us and love others well through us. The key to loving others as ourselves is to depend on the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:16). Our problem is not an absence of love because God’s love has already been poured out into our heart (Rom. 5:5). Our problem is sin in our heart. We need to admit our sin of not loving others as ourselves and ask the Holy Spirit to love through us. One of the ways we fall into the sin of loving ourself more than we love others is through “Ghosting” others.
Ghosting Is A Cultural Stank
Ghosting is a cultural word that has sprung into use in this cultural climate where we cancel each other, devaluing each other for various reasons. Ghosting to me is being devalued by someone else, being treated like you are not viable, you are not visible. It is one person ignoring another person, treating them like they are not good enough, it is an elitist, self-righteous attitude towards another person. Ghosting isolates people and is used by people when they want to shun you from relating to them and usually comes out of an exclusivity, a snootiness of spirit that speaks with an attitude of: I am better than you, you are less than desirable to me. I have seen whole families who act this way, who care less what they do to other people’s hearts as they ghost people with an elite exclusivity, a snobby way of living that excludes with a self-righteous stank. We have to guard our hearts from this type of devaluing of one another.
My child, pay attention to what I say. Listen carefully to my words. Don’t lose sight of them. Let them penetrate deep into your heart, for they bring life to those who find them, and healing to their whole body. Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Proverbs 4:20-23
From Our Lives Flow The Issues Of Our Heart
People who don’t give other people permission to be in their presence, are isolating people. The worse part of it, is that most of the people I know who ghost others, call themselves Christians. This is not what Christianity should look like. How can you be a Christian when you are so rudely careless with other people’s hearts? I have to come to grips with this myself, because I have ghosted others in one way or another, making choices to stay in my comfort zone. But, I have also been ghosted by other’s exclusivity, where they did not want to talk to me and they ignored me saying hello and walked right by as if I never spoke a word. The main commandment of Christianity is to love. Ghosting is not love, excluding and exclusivity of others is not a reflection of Jesus, the One Who was so very inclusive, He was criticized for dining with sinners. Jesus never devalued other people; He was selflessly interested in other people first. If there was truth that needed to be spoken, Jesus did not run from it, He faced it head on and spoke truth in love. Jesus lived a life of compassion adding value to everyone He crossed life-paths with and eventually gave His life, adding eternal value to our lives. Because of Jesus, we can live among “the rocks” and bloom in His life.
Be Like Jesus
We can be like Jesus as we depend upon Him to flesh us out and help us live out of His Kingdom precepts. It is possible to bloom in love even among the rocks, as we lean into God’s Sovereign Sway. Even in the harshest of elements of insults, hatred, anger, being ghosted by those who not only hate what we believe, but hate us. Yes, we can beautifully bloom in and through God’s love because we were created in the image of God and God is love. We can bloom in the bright SONshine of all God is. Life is not about us, it is all about Him and how He can empower us to bloom among the rocks. Therefore, if someone is “ghosting” you, devaluing you, cancelling you, don’t resemble that darkness with your reaction. Always, despite the way people treat you, bloom in the brightness of God, SHINE His Love and grow through, living, loving and laughing, blooming in bright yellow flowers among the rocks. Remember This: God does not “ghost” us, God stays with us, and we are seen by God and loved unconditionally by God and this has to be our enough when human beings do not love us well. God loves us well.
Bright Love Shatters Darkness
The enemy of our soul wants to keep us isolated, wants us to feel invisible to one another. Reciprocal Love shatters this dark desire of our enemy with the light of God’s love, through the expressing of human caring, which acknowledges other people, letting the Sonshine break through the darkness of invisibility, adding worth to people’s lives in tenderhearted kindness and unconditional love towards them. We increase our faith by digging our life roots deeply in God, so our whole identity is rooted in His Kingdom. Where there is the darkness of incivility a bright love of God in us and through us shatters that darkness and leaves peace where there was chaos. Learn and Grow~ Dig Deeper:https://thebridegroomscafe.com/reciprocal-love/
Let me emphasize this: As you yield to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life. When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit, you hinder him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the new creation life of the Spirit. But when you yield to the life of the Spirit, you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it! Galatians 5:16-18
This Hurts
Have you been hurt by someone who has “Ghosted” you because of a “superior than thou” attitude? Have you been left out, not invited because of being ghosted by self-righteousness people? Is there someone in your life who has kept you at an arm’s length, made you feel not good enough, devalued you through their exclusivity? Then you know what if feels like to live among the “rocks”! Rocks are hard and they don’t give nothing and if you fall among them, there is no compassion, nothing to break your fall, they devalue your life experience. A hard-hearted person of exclusivity does not have any compassion or civility. They do not grant you a drop of humane or charitable acceptance, they reject through their hard-hearted elitist attitude. It devalues you; it hurts your heart this kind of ghosting. Jesus understands. Open your heart wide to Jesus and He will fill it with His Love. Where others are careless with your heart, Jesus will guard it as a precious possession. Trust Jesus with your heart. Jesus will not hurt you, betray you or forsake you. Be so. Like Jesus. Listen up to this 1 Minute Encouragement Video on how to handle this kind of hurt the way Jesus would.
O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer. He will most certainly be gracious to you at the sound of your cry for help; when He hears it, He will answer you. Though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of oppression, yet your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will [constantly] see your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. Isaiah 30:19-21
Always Exceptions In Followship
There is an exception to this and that is when the Holy Ghost leads you to purposefully Ghost someone. This is called followship, where the Holy Spirit says to you: This is the way, walk in it. Are you living out of your “head” or has the Word of GOD, the life and power of God traveled from your head to your heart? You say you are a Christian, and think you are a Christian, but do you act like a Christian? We have to deal with the worldly clutter that obstructs the way from our head to our heart, so we can actually act out of the compassion and unconditional love of God and not out of our deportable human condition. There are times we need separation from people who have hurt us. I recently told a family member that there was at this time no coming back from this horrific, hurtful choice they made. I knew from my bad reaction, God was giving me a “time out”! Led by the Holy Spirit, I Ghosted them for the time being. But, I did not do that on my own. God knew that the relational situation, it was more than what I could gracefully handle, and I need the time apart to get my heart right, to heal, and to wait on God as I learned and grew through. This is a form of Ghosting, but it is led by the Holy Ghost, and it is not done with an elitist, exclusive, self-righteous attitude, but with a humble and contrite heart. This is a good 1 Minute Encouragement Video on the concept of followship and surrender. Listen Up:
I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ —for this will bring much glory and praise to God. Philippians 1:9-11
Thank you for stopping into The Bridegroom’s Café on this day. We hope your spiritual meal on the Smorgasbord Table was soul nourishing. We are thankful for our 1 Minute Encouragement Videos which added a lot of spiritual protein to this meal today. We hope you subscribe to our Heart To Heart Channel on Rumble. The Bridegroom, Jesus, His Voice is the prevalent voice in this Café and we hope you have heard from Him today. God bless you, Much KimberlyMac