How to Fail At Being a Martyr

It’s a funny title, but it’s a real thing. After all, as 1 Corinthians 13:3 says: 

“...and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing”.

Most people I know would say that if you were willing to give your entire life for something, even to be martyred for it, you must really have the goods.

Most people would say you really love something or someone.

Apparently most people are wrong.

That act alone doesn’t qualify you to have love. That’s the crazy thing. God says the only thing that makes it profit “something” is love.

What is love, exactly?

How could something drive you to give up your entire life and yet it not be love?!

I was asking God about that recently. God’s Spirit was shining His “flashlight” into my heart, as advertised. (“...the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depth of [your] heart.” Proverbs 20:27)

I didn’t like what I saw.

I told people: “I love you”, but when God’s Spirit started drawing me closer and closer, I saw my “so-called love” and all my righteousness was nothing more than filthy rags.

There’s something about God’s Spirit that’ll convict you more and more the closer you get to Him. You get to see clearer and clearer the difference between our “normal” and God’s “normal”.

As Hebrews 4:12 says, the word of God is “living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of thoughts and intents of the heart”.

That cuts pretty deep! Can you tell where the soul and the spirit divide?

As you draw closer to the Lord, He’ll show you!

I know. Because as I drew closer to the Lord, I began to see the difference between God’s love and my so-called love. It got so bright and so clear, I didn’t know that I could call it “love” any more.

It didn’t look like God’s love. It was full of quietly selfish motives. It was damaged by a carnal, worldly view point.

I watched my private judgments on people. The acts of “care” for others that I performed.

Yet in the middle of my so-called care, I caught myself looking around.

“Did anyone see what I just did?”

Then I would listen for other people’s praise. When I heard it, I would fixate on that.

As Jesus pointed out, “don’t do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them.” Don’t do it for praise, otherwise that earthly praise becomes enough reward.

As you can see why, I couldn’t call that “love” any more. That’s just making me feel better about myself.

As my girlfriend wisely pointed out, only God can give that kind of love.

One of the powerful and life-changing prayers we can pray is in Ephesians. It’s powerful because that prayer came from the Spirit of the Lord.

“....I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in Heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man…“

“...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height–-to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God..”

(Ephesians 3:14-19)

The more I could see the difference between God’s divine love and my earthly, conditional love, the more I could ask for the real thing.

Not the imposter.

Someone told me once that you can’t love one person and not another. Not if it’s real love. I heard that as a teenager. Later, I was talking to my grandma.

I have so many fond memories of Grandma. As much as she loved me, I heard her tell me about a lady at her church. “I hate her,” Grandma whispered to me, and I stared at her.

Then I watched as I put my conditions on my love as well.

“Love never fails.”

And I realized I was limited in my ability to love as well.

I had yet to know the love of the Lord fully.

I saw it so clearly, my own shallowness, the stark contrast between what I used to call “love” and yet what God’s love was, that I couldn’t sleep. I realized how much I robbed people from real love.

I slept perhaps two hours that night, but woke up in the morning, still vexed, at a hardness in my own heart that prevented me from receiving what God had.

The conviction was so strong, it even stripped ordinary life of its taste. I went to make myself breakfast, but the food tasted hollow. I threw the rest of it out of the window.

I stopped eating for days. There had to be more than this. There had to be.

In the days that followed, I watched how I rated people almost subconsciously. 

I began to look beyond that. Past how capable they were or how smart they were or any of that. I began to see them, as God must see them, for the first time.

I began to see how I rushed to conclusions. I so firmly believed in the strength of my conclusions that there was no room for God to speak otherwise.

I began to realize that no matter what I perceived, the only thing I could truly rely on was that still, small Voice.

I began to see God. 

Someone asked me, “well, how will you know when you get love?”

I truly do believe it’s a never-ending growing process. But I know God promises if you ask, you’ll receive. And if you seek, you’ll find. I know I received something I didn’t have before. 

Something even worth dying for.

I feel I could keep writing here, but I’ll end it here.

What’s the meaning of life? Our connections with God and others are the only thing that gives it substance. Great Aunt Nena May, on her deathbed, after a lifetime chasing the dollar, told us that same thing.

I don’t want to live for nothing. So I am learning to live for something. For a life of love.

I desire we live that life together.