{"id":841,"date":"2013-07-23T07:15:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T11:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/?p=841"},"modified":"2014-07-22T11:31:42","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T15:31:42","slug":"the-weight-of-my-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weight of My Response"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Well known singer-songwriter Christy Nockels has a song called \u201cChoose\u201d that I\u2019ve long thought captures the desire of a heart bent on pleasing God. One of my favorite lines in the song exclaims, \u201cLet me know that You have loved me first \/ and let me know the weight of my response.\u201d The apostle John would agree with Christy:<!--more--><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><em><span style=\"color: #000000\">\u201cDear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God\u2026 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\">Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us\u2026<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\">And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us\u2026We love because he first loved us\u201d -1 John 4:7-19 <\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">What I love about John\u2019s passage, as well as Christy\u2019s song, is that God\u2019s preemptive love is emphasized, but not to the exclusion of man\u2019s response. As God\u2019s children, we are called (compelled) to love both Him and each other. Not only our we as Christians called to love, but love is our very design as human beings. This truth was brought up in group by one of our residents, which we will affectionately call \u201cX\u201d at her request. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000\">\u201cGod made us to worship. It\u2019s <em><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\">who<\/span><\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000\"> we worship that can get us into trouble. God made us to be <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\"><em><span style=\"color: #000000\">addicts<\/span><\/em><span style=\"color: #000000\">, but we\u2019re supposed to be dependent <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\"><em><span style=\"color: #000000\">on Him alone<\/span><\/em><span style=\"color: #000000\">\u201d \u2013X (emphasis added).<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Every human on this planet is responding to love, either in reception or rejection of I; or, perhaps, in search of it. I believe X correctly identified that God created an irreversible component of addiction in each one of us. We were made for devotion, dependence, and addiction. Yet, that addiction is wrongly focused on substances and substitutes of the Creator. Paul, too, has something to say on this in Romans. Paul writes, <strong><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman\"><em>\u201cThey exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the <\/em>Creator\u201d (1:25).<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Unfortunately, the heart of every person is bent on pleasing self (there is none righteous, not even one, says Paul in Romans 3:23). Fortunately, God is The Great Physician, performing heart surgery on each willing patient to bend their hearts toward His ways (see Psalm 119:36 for a great prayer regarding this truth). Of course, while we are totally transformed, we are not perfect. It is not unusual to continue wrestling to put your flesh and the accompanying desire of the flesh to death daily as you grow in your relationship with Christ (this is referred to theologically as \u201cprogressive sanctification\u201d). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Every thought, word, or deed can be run through the \u201ctwo paths\u201d grid: am I pleasing self (path one) or am I pleasing God (path two). The Gospel is simple, in that regard: your aim is to please Christ. My aim is to please Christ. Our aim is to please Christ. Why? Because we are His bondservants (see Galatians 1:10). As bondservants, our identity is no longer in our sin, but in our savior! We are no longer under the law, but under grace!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well known singer-songwriter Christy Nockels has a song called \u201cChoose\u201d that I\u2019ve long thought captures the desire of a heart bent on pleasing God. One of my favorite lines in the song exclaims, \u201cLet me know that You have loved me first \/ and let me know the weight of my response.\u201d The apostle John&#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/\">read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[12593,12590,12587,63,110,119],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Weight of My Response - Vision of Hope<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Weight of My Response - Vision of Hope\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well known singer-songwriter Christy Nockels has a song called \u201cChoose\u201d that I\u2019ve long thought captures the desire of a heart bent on pleasing God. One of my favorite lines in the song exclaims, \u201cLet me know that You have loved me first \/ and let me know the weight of my response.\u201d The apostle John... read more\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Vision of Hope\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-07-22T15:31:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/faith-blog-assets.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/20170523134354\/photo1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"960\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"717\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rachel Bailey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rachel Bailey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/\",\"name\":\"The Weight of My Response - Vision of Hope\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-07-22T15:31:42+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/#\/schema\/person\/9276435e6529cea85b3bc60b74950190\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/2013\/07\/23\/the-weight-of-my-response\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Weight of My Response\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/\",\"name\":\"Vision of Hope\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/#\/schema\/person\/9276435e6529cea85b3bc60b74950190\",\"name\":\"Rachel Bailey\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.faithlafayette.org\/voh\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/faith-blog-assets.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/20180131154804\/avatar1517431682-300x300.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/faith-blog-assets.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/20180131154804\/avatar1517431682-300x300.png\",\"caption\":\"Rachel Bailey\"},\"description\":\"I began my internship with Vision of Hope in January 2013. 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