All My Heart

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

-Deuteronomy 6:5

So recently, a couple of my friends and I have been talking about "physical boundaries" in romantic relationships. Through various discussions I've come to a conclusion. God is a God of yes, not of no. God is not a God of boundaries, in fact He's a God of no bounds.

This is love for God: to obey his commands.

And his commands are not burdensome,

-1 John 5:3

These "boundaries" that we have fabricated (i.e. We can kiss, but no making out. Or, we can do anything, as long as it's not "sex") through reading the gospels and Leviticus, so on and so forth, are created so that as Christians, we can approach them without any guilt. Going as far as we can before we "fall off the cliff," so to speak.

And now, O Israel, what does the LORD

your God ask of you but to fear

the LORD your God,

to walk in all his ways,

to love him, to serve the LORD your God

with all your heart and with all your soul,

-Deuteronomy 10:12

I say let there be no boundaries. Have no boundaries in loving Christ, and serving Him through your partner. Have Christ be the complete focus of your relationship. You are in this relationship with the only person on Earth that you have found to be the most Christ-like. If you create these boundaries that make you want to approach them more and more, as you get closer spiritually and emotionally to your partner, what kind of respect and love are you using towards Christ---who dwells in your partner?

This is how God showed his love among us:

He sent his one and only Son

into the world that we might live through him.

-1 John 4:9

This is what I'm not saying: to be physical and ignore Christ's commands. No one should be doing this. I'm saying, that if you must set a physical boundary in the relationship, you might be going into the relationship at the wrong angle. Your goal should be to glorify Christ with your purity. To love Him through your partner, by not tainting or destroying the temple that holds His Holy Spirit.

Do you not know that your body is a temple

of the Holy Spirit, who is in you,

whom you have received from God?

You are not your own;

-1 Corinthians 6:19

Everyone is convicted about certain things they will or will not be partaking in during the relationship, but where's the focus? What things should you be doing in the relationship? You should be serving and loving Christ, with no bounds. No boundaries. Zero. Get rid of anything in the relationship if they cause you to create boundaries on how much you can be loving Christ during the relationship. If putting a boundary on/around what you should be doing physically in a relationship is causing you to create boundaries on how much you can love Him, then get rid of being physical in a relationship. Glorify Him with everything that you have. That should be our focus.

I have great confidence in you; I take great pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds.

-2 Corinthians 7:4

Your Love is a Song

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.... Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

-1 Corinthians 12:12, 27

So recently, community has been put on the hearts of Christian across the nation. It has been incredible. However, our Real Life Fellowship group, while reading through Ephesians, started to see how Christ has called us to community.

In Ephesians chapter 4, Christ calls us through Paul to "live a life worthy of the calling you have received. (Eph 4:1)." Paul then goes on to write, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."There is one body and one Spirit...one hope....one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and father of all, who is over all and through all and in all....Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Eph 4:3-6, 15, 16)"

Yes, Christ calls us to be unified in Him. Community is so much more than the body of people, it's the unity amongst them. Now, this doesn't just mean that unity needs to be with people all of the same age group (i.e. all college aged Christians), but that means that both young and old need to come together in Christ.

Recently, I got to experience this first hand. My church, Terra Nova, has Bible studies called "New Tribes." In these New Tribes the age range is very wide (youngest in our group is 19, eldest is what I'm assuming to be late fifties). It is evident that our New Tribe is a spiritual family. If it wasn't for the fact that we all look so very different, people might mistake us for being a blood-related family (as if a spiritual family isn't...).

Now, unity does not mean sameness. In fact, Christ has created us all to be very, very different.

And He Himself gave some to be

apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,

for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry,

for the edifying of the body of Christ,

till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,

to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;

-Ephesians 4:11-13

It is together that we function as one. We, as the church, all compliment one another. If we were made complete, knowing and having all things, then God wouldn't have created all of us. It is because of our differences that we need to be united, so that Christ may be honored in all ways.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

-Ephesians 2:19-23