First Kisses, Honor and God's Love

 "Love one another with brotherly affection; Outdo one another in showing honor." - Romans 12:10

Sitting back in a corner of my local Starbucks, I reflect on all the things that are delightful to me despite the chaos precariously whirling my little world upside down.
I'm sure you can relate.  For a moment I block out the hefty issues in front of me and choose to lean into the simplicity of ... the weather. No joke. 
I welcome thoughts of my favorite season gently riding in on the heels of late-summer's flat air thick with car-fumes, last minute barbecues and the frenzied preparations for the next school year. The coolness, the crispness, the pumpkins, the spices...the smell of bonfire smoke in my hair.
 I welcome those thoughts because it reminds me that the world doesn't revolve around me.  In fact - life goes on, and that is why I am where I am in this season - because its time to grow.

Before I go on, I want to share a story.

 Its not a very nice one and it most certainly doesn't make me look good.  But here it goes.



When I was 11, I made a decision before my mom and before the Lord that I wanted to save my first kiss for my wedding day.  With that decision came a set of boundaries which I chose to help me in honoring those promises.  I think looking back, it was a sweet time for my mother more than I, because she knew how big of a commitment this was and well I... I had no clue.
Despite my many mistakes and slip ups over the years, kissing on the lips was definitely not one of them.
When I moved out, it became evident to me that I needed to reevaluated the reasons I kept my own rules and readjust the way I viewed them in relation to my convictions now.  This meant that my reasons for these boundaries needed to be squarely set on pleasing God and bringing a rightness in my relationship with Him - and not set on pleasing my parents and therefore God.
Now, 12 years later I had come to a pinnacle place in my life where I realized that breaking my own life rules in general was sometimes necessary for me to follow God and that there was grace for me when I broke the rules that should stay in place.
It was in this moment that I had a raw idea - if I were to kiss someone, it wasn't the end of the world.
In fact, I would prefer to "kiss someone" if it meant a deeper working of purity in my life - something that I do desire strongly. But on the other hand, I was starting to wonder if it was a realistic expectation for myself. 
So I decided to make this abundantly clear to my mom before I ironed everything out with God.
I told her that it wasn't a sin if I chose to kiss someone (which is true). I told her I wasn't going to live my life to please her anymore (which though this is true, seems to shame her, blaming her for my previously childlike mindset - which is a normal thing to transition out of as one becomes an adult. So there was no reason for the shame.)
My mother said she would be disappointed if I changed my mind.  But more importantly, she saw a red flag in me wanting to lower a standard I had so strongly held to for so long.
I told her I didn't care.
This of course caused a rift to say the least.

See, the words I used and the attitude I had was one of this: "If you roar, I can roar just as loud as you.  And also, by the way - I AM right.  Don't correct me."

I was even proud of myself.
Except for - I hurt my mom.  Not only did I slap her in the face with our own special and intimate moment together 12 years prier, I refused the wisdom from an older woman of God who saw from a different vantage point - something that could only benefit me to at least consider.
 I did not love my mom with the affection of one child of God to another.
I dishonored her history, I dishonored what God is working in her now by my own assumptions AND I dishonored our history together.
This new revelation of my life is a good and God-given thing.  But I also need to work out the kinks of what I thought and what God was saying.
 I didn't even think to filtered my raw thoughts with her.  I didn't see a need to be sensitive to my mom's feelings.  I was going to 'tell her" how it was going to be.
In retrospect, I wasn't even honoring my OWN desires by taking a look at my discouragement in this season.
It took seeing a picture of my dear friend Matt and his beautiful new bride Angela sharing their first kiss at the alter on Facebook for me to realize that not only was it a good idea to save my first kiss for the sake of my pursuit of purity, but also it reminded me of the romance I'd longed for in making that decision in the first place, even as a little girl.
My lack of honor for my own heart overflowed into a lack of honor towards my mom and her desire to see her children walk in purity.
And - God was the one who revealed all of this to me.
I made amends with my mom and though I hurt her, forgiveness and redemption are sweeter still.


Today, I'm thinking about honor.
What does it look like?
What does it mean?
How does one live a life of honor?
How does one honor?

I was challenged by a mentor of mine to look the word up.  In fact, I needed to look a FEW words up.
So here are my findings (and its always good to go back to the basics here!)

Honor means to have "high respect".
So, I went ahead and looked up the word, "respect".


Respect: [VERB def]  Admire (someone or something) deeply, as a result of their abilities, qualities, or achievements.

So in a nutshell, honor is a 'big respect' for someone or something for reasons pertaining to that subject.
There's many categories of life or areas where honor is spoken of as a Jesus-loving person.
Some of those are:
Integral honor,
honoring of one's body
honoring of friendships/relationships
honoring people in general
honoring parents (as an adult, I will specify)
and
honoring God.


I confess, though "honor" has been a frequently used word my entire life, this is the first time I'm really delving into what it actually looks like to live bent towards it.

  "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." - Romans 12:10

Romans 12:10 has been rocking my world if only because it reminds me of a gaming mentality.  Love your fellow man.  Oh.  And always one up one another in showing honor. BOOM. What now? What uuuup??

Now though this is just me being a nerd here, I believe this verse is being pretty direct.  Two sentences:  Love one another like a brother and outdo one another in showing honor.

Showing honor, as in - honoring that person.

What does that look like?

What does that look like especially when that person doesn't deserve honor in your eyes?
Note: in YOUR eyes.
Or furthermore, in mine.

It becomes a matter of an attitude... even a lifestyle adjustment.

Now understanding tendencies and sin patterns and also factoring in that I'm just straight up young, its safe to assume I will probably come at life with an attitude of entitlement and a butt-load of pride - most of which I may very well be blind to. Maybe you can agree this to be true for yourself as well.

As a result, I know I default to think I'm entitled to decide who I respect and who I don't.  While this is true to an extent, it is not the mind set-up of the Kingdom.

Here's why.


"And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that He answered them well, asked Him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind and with all of your strength.'  And the second is this, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no other commandment greater than these." And the scribe said to Him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that He is one, and there is no other besides Him. And to love Him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”"  - Mark 12:30-31 (Emphasis added)

Jesus saw that the scribe understood that the overflow of love and honoring of God and man  is far greater than religious actions without it.  "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." What does this mean?
It means this scribe had begun to grasp the mindset of the Kingdom.

Here is what I believe about honor.
How and what you believe in your heart, soul and mind will manifest in the physical realm with where you invest your strengths.

If you do not honor who you are in Christ as a believer, there is no way on earth you can clearly honor your brother.
You cannot honor your brother without first respecting him.
You cannot respect him without first seeing in  him admirable "abilities, qualities and/or achievements."

Honor (deep respect) is in essence apart of Love.

And, you cannot love (respect, honor) rightly unless you have been loved (respected, honored) rightly first, to know what it looks like.

Love the Lord your God with everything - the commandment of Jesus.

"We love because He first loved us". - [1 John 4:19]
-A God-given revelation to a beloved best friend of Christ.

Therefore, we must start at the beginning.

1. God loves us.

He formed man with His own hands (a phenomenal achievement besides the fact that He's God)
and king David knows this well as he sings,
"I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, my soul knows it full well." - [Psalm 139:14]

You can't think He doesn't admire His own work, do you?  I know I would if I were God.  Life is beautiful, despite the sin mankind invited into it and the pain it causes. His works really are intricate and wonderful.
Therefore, we have reason to respect and love Him (besides that fact that once again, He's God.)
We learn how to love because He loves us. We must respect Him because we are the very work of His hands.

2. We practice loving Him as He has loved us.

We  learn to love Him with our hearts out of faith (doing it without knowing what the result might be at first).  Then it transfers into something that engages our emotions and our "want-to's" and so we practice loving God with our souls.  Then, it begins to make sense that as we learn this love, we want to learn more about God and how this love is interwoven into the world. 'How does what I know about life fit into this agenda of love?' Really, we're learning ALL of this simultaneously.  And THEN - as God's love sets itself as a pattern in the innermost parts of our lives, it begins to make itself manifest in what we do with our physical strengths.

But it starts with letting God love us. Letting Him show us our worth in the same breath that He's showing us HIS worth.  And why does He show us His worth?  Because He made us to be the way He is [Genesis 1:26].  We see our worth when we see His.  He is gently but zealously restoring our hearts and minds to live life fully alive in Him.  As we receive His love, we begin to believe what He believes about us. We begin to love God back.

But it doesn't stop there.


  We begin to love and respect and honor what He made.  We begin to love and honor ourselves as a result.  And through that, we begin to love and respect others as well.

3. We love what God made: ourselves AND others.

Since human beings are made to be the way God is, and since the works of His hands are fearfully and wonderfully made, a person (His creation) is to be honored as a masterpiece of God's no matter how much of an a-hole you think someone is or how stupid compared to you, you think he is, how poor compared to you, you think he is, how lowly compared to you, you think he is.

Get that?
'How you think'? How we think?  Not the way God thinks.
If we think that about someone else, it's because we think that about ourselves in some way.  And if we think that about ourselves, we've not allowed God to love us and to show us our worth in that area.

Its time for a paradigm shift.  Its time for the Kingdom to come into that and turn our worlds upside down.

God honors me - loves me.
Let me receive that.
Let me love God back and honor Him by honoring His thoughts about me and therefore others.
I begin to live a life of honor.  I respect myself because I respect God and what God thinks.
I see what He thinks about me and I connect it to what He thinks about His creation as a whole.
I must then out of an overflow of my love and respect to God, not only live in an honorable way (which starts with respecting who I am in Him) but also honor other people in the same way.
If that's not happening, something isn't going right somewhere else.

Good, healthy results come from something that is healthy.  Unhealthy results come from something that is not. 

Honor is in essence, apart of love. They go hand in hand.  It is not love when there is no honor.  And honor without love is empty at best. (1 Corinthians 13)

"Love one another with brotherly affection; Outdo one another in showing honor." - Romans 12:10

This is what the Lord is showing me about honor.

It's His way of revealing more of His heart of love.

And... its His heart I'm after.