Love has no hidden agenda

I used to have a calendar with cartoons, one for each day. One of them was a cartoon of a minister sitting on the sofa looking at a large, complicated year planner. His wife (it happens to be a male minister) says to him, “Don’t worry dear, just remember that God loves and everyone else has a plan for your life!” But it’s not only the agendas that other people might have for us that can deflect us. We can have what John Ortberg calls our shadow mission, our hidden agenda.

Paul makes it very clear that to live by the way of love is to dance to a different beat, to walk to a different pattern, to live to a different agenda, It is a way of life that is not meant to moulded and shaped by any other agenda than the agenda of the kingdom of God expressed through the life of the disciples if Jesus. It is a way of life that should reshape and challenge that which the world may see as normal, offering a new normality, a more excellent way.

The way of love subverts the agenda of a selfish, greedy, sometimes irresponsible agenda with an agenda of generosity, contentment and sacrifice. The way of love, according to Paul always trust, always perseveres, always protects.  But to follow this new kingdom agenda will mean that we must reject the alternatives. Something easier said than done.

 
The alternative agendas are subtle. We are so used to living in the world’s normality that we find it hard to recognise the false agendas from the true agenda of Jesus. So we adjust the agenda of the kingdom to fit the agenda of the world around us. For example, Jesus said, “Love your enemies” but we adjust his call in order to meet our need for security.

 

How then do we recognise the false from the true? How do we choose between competing agendas?

Agendas Jesus refused to follow

Political Agendas
Restoring the kingdom
Religious Agendas
The Pharisees and the Sadducees
Spiritual Agendas
The temptations
Self-fulfilment: make bread for yourself
Self-promotion: Worship me and I will give you power
Self-Preservation: Throw yourself down and God will save you.
Social Agendas
Stay with us

Handling Competing Agenda

Prayer
Perception: Discerning what is going on around us, and in us.
Priorities: Seek first the kingdom
Position: Following Jesus not leading

What is my agenda?

Consumer: typified by only worshipping God when things go well, only serving God when the cost is manageable, only following Jesus when it’s not too demanding.

My shadow mission: In public generous, forgiving and loving. In private mean, spiteful and self-centred.

Jesus calls us to an agenda of:

Surrender: “Here I am Lord, send me”
Commitment: "Take my life and let it be..."

Conclusion

Have you checked your agenda recently?

Have you taken a good, long look at your priorities? Are they more about you, your ambitions, your desires, than they are about following Jesus wholeheartedly, seeking his priorities for your life rather than your own.

Perhaps you have never prioritised the kingdom of God in your life. Perhaps the way of love has escaped you because you have never discovered God’s love for you in the first place. Perhaps today you need to step into that love in order that you might begin to live in the way of love.

Jesus calls us to reject any agenda that is not the kingdom agenda, to choose one master to love an to serve.

You alone can make that choice.