Habits of Love

This may be only my second time in Birmingham, but I know what Birmingham needs from you. Minneapolis and St. Paul need it from me and my family and my church. Wherever Christians have been for two millennia, our neighbors, our coworkers, and our cities have needed these things from us: our witness, our generosity, and our service.

The most important of the three is our witness. Witness requires words. Words should provide clarity and specificity. A witness has seen and heard and experienced something important — and so he speaks, with as much clarity and specificity as he can, to testify to others, to tell them about what he has seen and heard and experienced. Witness is most important, because the words of witness give meaning to the acts of generosity and service.

But generosity in Jesus’s name, and service in Jesus’s name, play their own essential part in confirming the witness, and adorning our words, and demonstrating the heart of love that goes with the witness and that has been changed by what we’ve witnessed. We witness as those whose lives have been transformed by what and whom we’ve witnessed; we do not witness as mere bystanders.

Habits of Love

In this session, our focus is on the habits of life that we hope God’s means of grace, and our habits of grace, will produce in us. We could call these “habits of love” — that is, the kind of rhythms and patterns of life we cultivate in Christian love for others, flowing from a heart that is being regularly fed and filled by God’s means of grace in his word, prayer, and fellowship.

What we’re doing here is focusing on the last twenty pages of the Habits of Grace book. In the first session tonight, Marshall essentially summarized the book’s first two hundred pages. Now my modest assignment is to capture just the last twenty. My hope in these few minutes is that you would get some clarity about where we want this life, lived in our various “habits of grace,” to lead. Habits of grace, rightly engaged and enjoyed, will lead to habits of love that serve others in the name of Jesus.

This is part 4 of the book, which is distinct from the first three parts. Parts 1–3 are about God’s ongoing grace flowing to me, and then, with fellowship, a transition begins to happen as God’s grace also streams through me and my words in the mutual upbuilding of church life. Perhaps my favorite quote (outside the Bible) on the means of grace is from J.C. Ryle (1816–1900):

The “means of grace” are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification. I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul and strengthens the work which He has begun in the inward man. . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and He will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them. (Holiness, 26)

Now, in this session, our question is this: What do we do with these “fresh supplies of grace [conveyed] to the soul”? What are the means of grace for? Well, for one thing, they deepen and enrich our enjoyment of God in Christ. The fresh supplies of grace cause our souls to survive and to thrive in Jesus. But then what? What about our friends and family and neighbors and city? What about the second-greatest commandment, to love others as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:39)?

Nine Companions

Recently, I came across a new book that commends nine practices of Jesus as spiritual disciplines for Christians today. Here are the nine:

• Sabbath
• Solitude
• Prayer
• Fasting
• Scripture
• Community
• Generosity
• Service
• Witness

Those are nine great practices. But they’re not all alike. This is like a fruit basket; you have some apples and oranges and bananas and a peach. For instance, alongside practices like Sabbath and solitude, couldn’t we add some others? What about sleep, exercise, nature, and music? And what about biblically commanded means not in the list, like baptism and the Lord’s Supper and corporate worship?

So, we have work to do here, some triaging and some ordering. How do these good practices relate to each other?

Of the nine, two are clearly God-appointed means of grace: Scripture and prayer. One is almost a means of grace, or close to that, or maybe that, depending on how you define it: community. If “community” means casual Christian friends, then it genuinely can assist in our accessing God’s means; but covenant membership in the local church would be the means of grace proper.

Then there’s fasting, which I’d call an “appointed assistant.” Fasting, on its own, is not a means of grace, but it accompanies or assists prayer. Fasting is a way of intensifying our prayers. It’s like a megaphone for especially needy prayers.

Sabbath and solitude, then, we might call “assistants.” Resting from our vocational labors can assist us in gathering with the church and engaging in communion with God through his word and prayer. Solitude also can assist, if used for engaging with Scripture and for prayer. But as therapeutic and spiritual as they may feel, resting and getting alone on their own are not God’s appointed means of grace, apart from being contexts in which we access his word, prayer, and covenant fellowship.

(This is where we could put sleep, exercise, music, and nature; on their own, they are not means of grace. They are normal human activities, which humans everywhere benefit from whether they have faith in Jesus or not. These are good aspects of human life in the world God made that can be good assistants in pursuing God’s grace through his word, prayer, and fellowship. But to convey fresh supplies of grace to the soul, they need to serve word, prayer, and fellowship.)

Different Posture

From the list of nine, then, this leaves the three on which I want to focus in this session: generosity, service, and witness. These last three are different from the other six. Scripture and prayer are Godward and receptive; community is others-ward and first receptive, then also reciprocal. But these last three are first giving, not receiving; first pouring out, then receiving reward. In these three, we give of ourselves: We share the message of Christ, we give of our finances and possessions, and we give of our time, energy, and effort.

“The words of witness give meaning to the acts of generosity and service.”

So, let’s look at each of these three “habits of love” briefly. You could call these “Witness, Generosity, and Service”; or you could say, “Mission, Money, and Energy”; or you could say, “the Commission, the Dollar, and the Clock.” With each, I’ll turn to a few key texts of Scripture and ask a few questions to help us as we each consider applying and cultivating our “habits of love.”

1. The Commission: Jesus works through his disciples to make more disciples.

There are at least two commissions from Jesus:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18–20)

So, two aspects of Jesus’s commission are witness and disciple-making. First, witness:

Empowered by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, we tell other people about Jesus and his gospel. We witness to what we ourselves have seen and heard and experienced in Jesus. We tell others about him with a view toward their embracing Jesus for themselves and being baptized into his church.

But there’s another part to it in Matthew 28:20: “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” The mission doesn’t stop at conversion and baptism.

What would Jesus’s disciples have understood when Jesus commissioned them to “make disciples”? He had called them in Matthew 4:19:

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Then, for three-plus years, he had invested himself in them, day by day, making them fishers of men. Disciple-making was not a one-time witness and baptism but an ongoing investment in their lives to form them into the kind of disciples who would make other disciples.

So, here’s what I have in mind when I speak of disciple-making:

The process in which a maturing believer invests himself, for a particular period of time, in one or just a few younger believers, in order to help them grow in the faith, including helping them also to invest in others who will invest in others.

The apostle Paul captures this mission to one of his disciples in 2 Timothy 2:2:

What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

Paul mentions four generations: Paul, Timothy, faithful men, others also.

What does this have to do with witness and mission as “habits of love” through which we not only pour out but also benefit and receive? My short answer would be that witness and disciple-making are two-way streets. When you witness and when you invest in discipling others, you not only expend your own energy and heart and life, but you taste great joy in and because of the work.

Paul gushed about the joy he received from his converts:

What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy. (1 Thessalonians 2:19–20)

So did the apostle John about the joy he received from his children in the faith, those in whom he had invested:

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. (3 John 4)

Here are a few questions to ponder:

• Who in your life right now (at work, at home, a neighbor, a teammate) needs your witness or discipling?

• If it’s an unbeliever who needs to hear your witness and be invited to embrace Jesus, then here’s a first step: Pray for him or her. Pray that God would crack doors to witness. Pray that he would give you ideas for time together (in the right contexts), for asking the right questions, for their readiness to hear, and for your courage to go ahead and share even when the moment’s not perfect.

• If it’s a younger Christian, also begin with prayer. Consider how you might prioritize time together, and make plans to invest regularly in a younger brother or sister in the faith.

So, first, we have the Commission: Jesus works through his disciples to make more disciples.

2. The Dollar: Jesus frees our fingers to give generously in his name.

As we cultivate habits of grace, and our hearts are regularly fed and filled with God’s word and through prayer and in fellowship, we become the kind of people who want to give, like Christ himself has given. One expression of that is generosity: the giving of our possessions and finances.

A heart full and happy in God gladly uses its money to show Christian love and to help others in Jesus’s name. Generosity is one of the great evidences of truly being a Christian and delighting in Jesus. “Freely you have received,” Jesus said; “freely give” (Matthew 10:8 NIV).

The great reason for Christian generosity is that Christ himself gave. Second Corinthians 8:9:

You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

Our giving to others is not payback for his giving himself for us. Rather, we give because his giving changes us, and he keeps on giving. And so, Paul summarizes Jesus’s teachings about giving like this in Acts 20:35:

Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Generosity with our stuff and our dollars not only reveals our hearts but is a means of reward. Jesus doesn’t want us to give out of obligation or under compulsion. He wants us to give cheerfully, with our hearts full in him, and in pursuit of even greater, even richer, joy in him.

So, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9:7:

Each [Christian] must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Not only does our God love a cheerful giver, but he himself is the great cheerful Giver. When we give cheerfully, we experience the increased joy of being like our Father in heaven and enjoying even more nearness to him.

Here are some questions:

• How tight are your fingers with your finances?

• Do you know the joy of giving to others and trusting God to provide for you, and the reward of fellowship with him through giving sacrificially and cheerfully like him?

• Has God met your “needs of this life” and given you excess to share and give generously in Jesus’s name?

• How might he be calling you to sacrifice — not only giving comfortably from excess, but making some particular sacrifice of some possession you otherwise would enjoy, or finances you would use for something else, to go without that others may have?

First, we have the Commission: Jesus works through his disciples to make more disciples. And then we have the Dollar: Jesus frees the fingers of his disciples to give generously and sacrificially in Jesus’s name.

3. The Clock: Jesus strengthens our hands to dedicate time, energy, and attention to serving others in his name.

Your clock is even more precious than your dollar. Many of us in the modern world have an excess of money and possessions, but we all have the same number of hours each day as humans have always had. And we all have limited resources of energy, and we all live in 2025, when there is a war for our attention perhaps like never before.

In Psalm 90:12, Moses prays,

Teach us to number our days
     that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Paul writes in Ephesians 5:15–16:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

We need wisdom for how we manage the clock, our schedules, to do others good.

First, a word of warning about scheduling. James 4:13–15:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

We do not know what tomorrow will bring, much less next week or next month! So, as Christians, we steward our schedules with open hands. We don’t plan like the world does. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are not our own, and our time is not our own. We have been bought with a price — the precious blood of Jesus. So, glorify him in your schedule. What might that look like?

Here are my closing questions:

• Are you more prone to be selfish with your time and attention, or careless? Are you more prone to over-schedule or under-schedule?

• What is your present calling in life? Not a calling that you aspire to in the future, but your calling right now. Think first and foremost about doing good for others in the scope of your calling.

• When you schedule your time, do you put the big stones in first? That is, what are the most important and typically most emotionally difficult parts of your calling? Put them in the jar first; then you can put the small pebbles around them. Prioritize the more difficult tasks that really move the needle in your calling and thus serve to bless and benefit others.

• Do you make the most of the morning? Not just the first morning, for time alone with God, but also the “second morning,” the beginning of the workday?

• Do you schedule in margin and flexibility for meeting the unplanned needs of others that arise? Do you have enough margin and flexibility in your calendar to meet late-breaking needs, to engage in unplanned conversations, or to share Jesus in unscheduled interactions, without dropping the major tasks of your calling?

Pouring Out in Joy

Brothers and sisters, you can’t pour out if you don’t fill up. And those who fill up want to pour out. And the pouring out of our finances, of our time, our attention, our energy, our very lives in disciple-making, are not only expressions of our joy in Jesus but also occasions for enriching our joy.

When we pour out, our God never leaves us empty. He fills us up again, whether in the act of love itself or in the reward we receive in greater nearness to him.