Jesus Loves Us - We Must Love People

​“He (Jesus) loves us and we have to love people that way,” Jurrell Belonga.

Sometimes we get it wrong; love that is.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “love”? Sometimes I think we use “love” to our advantage. Has a child ever said, “You don’t love me,” when you told them “no?” 

Other times it feels like the word “love” has been used for just about everything. It becomes watered down; it loses its worth. Even as I am writing this blog post, I am reminded of how often I said, “I love that,” during my interview with Jurrell; I plan to do better.

I know love is not just a feeling. Love is an action.

Meet Jurrell
I met Jurrell around 1995. We began working together for the State of Louisiana in Tuberculosis Control as Disease Intervention Specialists in New Orleans. That would be the first of three jobs we worked together and we also started two businesses together.

I left New Orleans in August 2005, just one day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. When I first left, I made every attempt to stay in touch. Even after he and his family moved to Chicago, I made an effort to touch base with some sense of regularity, but as life would have it, our conversations happened less frequently. Our conversations have now become phone calls on birthdays and holidays. But however infrequent, it is always good to catch up.

I found it a real treat to get to hear his What If Christ moment. It is my mission to share moments from people where they are able to see a glimpse of heaven on earth, in their everyday lives. You know when people do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. To know that God’s Will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Jurrell and his wife Sheryll have 3 sons, Jurrell Jr., Joell, and Jamel. They are also foster parents to a sweet little girl, whom they desire to adopt. Unfortunately, until the adoption is finalized, her name or picture can’t be shared on social media.

Early in our conversation, even before the cameras began to roll, it was easy to see that he had a deep rooted love for Christ. And a love that deep is tapped into the spring of life; the living water. Which means it is a love that can’t be contained, it must be shared because his life overflows with it.

Jurrell shared how as a body of Christ, we often manage to get “love” all wrong and how that error can even hinder our witness. Getting love turned upside down seems to go hand-in-hand with so much of how the world sees things compared to a heavenly perspective. The world tells us we must be number one, often at any cost, while Jesus says the last shall be first. The world tells us that we are most important; it is all about us. But from a biblical perspective, we were created for His glory. It is not about us at all.

People also get Christian living backwards. They often think to live for Christ means you have a list of rules to follow. As Jurrell explained it, it is because of the “rules of religion” he had doubts of wanting to be a Christian. Jurrell noted that some Christians live under the persona that you have to live right. He goes on to explain that we do have to live a certain way; a God honoring way, but if that is the reason then the perspective is all wrong. We do the right thing because we love. And it is because we love that we live a God honoring life, not the other way around.

Because we often get that mixed up, instead of seeking God and fulfilling our purpose; we were made for His glory, we often seek to satisfy our own selfish desires. And that’s actually a bend in the road. You see we look to our own knowledge to see what we need and then we look, and look, and look to find it. Always finding something, but never being satisfied. We are never satisfied because as Jurrell puts it, as he was speaking of himself, we are looking for the wrong thing. He says, “I’ve been spending all this time looking for something and Christ is the thing that I’ve been looking for.”

Jurrell shares his favorite scripture - Matthew 22:36-40. Here we find Jesus has had a conversation with the Sadducees and astonished them with His teaching. So the Pharisees stepped into the picture and felt they were smarter than the Sadducees. A lawyer, as their representative, stepped up and asked Jesus a question. He asked what was the greatest command. Jesus answered him and told him to love God with all of you - that is the first. But He went on to say that the second is like it - love others as yourself. Jurrell points out that although He said the first and the second, they are as one (the second is like it). Jesus explained to the lawyer that if he gets those two right, everything else will be a breeze; sort of - regarding perspective. If we love God with all our heart and treat others as ourselves because the love of God is so great inside of us, then everything we see, say or do is done through the lens of Christ.

His #WhatIfChrist Moment comes in him seeing God working all things out for good for those who love Him; working it out for the Belonga family. Their sweet little foster daughter came into their lives last fall and with the addition or subtraction of any family member, there is a dynamic change. As they were navigating the transition and maneuvering the stumbling blocks, COVID-19 hit. Imagine a sweet little 7-year old who does not have all the skills to comprehend all that is going on gets thrust into a COVID-19 quarantine. She has been taken from her parents and bounced around to a couple of foster homes, only to land in a home with three big brothers and the youngest is twice her age. And then just a few months later, everyone is in close quarters. 

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The effects of COVID-19 have been difficult for the greatest of men, so try multiplying those effects for the least of them. ​

​It is also important to remember that this was difficult for the entire family. But here is where you see the #WhatIfChrist moment. Sometimes those moments are small rays of light in a desolate dark circumstance. Other times they are gentle whispers in a chaos-filled room and still we might see them as a gentle breeze in a dry, arid desert land.

For the Belonga family, it was peace and calm as close quarters offered accelerated bonding opportunities. It was the creation of a new normal (COVID-19 normal) in the midst of a new normal (her being in a new home). It was not God saying I’ve allowed COVID-19 for you to get to know one another in a deeper way, in months rather than the potential years it could have taken, but rather, God was saying that I am still God and even in the midst of COVID-19 I can bring peace in close quarters.

So, is that a #WhatIfChrist Moment? Absolutely it is.

May God continue to bless their home and knit their hearts together. And may we all love people as God loves.

​Follow the YouTube link to hear my entire interview with Jurrell.

Last month Jurrell's church's, Immanuel Church, leadership hosted a 4-week online conversation on race and following Jesus. This series was called The Messy Middle. If you are interested in listening to any of those conversations, check out this page on their website, with links to the conversations and more.