Selections from John-Roger’s new book Serving & Giving by John-Roger, DSS with Paul Kaye, DSS

Giving Your Love

What is the love inside of you unless you give it away? Giving is the manifestation of loving. Without giving, you may be living. But living without loving is only existence, and existence often is a state of lack and an empty hope that someone will come along and save you from all the things that are happening “to” you.

Loving fills the lack and opens the awareness of the inner wisdom and the knowledge that you are the creator of your universe and that nothing happens to you that you do not create, promote, or allow. Loving is that active, dynamic part of you that accepts responsibility for all that you are and will be and lives in a state of open awareness.

The Spirit is eternal and is a gift that will endure forever. Spirit is free, and that means that you can be as free as you are willing to give Spirit away. That willingness to share all of yourself—all that you are—is your freedom. If you try to grab a hold of Spirit, you defeat yourself; and you lose yourself. Give it away and you will find it returned to you in more ways than you can imagine. You can’t fake it. You can’t say you are giving and loving and make anyone believe it, unless you demonstrate that giving. It is by your works that you are known, not by your intentions.

People are very perceptive. You can’t fool them. Words of love are not necessarily loving. Loving is active. Loving is giving the God that lives within you to the God that lives within all people everywhere. Loving is sharing yourself. Give yourself a gift of loving. Give yourself a gift of completing each day as it comes to a close and of awakening to the newness in you as each new day dawns. As you reside in your loving heart at each and every moment, you find that you reside permanently in the Christ and that you will never be separated from His grace and His presence. And you will experience the living Christ as your Beloved.

The Loving Touch

One of the great ways we can serve is to touch, with love. I make it a point inside of me that there is always a place inside of me to reach out and touch someone with loving. That’s what I work from and in. I know that love is the savior of us all. If a person I am relating to doesn’t have enough, the love in me would have enough because it’s tied to a greater supply of love. I make no apologies for that to anyone. I don’t love because I am after anything. My love is to serve because we love to serve. At the same time, it’s a very selfish thing, because I feel the love come back to me. It re-enters into me, and I feel the quality that the person receives.

We want to be touched by the Spirit. We fall in love with the Spirit in a person. That’s why we stay together when we’re old and haggard, because that Spirit is eternally young and present. If you withdraw your loving, then you’re not in a state of acceptance. If you go into acceptance, you go into serving. If you do cooperation—you’re serving. If you’re dedicated to a person’s well being—you are serving. The observable result of that will be God’s energy: enthusiasm. In that state, things don’t go neutral. They go into kidding and joking and laughing.

The Server and the Served

We need to look at service as not only the one who gives but also the one who receives. For there must be a receiver in order to serve. God is in the business of service. But in order to be in business, He needs people receiving the service—and that’s us. Looking at service this way, we have to say that both the server and the served are one.
Baruch Bashan