What is love?
Does anyone in American culture know?
Do we really have a grasp on what true love is?
I guess it would be quite impossible for a God-less society to know anything of real love apart from knowing God.
I think even Christians have adopted some sort of false understanding of God's love.
Of course, God absolutely loves you. He cannot help it. Love is His nature. He is love. He loves for the sake of love.
The thing about it is, love, perfect true love, does not always feel good.
Sometimes it hurts.
When we open ourselves up to the Lord, we actually are inviting Him to not only lavish us with His holy affections, but to also hurt, press, crush, break us.
If we truly believe that God loves us, we cannot think that He will leave us the way we are.
No.
I believe that He will do whatever it takes to get us to be who He created us to be.
I believe that He will not stop shaping us until the life of Jesus is so manifested in us.
He does not quit with us until His will is done in and through us.
This is a process.
And it will be one of pain and suffering.
There must be a time when God puts us through the refining fire.
There must be a time when the Lord spins His potter's wheel and pieces of us, our clay fly off.
There must be a time when He prunes our branches.
Everything the Lord does is intentioned and purposeful.
Everything the Lord does is full of love and care.
The times when I feel crushed and pressed, I know I will not be defeated.
I know the Lord is pushing on the areas of my life that need more righteousness, more Jesus.
Is that not what I want anyways?
To be like Jesus?
To literally be all Jesus, and none of me?
If this desire in my heart is true, I will suffer, just as my Lord has suffered.
Do I truly gain anything without an understanding of life without?
Do I truly gain the love of God, the peace and joy of God, without suffering through some of life without the tangible experience of those things?
These are questions I have been thinking about.
This word, long-suffering, has been a pausing point for me recently.
Describing the love of God as long-suffering never really hit me as much as it has been now.
And His patience and kindness towards us would be understandably long and cause Him to suffer.
Jesus manifested this facet of love all the way to death and back.
Long-suffering.
What in my life causes me to suffer?
Nothing.
I honestly cannot think of any trouble so great in my life that causes me to come close to what I would define as suffering.
When I think about the people I have met along this journey, the children I have seen living on the streets in the Philippines, the single mothers barely able to feed their children in Africa, women subjected to sexual slavery and abuse in Thailand….can I say that I suffer?
I am sobered and humbled at this thought.
I do not really have any words as I sit here and meditate upon the sufferings of Christ and the suffering of so many in this world.
These people, these single mothers, these bar girls, they suffer for their loved ones.
They subject themselves to hard situations, unbearable conditions, horrible treatment for their children, their families.
They risk themselves, put their lives on the line to provide a life for the ones they so dearly love.
Is this not the love of God?
Long-suffering.
Who do I suffer for?
Who do I so love that I would lay down my own comfort, dignity, well-being for?
Do I even love God this way?
Am I willing to be bruised for His will?
Am I willing to follow Him into harm?
I mean, real hurt. Real danger. Real darkness.
Do I love Him so much that I would risk it all?
I now understand Paul when he talks about fellowshipping with Christ in His suffering.
Knowing Christ, even in His pain, should be enough for me.
I desire all of Christ, including His suffering, just so I can know Him more.
I so desire to love the way God loves.
Even to death and back, the way Jesus loved me on the cross.
I pray that the Lord would continue teach me what true love is, whatever it may cost me.
