Love.
Almost a year ago, I was sitting in the living room of an orphanage with nine other teammates in Haiti. We were playing the question game, where each of us had to answer one another’s questions, ranging from “if you had to drink one drink for the rest of your life what would it be?” (club soda with lime) to “What are the top 5 things on your bucket list?”. One sister asked a seemingly simple question: “How are you best loved?”. As other people answered, I realized that I had no idea how to receive love without trying to earn it.
Since then I have been seeking to understand what it means to love unconditionally and be loved unconditionally, beginning with my first Love, my Creator, my Papa, and my Beloved. After four months of still trying to earn love, I am finally learning to rest and be loved as a human being, not a human doing. Here is where I am currently sitting.
God is Love. –1 John 4:8
If you’re jaded by that overused verse, then mull it over in this way:
2+2=4
God= Love
In a math equation this means that both sides must ALWAYS equal each other, obviously.
But this means that our infinite God actually has a limit. He cannot deny Himself. He Cannot Not Love.
Reread that.
God Cannot Not Love.
2+2 can never equal 5 and God can never not Love.
…It doesn’t say: God can never not Love a perfect Christian.
God can never not Love anyone.
Including Me.
Including You.
Including child molesters.
Including people who bomb churches.
Including people who bomb abortion clinics.
Including sex traffickers.
Including genocidal leaders.
I have been mulling over that thought for a few days now. I have always believed in an infinite God, a God who had control over every situation. I knew that He did love me and I am learning that I did and can do nothing to earn that love, but I always figured God was just so good that He chose to love me. I never understood that his default nature was Love. He cannot deny Himself…
And that means a lot.
But where does that leave me?
Luke 10:27 says that above all, God wants me to love Him” “with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength and all my mind”.
I have been on yet another quest to figure out what this means. I have tried several things that have failed, from obeying his rules and His voice to worshiping Him in all circumstances. And both have left me feeling distant from God and drained. So I kept figuring there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t doing enough. And that left me back at square one–trying to DO to EARN love. I already knew that was NOT the answer.
So I prayed that God would begin to reveal his true desires to me. And His answer began in a way I never expected.
In these past weeks, God has taken me back to different moments of relationships in my life to show me imperfect pictures of Love, to show me what Love is not.
When I was seventeen, I was in a one-sided relationship. I had very little feelings for this young man. It didn’t matter how I tried to pretend that I loved him, he always knew it was not real. I could do every last thing he asked of me, but without love my actions were hollow.
Obedience is not enough.
Love is MORE than obedience.
At another point in my life I was with a young man who didn’t know how to love me, so instead he worshiped me. He praised every one of my actions. He questioned nothing I did… And that left me on a pedestal. Alone.
Worship is not enough.
Love is MORE than worship.
…I know a few of you are reading this a little skeptically, but truly I know what I wrote. I truly believe that the broken human relationships I have had were given to me so that I would learn ways in which I, and most of us, try to serve God that aren’t what He wants. So what does God want if obedience and worship are not the answer?
The answer is not profound.
God wants a living, breathing, real, tangible relationship with me. With you.
If you read the Bible, you realize that God is a being who can be known the way we know any other person. He has tangible conversations throughout the entire Old Testament, beginning with Adam and Eve. They wandered through Eden having conversations with God as though He was just strolling with them through the garden…
At one point in Exodus, God gives Moses an ANGEL to lead the Israelites, and Moses says to God “It’s not good enough. If you don’t go with me, I am not going.”
I want to break this down. First, can you imagine God tells you something and you tell him “no.” Have you ever wrestled with God when He speaks clearly, or do you take what He says as the end-all-be-all. I am positive that if I were in that situation, I’d be STOKED that God gave me an angel–that’s great! But not Moses. No. Moses says God’s offer is not enough and doesn’t stop arguing until God finally agrees to lead them.
Moses told God, “no”. And God listened. God changed His mind.
WHAT. The infinite God changed His mind?
Why?
All I can figure is Love. That Moses was living in such a real relationship with God that they were able to have a two-sided conversation, that they could argue and talk and change. Moses did not obey simply because God spoke.
Second, Moses is so in love with God that nothing short of God’s presence was enough. An angel was not good enough. He loved God so much that Moses said no to having an ANGEL as an escort. That blows my mind. Moses truly desired God above all else.
This passage was like reading a conversation between any married couple, arguing with each other, fighting for each other. I had to reread this and realize that Moses as talking to God, not his earthly wife or his brother.
If Moses, Adam, and King David can all have these relationships before the Holy Spirit is even on the scene living in each of them, then how much more does God desire a relationship with me?
A real relationship.
One where I fight for the desires of my heart.
One where I listen, question, discuss, compromise.
One where I worship not simply for the action, but out of the overflowing love in my heart.
One where God’s first word is not necessarily his last. A relationship where He listens to me, listens to my thoughts, my dreams, my pains and vice versa.
That doesn’t sound like the God I learned about in Sunday school.
That doesn’t sound like the God I have oft heard from the pulpit.
But the more I study God’s Word and listen to His voice, the more I know that this is the God of Love.
This is a God who loves me above all else. The God who wants me to love Him above all else.
He is Love.
He is True Love.
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