Love:
I have quite a few people in my life who I say I love you to. My family uses these words often and we are all very close. We haven’t always been, we have definitely had our ups and downs as a family. When you are close with people you see everything; the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful.
As I was praying the other day I asked the Lord, why do I tend towards legalism when I’m wanting to spend time with you? His response, “Relationship is hard.”
When you commit to “doing life” with people, it is not easy. A lot of times I want to commit only to the point where I can pull away if I start feeling anything hurtful. I want the benefits of relationship, but not the hardships. I want everything and anything I can get out of it, but I don’t want to pour too much in, just in case it’s not reciprocated in the way I would like it to be.
On the Race, we do something called “feedback.” This is where you get together with your team and everyone tells each other something positive/encouraging that they’ve seen the other person doing that reflects Christ and something constructive that they see the other person can grow in to be more like Christ.
If you ask me, this should not be called feedback it should just be a normal part of relationship. Relationships can be messy but through the mess God can press, stretch and grow each person to be more and more like Christ. Through relationship God can bring healing.
That is where love comes in. Love isn’t just saying I love you, or giving someone a hug or being there for the fun and good times of life. Love is commitment; it’s a commitment to another person that you aren’t going to pull away when things get hard. You aren’t going to push someone out of your life just because they annoy you, or you don’t always get along, or you can’t see eye to eye in a situation.
Love is pressing in, and fighting through. LOVE IS NOT A FEELING! Yes the Lord gives us pleasure through loving others and sometimes it’s easier to love than other times; but to truly love someone is to commit to working through the hard things and pressing in and communicating when you don’t want to.
If God’s love looked like the way we define love sometimes, there would be no hope. I know I hurt God more often in a day than I’d like to, and I know I forget about Him and His feelings at times, but I also know that He doesn’t pull away from me in these moments. He is right there waiting for me to acknowledge Him and talk to Him, worship Him and adore Him. He is waiting for me to get over myself so that He can hold me in His arms and reveal His deep love for me to me.
God’s love is so perfect and so different than the way the world defines love. It’s not easy to reciprocate and He isn’t asking us to commit anything less than our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Love is a choice. It’s an active choice. And today, I choose love.
