Way back in India, Month 1, the very first week of the race, God told me I didn’t love Him.
I was on the under construction, brick and cement roof overlooking the nearby cemetery and the far off mountains, voicing to God that even though I was doing really awesome, beautiful and meaningful things, I still felt empty and purposeless.
That wasn’t the first time I had felt like that. I had felt like that a lot, especially over the previous year. Somehow I was confident that the second I flew across the world and served “the least of these” that that feeling of purposelessness would disappear.
He nudged me to flip to Matthew 22:37-38 which reads, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.” Then He gently whispered, “You do not love Me.”
I was hurt and insulted – offended even. There I was on some deplorable roof in who-even-knows-where, India, having just dropped out of school leaving behind all my relationships, dreams, and pursuits to seek Him, know Him, and serve Him. How dare He tell me I don’t love Him!!!
The truth was, however, that I did not love Him.
I appreciated Him, trusted Him to provide for me and to guide and direct me, but I did not love Him. This was pretty painful to realize. I felt like a hypocrite who had deceived herself.
The reality is this: God created us to know, love, and be in a relationship with Him first and foremost. Until we are living in and through that relationship, we will never be fully content, satisfied, or fulfilled.
I had believed that for a while, but hadn’t been confronted with it until then. That is why I was so empty despite where I was or what I was doing.
I wrestled with this realization all month, wondering how one even begins to love the Creator and Savior of the Universe, thinking: so it’s more than just obedience, is it even humanly possible, how do others love God, is it similar to loving people, do I love people, I hear that you have to love yourself before you can love others, so do I love myself? After much wrestling, I finally came to a conclusion…
Before you can give, you must receive: I didn’t love God because I hadn’t received His love yet.
It takes a lot to receive something from someone, especially someone as great as God and something as intimate as love. It takes humility, recognition and understanding of what you are receiving, recognition and understanding of your need, and trust in the Giver.
I didn’t know what God’s love was. I knew that He showed it by creating us, saving us, and pursuing relationships with us, but I still didn’t know what that meant.
Starting right then, I began to seek to understand, know, and experience His love, and He has honored and answered me by spending this year, as I know He will the rest of my life, unfolding and revealing His love to me.
Later in India, God used Psalm 119:88 to tell me that life – real, abundant, true, fulfilling life – is in His love. It reads, “In your steadfast love give me life, that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth.” It was a beautiful revelation that I was grateful for and encouraged by, but I didn’t know what that meant practically. How does one live in God’s love? Is the whole Earth not covered in it? I didn’t understand, but I held closely to that revelation. “Life is in My love,” He said.
Next was Nepal, Month 2. My team worked with girls in the sex trade. Before entering the country, my team prayed and asked the Lord what His vision or desire for us that month was so we could focus back to it no matter how crazy, confusing, or demanding the month may have become. (Side note: This is something my team has done every month, and something I want to continue to do for myself as I step into new seasons where there may be lots of unknown or many things calling for my attention.) He revealed to my team that that month He wanted to redefine love, specifically for the girls in the dance bars, but also for me. I was ready and eager.
Jump now to Swaziland, Month 7. I wrestled with extraordinarily deep discontentment. Again, I didn’t understand why: I had never had a better relationship with the Lord. I had never been in a better place with myself. I had never been surrounded by more loving and encouraging people, and I was in Africa playing with beautiful and precious children everyday. What could bring me greater contentment? Sure my tent was hot most the time and I had to wait in line every time I wanted to go to the bathroom, but I wouldn’t have changed anything – I had some really good conversations while waiting to pee. I loved what I was doing, where I was, whom I was with, and even who I was for the first time in a long time. Why was I so discontent?
I thought back to India when the Lord shared with me, “Life is in My love.” I figured I must be missing the point still. I was living in His will, but was still absent of, distant from, and unfamiliar with His love. That month I began asking the Lord for a revelation of His love – a personal, unique event or understanding directly from Him that would help me fully know, experience, and live in His love. Everyday that month I prayed for it and waited, pretty impatiently I might add.
Then, the first weekend of Month 8 in Argentina had come, and along with it, a revelation of God’s love! God used Pastor Favian, his beyond incredible family, and his church to reveal to me just a glimpse of the love of the family of God, love that comes straight from God Himself. They loved us and served us so radically that literally every hour I was shocked and re-shocked by the extraordinary kindness, care, and compassion they poured out onto us, a bunch of American-gringo-stranger girls. I slowly began to understand that they only ever saw as their brothers and sisters in Christ whom they finally were blessed with the opportunity to not only meet, but to love and serve, and that was a great pleasure and honor to them.
The whole family – from the little, old grandma to the youngest son – loved us and served us ridiculously. They did everything from washing Trudy, our translator’s, car, to making Blair Grace dairy free cake since she was allergic to the cake we were eating, to asking us questions, really listening to us and encouraging us as we were hitting a weary part of our journey, to bringing us tray after tray of empanadas, all making sure we had our fill.
In our last church service with them, they brought Sherese up to the front. It was her birthday, and Pastor Favian shared that because she was serving the Lord overseas, Sherese couldn’t be with her family or dearest friends on her birthday, so that made it their job to love her and make her day special for her just as they would their own daughters. Immediately, the entire church went up one by one, kissing her on the cheek and praying blessings over her for her birthday – not out of obligation, but out of love. I actually wept as I watched, amazed, and honestly mostly confused at what I was seeing and feeling. Instantly I knew: What we were experiencing was the love of the family of God, straight from the heart of the Father Himself. The Lord had answered my plea.
Soon we were in Chile, Month 9, and I still felt discontent. I began asking again for another revelation of God’s love. That month, God used our host, Daniel, and his youngest daughter, Maite, to reveal another aspect of His love for me.
At Wednesday night church or community day Saturdays Maite typically bopped from one stranger’s arms to another’s lap, seeking attention and affection from whomever she desired it from in the moment. We were worshiping one Wednesday night, and she was wandering around looking for someone to sit with. I had played with her, made her laugh, and tended to many of her needs that whole week. She finally knew me, liked me, would ask me for help and to do stuff with her. I even babysat her the previous night so her parents could have a night out. I thought certainly she will come sit with me – she had just been so lovey to me the night before. She heard me call for her, saw my inviting smile, and turned away, choosing a random other girl she didn’t even know the name of, to sit with and receive affection from.
I was surprised by the sting I felt from that little girl’s rejection. I thought about how it must hurt Daniel, her father, when she rejects him after he literally brought her life into the world and has provided her every physical and emotional need since. Yet he still loves her and takes care of her all the same. I thought about how I have rejected my Heavenly Father and how He somehow still remains with His arms open wide no matter how many times I sin against Him or give my love and devotion to others above Him. It stung because I loved her, delighted in her, and was jealous for her. I tried to imagine that sting amplified as I thought: How much more infinite God’s love for, delight in, and jealousy for me is, His daughter whom He knit together, breathed to life, and has been pursuing every day since. That is the love of a beautifully jealous God and caring Father, another precious answer to my request for revelation.
Lastly, in Bolivia, Month 10, the Lord revealed a piece of the love of the undeserved cross to me through the movie, Troy, that I watched with two teammates on a whim one night.
All throughout the movie, I was growing angrier and angrier at Paris and Helen, two people whose dumb, selfish decision caused the death and torment of hundreds and thousands of innocent lives. Paris had opportunity after opportunity to stop the innocent bloodshed and take ownership for what he made wrong, but cowardly gave in again and again, choosing his own life above the lives of the innocent citizens and warriors of his nation and the opposing nations. I was shocked at his cowardice and how he could think of his and Helen’s lives as more important than the thousands of others. He absolutely outraged me. I kept yelling at him through the computer, “Are you kidding me? You did this. All this is your fault! You’re the one who deserves to die! What a coward. Own up to your choices. Pay the consequences you deserve! You can’t keep putting them on others! You deserve death, not them! You are pathetic!” In the middle of the heat of my anger at Paris and Helen, I felt the Spirit nudge me, saying, “That’s you. That’s all of you. We came, suffered, and died for you and the consequences you deserved, when you couldn’t pay them yourself, and when you chose yourself over us again and again and again.” Wow. That was the crappiest I felt receiving a revelation of God’s love. Crappy, but good – real good for me to recognize and feel. It’s amazing how your perspective shifts when you see and judge such filth in someone else and then realize that that someone else is no filthier than you, and then that a perfect God decided to die for the both of you. It’s truly mind-blowing, severely convicting and equally humbling to even begin to grasp the weight of God’s sacrifice for selfish, undeserving, pathetically sinful people like us. As much as it hurt, I was grateful for that revelation too.
…
I don’t think God wants us to live from and for one revelation of His love to the next, but I do believe that for me, this is part of the process of understanding, receiving and living in His love. He is redefining His love for me, patiently waiting for me to step into it.
These aren’t all the ways the Lord has revealed His love to me this year, but these are the big ones, and as I continue to seek His love and learn what it is to live in it, I hope and believe that one day doing so will be as simple and natural as breathing. That’s how He intended it, and that’s how I believe it will be – on Earth and in Heaven. Until then, He will continue to redefine it for me… and I am willing to bet that He will redefine it for you too if you ask Him.
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins… God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:9-19
