There is a big truth that a lot of Christians do not tell new believers. When I first came to Christ no one told me how difficult it is being a true follower of Christ. I am sure I am not alone in this. I admit that a big part of my coming to Christ was for comfort. I was lost and alone and people told me that Christ will take care of that. I was a nineteen year old romantic and the thought of constant love and comfort sounded just like all the romance movies I love so much. I was under the assumption that if I am a Christian I wouldn’t have any problems. I made my Jesus my Noah from the Notebook. In my head if Jesus was in my heart then nothing in the world could go wrong, because all I need is for Jesus to love ME. Jesus would take care of ME. Jesus would protect ME. Jesus would provide for ME. The relationship I had with Jesus was surrounded around ME. So when problems from my past came back I blamed Jesus for hurting ME. For not protecting ME. I thought He didn’t love me because of all this pain that was happening. Needless to say I walked away from God and I fell. I fell extremely hard. It was if I started at the top of the Empire State building and everyday I fell down one more level always landing on my face, then one day I finally fell down the last level. I fell for almost 300 days. Three hundred days of living a life that slapped Jesus in the face. Three hundred days of living in complete selfishness. Three hundred days that tore me down. Imagine going three hundred days without bread or water; that was me. I had the source of living in my finger tips, but I ignored it for my own way of living.
However, painful that time was it taught me something I had never realized before. A relationship with Jesus is like a marriage. Yes, Jesus loves me, but I am to love Him back. I am sure many of you reading just think that observation is silly, and that everyone knows this, but I don’t think so. We live in America where there is one word for love and we use it like toilet paper. We say oh I love chicken, I love this movie, I love that girl even though I literally just met her two minutes ago. While some languages have multiple words for like, and then one word for love. They have a word for like towards material things like food, then a higher level of like for friends, then there will be love for a significant other or for family. The love for family and a significant other is rarely ever used because it is of the highest degree of emotion. This word is the true meaning of love to them, which is why it is rarely used.
Take a moment a to think of all the things you say you love and think about why you love them. Why do you love a certain movie? A movie can provide you with entertainment, but only for a moment. A piece of food can relieve hunger, but only for a moment. The girl you just met two minutes ago is only there for just a moment, but will you love her if you never see her again? While I am sure most of us would say “well, I don’t really love them. It’s just an expression,” but why has love been torn down to something that can be an expression? Why are we using a word that is defined as God as an expression. In 1 John 4, John expresses how God is love and our love comes from God. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Take that in…God is love.
When I was in high school and I had my first boyfriend my mom over heard me saying to him that I love him. She got upset with me about this. At that age I did not understand why she thought it was so bad, but she asked me if I would die for my boyfriend. She said that is what love is. She said she knew she loved my dad because she would die for him. I thought about this for a while. She asked me this when I was sixteen; I am now twenty one and I think of this question before I say I love you to someone. Unfortunately, I don’t think about this before I say that about a material object, but I should. Would I die for the movie Braveheart? Definitely not. Strangely, I have always thought about this towards people, but I did not apply this to Jesus. That was my problem. I never imagined that Jesus was real, and I had forgotten what my mom said. By my mom’s definition Jesus loves me, but I did not recognize it. I was so caught up in what Jesus could do for me that I forgot about what he already did.
It wasn’t until I was crying on my knees alone in a dark street that I saw the beauty of what Jesus has already done for me. Jesus knew all the sin I was going to bury myself in before I was even born. He knew my self destructive habits, yet He still died for me. He knew I would do the very thing He was dying for, I would do every single day of my life. He knows that about all of us. Jesus was tortured and brutally killed on the cross knowing that everyday we would chose to sin. Is this not love? Is this not the most perfect example of love known to mankind? Why have we taken this word that is used to describe Jesus’ death and made it an expression? I mistakenly overlooked how Jesus’ death is constantly giving me grace, and hope, and forgiveness. It is a continuous act of love that happens no matter what we do. Every time we sin Jesus’ death is how we are forgiven. It is how we are allowed to get into heaven. This should change our hearts.
Jesus gave up His life for us, because He loves us. I don’t think we will ever be capable of capturing the true essence of that statement. The only way to even grasp a glimpse of this kind of love is to understand what love is. Love is an affection, not an emotion. A affection is “the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul” (Edwards). To love something means that your heart is constantly changing and growing towards the thing you love. You are not the same person because of that love. Everything Jesus did on Earth was in hopes of everyone coming to know God, because Jesus loved God and loved us. He loved God and everything He did was surrounded by that. Everything He did was to glorify God. Are we not called to do the same? I mean He loved God and us so much that he died on a cross in hopes that we could meet God one day in heaven. His death was a symbol of God’s longing for us to be in heaven. God’s longing to have us know Him. How amazing is that? Is this not a God who deserves praise every moment of our lives? Is this not a God who deserves to be called love?
This thought should captivate our hearts and change us. We should strive to affectionately love God. We should constantly be seeking God and learning who He is. If we truly love God our hearts should desire nothing more than God’s presence, because we see how nothing else will love us as much as God. We should see that who God is, is enough to attract our worship. Just who God is should be enough for us. My problem before was that I was always asking for stuff from God, but I never gave Him anything in return. A marriage will never work if only one spouse gives and the other spouse always takes, and I never realized that. God has given us the whole world and yet many us only want to take more from Him. God is more than enough.
Coming to end of this blog I realize how this is a ramble of a lot of things. I hope people who read this get my main point which is that God is love, and if your relationship with God is you only asking for things then maybe you should check yourself. God made us to love. God made us to glorify Him. You should be so in awe of who God is that then when bad things happen you still praise Him because of who He is. God is good and gracious and merciful. Who He is should wreck your heart. God is never changing. He was beautiful and loving before Jesus died on the cross and He always will be. He has loved you before you were born and He always will. This is a heart changing truth. Everything God has done and will do is love. A relationship with God is continuously seeking Him and knowing who He is, which is not what I thought it was when I was nineteen. When problems came I blamed God instead of acknowledging how God is strong enough to help me through them, but I have to seek Him. He was showing me how life with Him means that I am to know who He is, and that means working to know Him. I should have worked to see how His strength can take me out of certain situations instead of blaming Him. I have to give Him time in order to know Him. Learning who God is makes anything seem possible because it grows your faith, which requires work. Growing to know God is a difficult task, but it is worth it. God’s love is worth more than anything else in the world.
