Love.
It’s a simple four-letter word. But my world revolves around it. Especially lately. My faith, my relationship with my God, my calling. Everything centers around LOVE. Giving it, but also receiving it. Believing it in my heart. Recently there have been quite a few discussions about love and our relationship with our Father. There’s one revelation in particular that I’ve been mulling over the last few weeks: Our sole purpose in life is to be loved by God. That’s it. We’re not supposed to DO anything. We’re just supposed to receive. And if we wholeheartedly accept the love of God we can’t help but be affected. If we truly accept it, we’ll be so overwhelmed by it that a natural overflow will just happen. We won’t have to love people. It will just happen. Bam. A+B=C. That simple.
Unfortunately for me I’m making it harder than it needs to be lately. Receiving is hard. Really hard. I don’t know why yet, but I do know that it’s causing some serious issues. The last few weeks have been filled with alot of questioning, alot of doubt, and quite a bit of disbelief. Disbelief that I am a daughter of the King, clean, a new creation, I can be used by God, and most of all that I am loved by God. I know verses that tell me those things are Truth. But none of that really matters unless it hits home in my heart.
I finally opened up to my team about it and they immediately took up my cross along side me. They rained Truth down on me and prayed for God to show His love for me in a tangible way. And He did. He showed up BIG time. (That’s going to have to be a whole separate blog…sorry!) He poured His love upon me in a way more real than I think I’ve ever experienced. I needed to process afterwards so I wrote out my heart. Here’s a little excerpt from my journal from that night:
I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand. But I guess that’s kind of the point huh? It’s not supposed to make sense. The way God loves us isn’t normal. It’s more extravagant and over-the-top than any love on this world that we could ever experience. It’s unlike anything we know. Unlike anything we’ve ever experienced. So it doesn’t make sense. If it did, it would just be another worldly love, capable of being destroyed, temporal, and illusive. But it’s not. It’s not of this world. Humans don’t act like this. If I suck at showing someone I love them, disobey everything I’m asked to do, piss off everyone, scream at them, continually question them and fight with them, and ignore them half the time–there’s no way that they’re going to love me. And that makes sense. People get their feelings hurt; people need to see and feel that they are loved. But God, He doesn’t need love. He IS love. All He does is give it. Abundantly. And it’s only when we’ve received it that we have any to give. So He loves us. All the time. It’s not an option to not love when it’s all that you are. That would be like asking water not to be wet. Or dirt not to be dirty. It’s just not possible. God IS love. The idea of Love not loving is a lot harder to wrap my mind around than me actually being lovable or trying to believe that God loves me wholeheartedly, unconditionally, and not because of anything I do, say, think, or feel. Neither make sense, but that’s the point.
I’m still working through alot of this. And I’m learning more and more that it’s okay to not understand. And that I better get used to it, beacause I’m not going to get it for the rest of my life. So even though I’ll never completely figure all this out, I’ve discovered it’s the best place to start.
“God is love.” 1 John 4:16
