On the last night of training, we were challenged by the following question: “What is the number one reason I am on planet earth?” Of course we all shouted back, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all you mind. And, love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) But that wasn’t the answer they were looking for. “I challenge you to think before that. Where does that love come from?” probed Andrew Sherman (one of the amazing men of God that poured into our lives this past week). Then, in a gentle voice, he confirmed what God had already been birthing in our hearts, “To be loved.”
“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
This stuck home with me. I cannot love God with all my heart, soul and mind nor love my neighbor if I do not first grab a hold of his intense love for me. It is not just his love flowing through me to others…but His love pouring into me. I know that this is simple. But at the same time, this thinking is revolutionary (at least for me). I am a giver, not a taker. It is easier for me to serve, than to receive. Basically, I am a “human doing”, while God is calling me to BE….that is why we are human BEINGS. He wants to love me.
He wants all of his creation to know this. He longs for man to receive his love. He died as a demonstration of his love. How would I feel if I died for a friend out of love, and they didn’t receive it, or if they even rejected it and scorned it? Tonight I realized how much He must be hurting because many of us do not openly receive this gift. A lot of those wounding arrows came from me. Yes, I know He loves me, but do I truly BELIEVE it. I felt the Lord whisper in my ear, “I don’t just want to use you, I want to love you.”
After I truly receive this love, that’s when I am activated. And I know I have been switched fully on this past week.
“Dear friends, let us love one another. For love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:7-12)
God want’s others to know and feel His intense love for them. As mentioned before, God desires us to give this love away. Not keep it guarded, but to let our light shine before men. Now, to make this circle of love complete, God’s abundant love in me overflows back to Him and to those around me. Knowing that God loves me, I am now fully and freely able to love and give God’s love away…and to receive that love from my brothers and sisters.
I think back to this afternoon, when many of us were crowded around Angél as he painstakingly, yet loving hand crafted his wooden chair. (Read my blog Muebles to hear his story). God works through the heart. Watching Angel, I felt like he had let me enter into a corner of his heart. He came alive as he pieced together the chair. To him it is not just a chair…it is a part of him. A work of his own hand, thus and extension and expression of his heart. What an honor to be able to peek into his heart.
Take this a bit further. Team Nessa was not just invited to share an afternoon on this family’s front porch, but we were warmly welcomed into their home. And we all know home is where the heart is. I didn’t just play soccer with the kids, but I got to share a part of their heart. I not only had a conversation with Vicki, the 18 year old daughter, but I got to enter into her life as she shared her dreams, goals and passions with me. “I want to become a better person and help those around me,” she says meekly to me with a shy smile. “I want to have a family someday,” she adds after a few seconds.
To be loved. It’s that simple. God created me to be loved. I will not be able to freely love those around me unless I know that I am loved. I do not want to steal this love from God’s creation. I want others to experience and know His love through me. I want to share my heart with others while entering into the hearts of others. I want a heart that humbly listens to their stories. For in giving and receiving, God’s love is made complete.
