that four-letter word

Since coming on the race, I have found myself more confident than
ever before in my faith in the total sovereignty of God, in His
control of circumstances, in His hand working out all things for His
glory. My mind concedes to His omniscience, His omnipotence, and His
perfect wisdom. Recently, however, I’ve recognized the snag in my analytical outline as I then attempt to check off His love for me on the same line of logical truths I can ascribe to. In those moments of complete honesty with myself, to some degree I’ve lost this most crucial of attributes of our God. Somewhere along the
way, I have lost the bridge that crosses from His divine workings for
His own purposes to what I’m told is a desperate love for His people. As I’ve worked to meticulously construct my theological framework, part of me was almost convinced that I had it all figured out. That should probably be a red flag when you are working with an infinite God. By His grace and that same sovereign Hand I’ve spent so long contemplating, I got a slapped in the face by the most powerful four-letter word in my vocabulary.

“If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2) I am nothing if I don’t have His love. It doesn’t say “if I do not love,” but if I “have not love.” As I’ve scrolled through my personal inventory, I can check off a lot of things that I may think I have. But as long as I’m missing His love, then all truly is for naught, and I am nothing. It’s not merely that I possess nothing, but I am nothing without that love. This really speaks to the self-righteousness that my knowledge can easily begin constructing or feeding, strengthening the illusion that I am anything on my own, effectively nullifying His grace. “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21)

This month, I understood God’s pursuit of me and each one of us in a way that I never really had before. We are not pawn getting moved around the chess board of a cold, divine puppet-master, but the object of the affections of the God of the universe, the apple of His eye, His beloved. “You are no longer a slave, but a son.” (Galatians 4:7)
 

It was undeniably difficult wrestling through some of these issues this month, but I managed to catch a glimpse of what God will, by His grace, throw in my path to make
me realize I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have all of Him
figured out, and He will not fit easily into boxes that I can
diagram. He can exist in seeming paradoxes of love and control that my mind will never be able to fully wrap itself around. There will never be a Q.E.D. at the end of my assessment of the Creator, there will always be more of Him to experience and explore. I will forever be in the shallow end of the infinite depths of the love of my Father, but I can say that this month I’ve taken a couple steps deeper.

“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:17b-19)