"Jesus loves you," she says as she hangs up the phone.
"God is love," she says as she tries to explain how wonderful He is to someone who just doesn't get it.
Yes, God is love. But our idea of love as we live in this often-confused, far-from-perfect world is sometimes less than accurate. Honestly, it can be pretty skewed and totally the opposite of what love really is. And if we don't understand what real love is and what that really means, it's hard to appreciate God's love for us.
I want to take a couple minutes to show you how I've begun to understand what "God is love" really means.
Just so that you know where I'm coming from and that I'm not pulling anything out of thin air, in 1 John 8, John proclaims "God is love." He reiterates the same exact truth in verse 16. If God is love, that means God defines love. In 1 Corinthians 13, we find a longer definition of what love is. It begins, "Love is patient. Love is kind..." You've heard it before. If God is love, I was presumptuous enough to substitute (just for a minute!) the words "Love is" for "God is." Read it like this and begin to understand how real and perfect and wonderful and everlasting God's love is for you!
God is patient,
God is kind and is not jealous,
God does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly;
God does not seek His own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
God never fails.
Lord, Your word says that neither height, nor depth, nor anything on Heaven or Earth can separate us from the love You have towards your children. Help us to remember that we can't earn your love but that's it's simply a free gift. Take away our preconceived ideas of love that we've learned from imperfect people by showering us with Your love! In Jesus name, Amen.
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LOVE THIS!!!
ReplyDeleteThat was a beautiful prayer at the end of the post. We are all imperfect people so we have imperfect love for each other. Only God has real, perfect love for us.
ReplyDeleteamazing! one thing that i have to point out is that God loves us and is jealous when we put others before HIM but his jealousy is ever a pure and holy flame. i love this!!!!
ReplyDeleteSo true Olivia! The "jealous" in Corinthians is a different kind of jealous but I should look up the Greek of it. There's definitely a godly type of jealousy like you wrote when we are "jealous" of something that is ours (like a husband toward his wife, and God toward us), but I think in Corinthians it's talking about how we shouldn't be jealous of something someone else has that leads to sin, anger, and bitterness. Now I really want to look up the Greek--I'm pretty sure they must be 2 different words. : )
ReplyDeleteI was going to mention what Olivia said and then some, but was afraid of sounding cynical. You're right, though -- God's feelings are different from those of men, and are furthermore always justified, because He created all of us and everything in this vast and astonishing universe and has every right to want his creations to serve him and love him with all of our hearts. We owe Him everything, because without Him, we are nothing. Hooray for God/Love! :)
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