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"God hasn’t doomed you to a bad life because of your misunderstanding of Him or because of some bad thing you have done in your life. If this is the case than the verses from Romans we read earlier are a lie."
As quoted from the book "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim-Based Society" by John H. Hovis Page 149.
The Romans passage I alluded to in my opening quote talks about the fact that nothing can separate us from God's Love. I love how Paul writes. His over the top way of making a point really helps me to see how serious God is about His love for us.
Paul says that nothing can separate us from the love of God. He then goes on to explain what he means by the world "nothing." Nothing to Paul includes; trouble, calamity, persecution, hunger, bankruptcy, danger, our fears, death, life and worries. He even goes on to say not even angels in heaven or demons in hell can come between us and the love God has for us. I think Paul is pretty serious about the fact that when it comes to relationship with this God we can expect love to be something that is for us in this life.
Problems is, I don't think we really know what love is. We all have a notion of what love should be. Most of what we would describe as being love comes from a warped view of the concept based on what we have seen, what we have been taught, what has been modeled to us and what we desperately need. Approaching love from this direction sets us up for making love something that actually hinders our ability to relate to one another and to this God that loves us.
Love is suppose to be what binds us together. When our view of love is different than the view someone else has about love, it can be so difficult to make relationships be the powerhouse they are suppose to be in our lives. Let me explain that a bit further with a hypothetical situation. But first, I need to set this situation up with a little information.
Gary Chapman has a book out called "The 5 Love Languages". It has been around for quite a while. You may have read this book yourself. In his book, Gary highlights that we all have a "language of love," He stipulates that we understand what love is through the filter of that language that best matches our natural language.
This is actually a pretty amazing concept but there is a big problem in loving relationships based on languages of love. The problem is that the way we need to receive love is typically the way we show love. That works fine if all the relationships you are involved in have the exact same love language. It is when we are showing love in the way we expect to receive love and the one we are loving has a different language that trouble begins to happen.
Resentment, disappointment, strife and ultimately broken relationships are the result when the language of love isn't being understood. It is like this. When person A is wired to feel and relate to love through gifts of service, they naturally are inclined to love others by serving them. These are the amazing people who are so thoughtful. They know just the right thing to do and to say for every situation in another person's life.
The results of having a love language barrier begins to happen as Person A is showing love to Person B who happens to speak the language of love based on touch. Person A might be pouring out service like crazy to show their love while Person B responds with touch in ways that they see as loving to the fullest. Remember, each person is showing love the way they need to be loved in order for love to be seen the fullest in their life. That's where the problems begin.
Eventually, Person A and Person B are going to become disillusioned with the other each other. Each is going to think the other just doesn't appreciate their efforts to love so completely. Person A is going to think, "What's wrong with Person B - I do and do and do and all they can respond with is the fact they can't keep their hands off me." Person B is going to think, "Person A must not be all that attracted to me. They are so busy doing they just don't seem to be able to find time to simply be with me." The more these thoughts are left to linger in this relationship, the more damage that occurs. Love begins to be the dividing issue in the relationship rather than the glue that binds.
It isn't that both of the people in our example don't want love to be a major force in their lives. It is simply that they were just speaking the wrong language to each other. Best intentions just aren't enough when something as profound as love is concerned. It is when we recognize what love is and how that love is to work in a relationship that we begin to see how to more fully step into the power of relationship in our lives.
Now, take that problem of miscommunication that I briefly outlined in our example and multiply it by infinity and you get the potential for problem based relationships that will occur between us and the God that loves us. Just like the couple I described in my example, we are speaking a different language than God when it comes to love. That's what I meant earlier by my statement regarding the fact we really don't know what love is.
The Apostle John wrote a really interesting Book of the Bible. In Revelation, John tries to communicate some scary and hard to understand things about what is to come. I find it interesting that God chose John to write this book. You see, the Gospel of John was also written by this man. The Book of John is often described as the Book of Love. John had this amazing ability to get God's love in a way that others just seemed to miss. Maybe it was because John understood God's language of love in a way others didn't that he was selected to write something as challenging as the Book of Revelation. Check out today's Bible verse that comes from this Book John wrote.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave. Revelation 1:17-18 (NLT)
It was when John saw Jesus, in His full form, that John fell down as though dead at the feet of Jesus. Something about Jesus scared John so badly that he just couldn't stand up under the pressure of what he saw. What was it that scared John so badly? I believe that John saw the fullness of what Love looks like in the person of Jesus.
This same person that John had written about in ways that is so often associated with the word love, now drops dead when he comes face to face with what love really looks like. God has such an interesting way of making a point. The truth is that we are trying to live this life feeling God's love in a way that so misses the mark when it comes to the fullness of the Love God is in our lives.
Our victor status gets challenged when we think that God's love will look a certain way that will benefit us. Should God not do what we expect that so completely defines love to us, love is challenged in relationship blocking ways. It is when we only accept love in ways that we understand that our relationship with God becomes challenged in ways that make our victor status seem so impossible to live out.
Bad news is that the fullness of God's love will never be completely seen and understood on this side of Heaven. We all are destined for a little bit of what John experienced. We too will be shocked at what love really looks like when we come face to face with that love in Heaven.
What are we to do in the meantime? How are we to handle the fact that, when it comes to love, we are speaking a foreign language to God? I believe all we can do is have faith. Faith comes as we simply believe God loves us no matter what our circumstances look like. Allowing how good or how bad our lives are at the moment be what defines the extent to which God loves us is the epitome of how we let the language barrier of love ruin the relationship God wants with us so desperately.
Take time today to remind yourself how much God loves you. Don't let what you do today play any part in proof for that love. God's love for you is unstoppable. It is exactly what it needs to be to let you be all you can be as the victor He has called you to be. Let the love of God overwhelm you today. Let that love confuse you. Let that love scare you to death. Start speaking God's love language and watch how His power flows through you in all you do today.
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