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A friend of mine asked me a thought provoking question the other day. We were talking about the love God has for us. He stopped in the middle of our conversation and asked, "Why can't I get this, why can't I understand God's love in ways that would make my life totally different?"
This friend is a seasoned follower of Jesus Christ. He is in his seventh decade of life. He started this Jesus thing a bit late in life. He's only been at it for just 30 years now! The older I get the more I connect with what my friend was asking.
You see, my friend knows how God's loves changes things. He has seen first hand how people make miraculous and instantaneous changes when they come face to face with the fact that God loves them. His question that morning comes from the realization that, even with as much experience and knowledge as he he has in his life, he has so much further to go.
You don't have to be in your seventies to be asking that question. Have you ever felt dumbstruck when it comes to accepting and living in the fullness of God's love? Join the club! I believe that feeling is a uniquely human attribute.
Why is is so hard to understand, trust and apply God's love in our lives? I can think of three reasons why this might be the case. Crazy thing is that simply mastering each of these areas won't make it so that you fully live in the love God has for you. It is a we master one of these areas, another weakens in ways that demand our attention. It's as though the cards are stacked against us when it comes to fully knowing God's love on this side of heaven. Maybe they are. Let's take a look at each of the reasons I see why God's love seems to be so missing in our lives at times.
The first reason I think that God's love is so hard to understand is that we have no ability to generate the kind of love God gives all the time. I have spoken on this before but it is important that we come to grips with this fact. We simply cannot love unconditionally on our own. We weren't made to produce that kind of love. We were created to be conduit of unconditional love, not the source of that love.
God's love can be so hard to understand because of the fact that we are designed to be conduits of His love. It stands to reason that something we can't generate is likely to be quite difficult to understand, trust and apply in our lives. The more we simply give in to how God wants to love us, the more we will be able to experience unconditional love for ourselves. It is as we get use to seeing unconditional love being dispensed in our lives that the love of God starts to make more and more sense.
We find it challenging to understand God's love for us at times because His love isn't something that we naturally have at our fingertips. God is the source of that love. He has unlimited supplies of unconditional love for us to enjoy. Problem is that we put conditions on receiving that love God so freely gives to us. The second reason we find it difficult to understand God's love is that we work to box God in with our conditions on His love.
What are our conditions? We often see God's love in light of our circumstances. We have come to believe that God loves us when our lives are going well. Our expectations put conditions on God's unconditional love. Doesn't that sound completely illogical? Well it is! When you put conditions on something unconditional it kind of negates the power of that thing in the first place.
That paradox makes the power of what God's love is suppose to look like in our lives so confusing and so easily missed. We are a conditional love based kind of species. Sure we are able to love the unlovable in some pretty remarkable ways. But, even in loving the unlovable, there are areas we won't go. Those areas, as right as they might be for the situation, are conditions. When we approach God's love with conditions of any kind, the power of His love gets lost in the shuffle.
Want more of God's love? Stop making God meet your expectations of what that love is suppose to look like. He is offering an unlimited supply of His love. Our conditions do nothing but limit how much of His love we can accept and apply in our lives. The more we can lay down our expectations of what God's love is to look like in our lives, the better we will be at seeing that love in action.
The last reason I want to consider today when it comes to God's unconditional love has to do with our home. I'm not talking about the house you live in. I'm talking about this world. Christians tend to forget that they are nothing more than aliens in a strange land. This world will never be capable to fully understanding the love God has for us all. Sure we are able to drink in gigantic portions of that love from time to time, but reality is that it won't be until we are home in heaven will God's unconditional love make perfect sense.
That doesn't mean that God doesn't want us to grow in the knowledge and experience of His love here on earth. He longs for us to let that love be the driving force in our lives. I think that we need to realize that this place is too small to contain the vastness of His unconditional love. We were made to take in all we possibly can handle and let the excess spill out into the lives of those around us. The more we live that kind of life, the better we are able to see what unconditional love looks like on a moment by moment basis.
Problem is that even is we were capable of being filled completely by God's love every moment, there is so much more that this world will never be able to understand. That's the challenge when it comes to serving a loving God that is unlimited. His love is too big for us to ever completely understand, at least in our present condition.
Our Bible reading really highlights the power of God's love. It says...
And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:5 (NIV)
Never feel shamed that you don't fully understand the love God has for you. You are in great company. None of us will fully understand His love on this side of heaven. Today's Bible reading says the answer to any shame we might feel over God's love is hope. God is pouring out His love on us constantly. Hope is only hope when what we hope for is sometimes missing in our lives. Hope is not needed when we have all we need.
The same goes for God's love for us. Sometimes we might need to feel the sting of wondering whether we are living in God's love so that we can exercise the muscle of hope. Our reading today reminds us that God is pouring into our hearts all we need. It is as we hang on to hope and listen to our hearts that the quiet whisper of love can be heard in our lives in life changing ways.
Want more of God's love in your life? So do I. It is as I drop my expectations, be the conduit for the love God made me to be and live a life of just passing through that His love becomes more and more visible to me.
Take time today to drink in all the love God has for you. He has more than you can handle. The excess will work through your life to change people's lives all around you. Let God's unconditional love for you be the power behind who you are in all you do today.
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